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Author Topic: Possible Combo: Scrying Pool - Secret Chamber  (Read 4962 times)

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Davio

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Possible Combo: Scrying Pool - Secret Chamber
« on: July 13, 2012, 06:01:24 am »
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I recently played a game where these two cards appeared together, they formed an interesting combo.

It's not a straightforward combo as many of the other combos that have been posted are, because it needs some support to set it up. But when the support is there, it's really fun to play.

The main trick of the combo is: Discard all of your action cards with Secret Chamber (SC) and use Scrying Pool to draw them again. You can repeat this process as long as you have actions, SC's and SP's remaining. Vault can work also, but it's more expensive and lets your opponent possibly benefit as well.

First and foremost you need a Village. SC is a terminal. Villages enable you to play more SC's and they serve as extra draw cantrips when you get them off a SP chain. Border Village is a nice target as you can grab an extra Action card with it. The SC->SP trick only works when you're able to draw your entire deck otherwise you're not guaranteed to draw everything off your 2nd or 3rd SP. This means heavy trashing and/or draw assistance like Lab.

Then there's the +Buy. It's fun to generate tons of money, but you need Buys to spend them. Something like Worker's Village can help here as it provides both the Village and the +Buy component. +Buys also help when gaining Scrying Pools early with cheap action cards like Pawn and Hamlet.

All in all it's an interesting combo, but not one you're likely to come across often, because of the needed support. Still, it's always fun to let a bad card like Secret Chamber have its moment of glory.
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Kahryl

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Re: Possible Combo: Scrying Pool - Secret Chamber
« Reply #1 on: July 13, 2012, 01:28:19 pm »
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It's fun and antintuitive that "discard" doesn't necessarily mean "lose for this turn" if you're drawing your whole deck with power to spare. Similarily, "gain" effects don't mean "get for next turn". I bet there are a lot of combos involving gaining/discarding and card draw lurking in our subconsiouses.
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ednever

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Re: Possible Combo: Scrying Pool - Secret Chamber
« Reply #2 on: July 13, 2012, 01:30:03 pm »
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Also works with vault.

Inn is a great facilitator as it lets you discard actions you can redraw.

Worker village also really good here for the +buy you need given the time to set it up.

With enough sp's this can be done without trashing (played s game last night I think where I did a so+vault combo. I'll try to find on cr to post. Made some errors, but managed to come back from a huge deficit and get a tie)

It also used remodel to pick up cards and play on the same turn

Ed
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GendoIkari

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Re: Possible Combo: Scrying Pool - Secret Chamber
« Reply #3 on: July 13, 2012, 01:45:52 pm »
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I did this recently, actually!

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120622-184709-c02347df.html

The game as a whole isn't a great example, probably, because I was playing against my wife who is a much more casual / just have fun player; not very competitive. But anyway, with no +Actions and few Money-giving actions in the Kingdom; I realized that Secret Chamber was actually a really good Black Market buy.
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Copernicus

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Re: Possible Combo: Scrying Pool - Secret Chamber
« Reply #4 on: July 14, 2012, 06:45:28 pm »
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The main problem with this combo is that Secret Chamber's reaction to Scrying pool is so painfully slow that I'll refuse to play in a game with both cards.

Even worse, there's a bit of reason and strategy to playing it each time, as it's possible to try to trick your opponent into letting you pseudo-dig for cards.
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clb

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Re: Possible Combo: Scrying Pool - Secret Chamber
« Reply #5 on: July 14, 2012, 07:54:50 pm »
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I played a game like this IRL - I had SP and SC (and Jester, for fun), and my opponents took quite a while on each SC reveal. It was also a difficult decision sometimes on whether to have them discard a good card or not. I didn't want a lot of money in my deck to trip up scrying pool, so do I make them discard the Gold so my Jester will hit something else? I don't want a copy of it, and I don't want them to have a copy of it. Well, the answer seems obvious now; I struggled with it in-game.  :-[
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Asklepios

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Re: Possible Combo: Scrying Pool - Secret Chamber
« Reply #6 on: October 08, 2012, 07:47:15 am »
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I'd say you need trashing too, to get any sort of pace out of this.

To get the combo going you need to have the deck in such a place that you can guarantee Scrying Pool drawing the whole deck when you play it. I'd agree that Worker's Villages are great with this combo as every element of them helps: +buy to make use of the money, +actions to feed Secret Chamber plays and +card to help move towards the full deck draw. I'd also flag Hamlet as a nice addition, as its cheap enough to acquire multiples of quickly, and once the engine is running you can carefully make sure that you're only discarding actions to it, so as to draw back with Scrying Pool again.

The main problem with getting this engine up and running, in my experience, is the potion cost of scrying pool. Generally it takes a while to get to the critical mass of Scrying Pools for the deck to activate, and getting a second potion means having to get one more Scrying Pool for full deck draw later.

Hence trashing is the third part of the needed support here.
« Last Edit: October 08, 2012, 07:50:37 am by Asklepios »
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Markov Chain

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Re: Possible Combo: Scrying Pool - Secret Chamber
« Reply #7 on: October 08, 2012, 11:21:25 pm »
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Another problem with this combo is that Secret Chamber is a good defense against Scrying Pool; your own Scrying Pool won't hurt your opponent's hand as much if your opponent has a Secret Chamber to get the best five of seven cards in his hand.
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