It is indeed possible to beat the Lucky Chancellor even if he goes first. Here's a proof.
This works even against a smart Lucky Chancellor who doesn't follow the strict "Big Money" algorithm -- instead, we'll say he buys a Chancellor on his first turn and then can buy whatever basic cards he wants. (This change makes the Lucky Chancellor significantly stronger. He can now buy Copper to recover after we trash his deck, and he can buy out Duchies, Estates, and Curses to end the game before we're finished trashing his deck.)
The ten kingdom cards are Chancellor, Chapel, Ironworks, Great Hall, Worker's Village, Pawn, Peddler, Militia, King's Court, and Masquerade.
Open Chapel/Ironworks. This is always possible, regardless of which split we get. Our goal is now to Chapel away eight of our ten starting cards, and acquire a Worker's Village and a Pawn.
For now, whenever we draw the Ironworks, we'll use it to gain a Great Hall. This means the Ironworks is a self-replacing card for now (i.e. it gives +1 Card and +1 Action), and of course the Great Halls are always self-replacing. We stop using the Ironworks for Great Halls after turn 9, so we don't have to worry about running out of them. Similarly, the Worker's Village (once we pick that up) is self-replacing, and we'll use the Pawn for a card and an action to make it self-replacing too.
We aren't using the self-replacing cards for anything useful yet, so it doesn't matter when we draw them. Whenever we get one, we play it, and then it's as if the self-replacing card wasn't even there. In other words, our deck behaves exactly like a deck of just a Chapel and ten starting cards. This makes it easy to analyze!
We must draw the Chapel some time between turns 3 and 5. There are two possibilities:
CASE 1: CHAPEL ON TURN 5.
| | Since we don't draw the Chapel on turns 3 or 4, those turns (once we've played any self-replacing cards) will consist entirely of starting cards. We'll therefore have either the $3/$4 split or the $2/$5 split; either way, we can buy a Worker's Village and a Pawn.
On turn 5, we finally draw the Chapel with four starting cards. Trash them all. Sadly, our Chapel missed the shuffle, so we don't draw it on turn 6, but it must show up again on turn 7 or 8. When that happens, trash another four starting cards. |
CASE 2: CHAPEL BEFORE TURN 5.
| | Since we draw the Chapel on turn 3 or 4, one of those turns (after we've played any self-replacing cards) must be the Chapel and four starting cards, and the other must be just five starting cards. On the Chapel turn, trash all four cards; on the other turn, we must have at least $2, so buy a Pawn.
The Chapel does get shuffled in this time, so we'll draw it again on turn 5 or 6, and we can trash another four cards.
Now that we've trashed eight starting cards, we're going to start using the Ironworks to gain things other than Great Halls, so the Ironworks is no longer a self-replacing card. Even so, our deck only has four non-self-replacing cards (Chapel, Ironworks, and two starting cards), so we're guaranteed to draw our whole deck each turn. Therefore, on the next turn, we play all the self-replacing cards and Ironworks a Worker's Village. |
Either way, by turn 8, we've managed to trash eight starting cards and gain a Worker's Village and a Pawn. Our plan is now to use King's Court/Masquerade to trash the Lucky Chancellor's deck while we buy up all the Worker's Villages, Peddlers, and Great Halls to end the game. However, we have to be careful not to empty any piles before the last turn, because otherwise the Lucky Chancellor could end the game before we're finished trashing his deck.
As above, we're now using the Ironworks for things other than Great Halls, so it's no longer a self-replacing card. Similarly, we'll sometimes use the Pawn for things other than a card and an action. As long as we only have four non-self-replacing cards each turn, though, we can always draw our entire deck -- to make this easy to track, I'll put each turn's non-self-replacing cards in bold.
Turn 9: Our deck is
Ironworks,
Chapel,
two starting cards, Worker's Village, Pawn, and some number of Great Halls.
Play all the self-replacing cards except the very last one, so our hand consists of Ironworks, Chapel, two starting cards, and a self-replacing card. Our deck and discard are empty. Ironworks a Pawn, which becomes the only card in our discard, then play the remaining self-replacing card to draw it. We've now played all our self-replacing cards, so we have +2 Actions and +1 Buy from the Worker's Village; play the Pawn for a buy and anything, and Chapel the last two starting cards. We have at least four action cards in play (Worker's Village, Ironworks, and two Pawns), so Peddlers are free. Buy three of them.
Turn 10: Our deck is
Ironworks,
Chapel,
two Pawns, Worker's Village, three Peddlers, and some number of Great Halls.
As before, play all the self-replacing cards except the last one, then Ironworks a Militia and play the last self-replacing card to draw it. We now have +$3 from the Peddlers, as well as +2 Actions and +1 Buy from the Worker's Village. Play one Pawn for an action and a coin, and the other for a buy and a coin. Play the Militia. That's a total of $7; buy a King's Court and two more Peddlers.
If we hadn't played the Militia, the Lucky Chancellor would now buy the last Province. (Remember, he went first!) With only three cards in hand, though, he can't do it -- if he has seven Provinces already, then he only has one Gold, so his hand is worth at most $7. If he has more Gold and fewer Provinces, he can buy another Province this turn, but it isn't the last one. Either way, he can't end the game this turn.
Also, he's played 11 turns so far, so he has at most 21 cards in his deck. This will become relevant soon.
Turn 11: Our deck is
Ironworks,
Chapel,
Militia,
King's Court, Worker's Village, two Pawns, five Peddlers, and some number of Great Halls.
As before, play all the self-replacing cards except the last one, then Ironworks a Masquerade and play the last self-replacing card to draw it. We have +2 Actions from the Worker's Village, so Chapel the Militia (!) and King's Court the Masquerade. We draw nothing and have nothing to pass; trash the three cards we receive from the Lucky Chancellor, so he's left with at most 18 cards in his deck. Buy two more Peddlers.
The Lucky Chancellor now has only two cards in hand. He'll never have more than that for the rest of the game, so no matter how much Gold he has he'll never buy another Province. (Fortunately, we're not playing with Platinum!) He can try to end the game on piles, but we haven't bought any basic cards or emptied any piles ourselves, so the quickest he can do it is turn 27 (by opening Chancellor/Estate and buying out Duchies, Estates, and Curses). We'll clean out his entire deck before then.
Turn 12: Our deck is
Ironworks,
Chapel,
King's Court,
Masquerade, Worker's Village, two Pawns, seven Peddlers, and some number of Great Halls.
Now we're set. For the next nine turns, we're going to play all our self-replacing cards but one, Ironworks a Worker's Village, play the last self-replacing card to draw it, and play it; then we play the Chapel, trashing nothing, and King's Court the Masquerade to trash three of the Lucky Chancellor's cards. He's buying at most one card per turn, so by turn 20 we will have trashed his entire deck. We have plenty of buys from the Worker's Villages and plenty of coins from the Peddlers, so it's no problem to buy all but one of the Peddlers and Great Halls by turn 19; on turn 20, after we've Ironworksed the last Worker's Village and trashed the last of the Lucky Chancellor's cards, we buy the last Peddler and Great Hall to end the game.
