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Request: Golem

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rinkworks:
I haven't played with Alchemy much.  Golem seems like a lot of fun, and I can see how it's useful, even if I can't quite completely articulate why it's more than a Village with a guarantee of having the actions to use with it.  But I've heard reference to a "Golem deck" on this board, and I can't conceive of how you'd build a deck around the card.  Can anyone elaborate on how to best use this card?

Davio:
Golem is helpful when you have:

- A lot of junk you want to skip over
- Critical action cards you want to play as much as you can

But I'm no Golem expert either, so this is as far as my knowledge goes. :)

Be careful when there are non-optional trashers in your deck, because you have to play both action cards.

DG:

--- Quote ---Golem seems like a lot of fun, and I can see how it's useful, even if I can't quite completely articulate why it's more than a Village with a guarantee of having the actions to use with it.
--- End quote ---
It's probably better to compare a golem to a throne. Instead of playing one card twice you're playing two separate cards once each. The major difference (and advantage) of the golem compared to the throne is that the target cards come from your deck rather than your hand. The golem also discards all the non-action cards revealed when looking for two action cards to play. This can again be an advantage when you deck has high quality actions and a lot of rubbish in between.

When it comes to building a golem deck you need to realise that the golem is an expensive card and the potion can be extra baggage in the deck. It can often be worth skipping the potion and buying victory points sooner with silver and gold. If you decide that you need a golem then you should really plan ahead from the start of the game and consider what actions you'd like the golem to draw. If you put pearl divers and pawns into your deck then the golem will often find them instead of the stronger actions cards you'd prefer to play.

You can either keep the golem deck focussed with just two or three key action cards and a lot of golems, or put in a lot of actions  for a big action chain deck. Engineering good card combinations can be quite technical so I'll won't say much more. One thing that does need to be considered is the discard pile created by the golem when it searches for actions to play. This discard pile will typically contain all your worst cards. If you draw past the end of your deck and turn this pile of rubbish into your new draw deck, then put all your good cards into a fresh discard pile in the clean up phase, you may set yourself up for a couple of bad turns.

Mean Mr Mustard:
The great thing about Golem is that in a properly constructed deck you can play terminal actions that are otherwise sub-optimal in devastating ways.  As DG stated above the important thing is to not dilute the deck with actions that do not help achieve the thrust of what you are doing.

For example, I almost always ignore Pirate Ships and Saboteurs; playing two or three of them most turns can absolutely destroy an opponents deck if you can manage to start chaining them early enough.  Imagine what playing multiple Mountebanks can do.

One of the disadvantages of playing this style of engine is that bad shuffle luck can forestall the implementation too long and your more focused VP buying opponent will have gained an insurmountable lead. 

Fuu:
Golem is really quite powerful!

1) In the early game, Golem will be digging for what limited actions you have - so emphasise buying high impact actions. If you have two high quality actions in your deck/discard and you draw Golem, you are guaranteed to play them both.

1b) As a consequence of the above, buying early treasure can help, since it will get you to high quality actions faster, and won't distract your Golem with mediocre actions.

2) Golem works well with +treasure or +VP. Hitting Monument twice with a Golem for +$4, +2VP is just great. Because you can skip over victory cards, you may also consider using early, high treasure turns for Provinces.

3) Golem can work well with non-terminals. If you hit two, you'll end up with +2 actions, which helps you play any terminals you drew initially (or can draw from some other card drawers). But through chaining, you may end up with more actions than you can use.

4) Golem helps your momentum in situations when you have lots of useless non-actions (copper, curses or victory cards) to skip over.

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