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[clb]

Could anyone provide some insight on this? I got 6 provinces in 15 turns (7 in 18 to end it).
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201207/14/game-20120714-210839-de40a6f0.html
I had a crossroads, a few apothecaries (which I mistook for alchemists when formulating my plan), a mountebank, and 2 King's Courts. Some of this has to be shuffle luck, right? My original plan was to hit the corssroads, pearl divers, apothecaries (I thought they were alchemists...) pretty hard and grab lots of vineyards. There wasn't +buy, so I didn't know how well it would work, but I was playing with my lovely wife, and she isn't as aggresive as most, so I thought it might work. I guess because I had to little else in my deck, I was able to draw lots of coppers for the early buys (and get 2 or 3 extra coppers from her mountebank) and then the KC/MB started lining up, ramming her full of curses and lining my pockets with unaticipated $.
Would you have seen this coming? Is this actually a good strategy, or did I just get the best luck possible, and I shouldn't expect this to do well ever again?
Thanks!

[meow]

I'm far from a "real" expert, but I haven't learned that Apothecary is very often better and faster that low and mid level players expect (and Alchemist is often NOT as good as mid level players think .

[clb]

I'm far from a "real" expert, but I haven't learned that Apothecary is very often better and faster that low and mid level players expect (and Alchemist is often NOT as good as mid level players think .

I agree that Alchemist is pretty slow, and easily broken. I had thought of it as a cantrip+ and drainable pile with little money and the potions I had planned on gettting.
I wasn't aware that Apothecary is considered fast. I will dig around and see if there are articles/comments, etc. about using that card. In function, it seems like a partial reverse Counting House (pull the coppers from your deck, rather than your discard), but it does have the +1 action, +1 card, which is a saving grace.

[ftl]

Apothecary is quite good. Just going pure apothecary gets you three provinces lightning-fast.

However, Apothecary chokes on green cards. If you have no green cards in your deck, Apothecary is somehwere between +3 and +5 cards, +1 action. Great card, gets your whole deck of coppers in your hand. If you have a few green cards, it starts choking - green cards accumulate at the top of your deck, and it soon becomes something like '+2 cards, +1 action, where one of those cards is a copper' or even just +1 card, +1 action, rearrange the top 4 cards of your deck, and the chain of apothecaries breaks.

Apothecary works well when there's a way to keep powering through that - when there's a way to draw the non-copper cards off the top of your deck easily. Here, crossroads and King's Court do that for you. You also used apothecary's rearrangement powers to a few times set up your next turn - like leaving a crossroads with a few green cards on the deck.

That said, Mountebank's curses could have made things a lot worse for you, but your opponent delayed getting a Mountebank; on the first shuffle he got a gold instead, and I think that cost him.

I'm no apothecary expert, but 6 provinces in 15 turns when Apothecary+good support is around is not surprising to me. (Not saying I'd be able to duplicate that, I'm pretty bad with apothecary, but such things can happen.)

[verikt]

Apoth crossroads is practically guaranteed to draw your whole deck. (when your deck is all copper green) Not surprising at all. You missed a couple of things. You ignored tactician. With secret chamber you could have gone for double tac, or discarded all your coppers and redraw them with apoth. But that's fancy. For plain and simple, when you hit kc mount the first time you won.

[clb]

Apoth crossroads is practically guaranteed to draw your whole deck. (when your deck is all copper green) Not surprising at all. You missed a couple of things. You ignored tactician. With secret chamber you could have gone for double tac, or discarded all your coppers and redraw them with apoth. But that's fancy. For plain and simple, when you hit kc mount the first time you won.

I just played a few solitaire games to test these out. I may have made up my decks sub-optimally, but the straight 2xTac+SC (using the apothecaries to increase handsize) seemed to be easier to set up and a little more stable (consistently a province a turn once I turned it on), whereas the 2xTac+SC (cycling through coppers with apothecaries and SC) was more likely to double-province, but it seemed more prone to choke. That is, the second method feels like it needs more apothecaries and SCs to make successful. In both cases, having crossroads was a huge boon.
Thanks for the insights!

[verikt]

I wouldn't call it suboptimal. It was good enough for the game you were playing. looking at the board again, I didn't even notice coppersmith. Your biggest block here was no +buy. but kc apoth kc coppersmith could also have been fun. Not so relevant to the game you were playing, but good to recognize your options.