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[philosophyguy]

Would the forum be collectively interested in generating a list of Kingdom sets that are designed specifically to combat groupthink? An example would be a Pirate Ship setup in which Pirate Ship is actually a horrible strategy (e.g., Minion, lots of cantrip cards, Moneylender, Festival/Bazaar). The idea would be to generate setups that could be used to educate a group about why seemingly awesome cards are not great in every situation.

Obvious candidate "groupthink" cards to defeat:
1) Pirate Ship
2) City
3) Minion
4) Tournament

Please either suggest other cards to add to the groupthink list or submit Kingdom card setups that demonstrate why those cards are weak.

[DG]

You probably need to specify the number of players for the sets. All those cards vary in strength with the number of players in the game. In a two player game the majority of sets will have good defence to a pirate. In a 4 player game the cities are almost always going to be strong if the players choose to make them so.

[Elyv]

City: Any setup with no cursers and no cheap, easily spammable cards.
Pirate Ship: Setups with little trashing but lots of non-treasure money, preferably with a good action-based deck.

Other two: not sure.

[Lionel]

For tournament : colony game.
For minions : horse trader.

And notice than an early embargo on minion or tournament may change your strategy;)

[Davio]

Heavy Saboteuring / Swindling can have a big effect on these cards too, especially with more players when you can be Sabotaged or Swindled 3 times in 1 round.

Minions are only good if you have a bunch of them.
If you play a 4p game and every player has 2 or 3, it's better to have Silvers instead.

Pirate Ships work less good with Chapel-games in which the main source of money comes from Action Cards, not Treasure.

City is less good in fast games, Gardens rushes maybe, but some Chapel examples too.

Tournament is is hard to compete with in groups, because if 3 players are rushing Tournaments and Provinces and you're not, you will likely lose, but I imagine in some fast Chapel-games it can be better to just one Tournament and a Province asap.

[matt979]

Is there board on which the NV-Bridge combo is bad?

I just played a game where that strategy almost ran out of time against Workshop-Gardens.

(I'm embarrassed to admit that both of the previous two times I played a Native Village-Bridge game, opponent fully exploited it before I had any idea what was going on. First time is one thing, but the second was inexcusable.)

(Longtime reader, first-time poster here.)

[ARTjoMS]

Is there board on which the NV-Bridge combo is bad?

There are some board where it will be too slow. Cards like remodel, savager, expand, forge can shorten province pile very fast. If there is way how to get drawing engine fast, there might not be enough green cards left for your single turn.

Another situation arises when there is reasonable alternative to NV, NV will help you to get that single great turn, but if both players buy bridges and they split 5-5, you will have hard time buying enough VP with your first green turn, and getting your 2nd green turn will take too much time. Simple village smithy bridges will be able to get those 2nd and 3rd VP turns way faster.

[Young Nick]

Other cards that need anti-group-think set-ups: Saboteur, Gardens, other attacks - mainly curse-related ones. I would suggest heavy trashing for Gardens, strong trashing without direct counter-reactions for curse-giving attacks and almost any lay-out for Saboteur.

[kn1tt3r]

Is there board on which the NV-Bridge combo is bad?

I just played a game where that strategy almost ran out of time against Workshop-Gardens.

(I'm embarrassed to admit that both of the previous two times I played a Native Village-Bridge game, opponent fully exploited it before I had any idea what was going on. First time is one thing, but the second was inexcusable.)

(Longtime reader, first-time poster here.)

Basically, NV/Bridge is only really good if you're the only one going for it.

[philosophyguy]

I would suggest heavy trashing for Gardens[...]

An good anti-Gardens setup will have solid trashing (Chapel or Remake), a Bishop (since the Gardens player can't take advantage of the opponent's bonus), no enablers (Workshop/Ironworks), no +Buy, and few cheap cards. I'd suggest:

1. Gardens
2. Chapel
3. Bishop
4. Cutpurse
5. Mining Village
6. Embargo
7. Rabble
8. Smithy
9. Alchemist
10. Tournament

Mining Village and Embargo are cruel because the Gardens player doesn't want to trash them, whereas the opposing player can do so with impunity and gain an edge that way.