I realize that the hive mind must have thought of this before, as they're in the same expansion, but I just found it. The presence of expand (as with any 6 or 7) softens the blow of contraband; later, you can expand the contrabands into provinces. It just worked well for me in a game against a friend, but there wasn't much going on on the board. Anyone have thoughts? The board I played was, I think:
expand, contraband, counting house (?), royal seal (?), talisman, navigator (?), fishing village, warehouse, pawn, haven
Would this work on better boards?