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[RobF]

Suppose you're sizing up a new Kingdom in a 2 player game and you see both Torturer and an appropriate village (native, fishing, regular, hamlet, etc).  Having been on the wrong end of being tortured to death (and boredom), you want to make sure you don't lose to this strategy unnecessarily.  If it's going to be dominant, you should at least play it yourself too and flip a coin for whoever gets the better draws and/or first key Torturer hits.

What other cards in the Kingdom would cause you to avoid the Torturer strategy and pursue a different one?

Active defence:  Moat, Lighthouse, Watchtower?
Passive defence: Chapel, Ambassador, Remake, Masq, etc, for getting rid of curses?
A good offence: a better strategy without defence?  Gardens with IW, KC + Goons, etc.  Pick your favorite.

Perhaps out of novelty, you'd rather not play the Torturer strategy yourself if you think something else will be reasonably competitive (or better!).

[WanderingWinder]

Moat: pretty bad card in 2-P, this isn't enough to get me to play it most likely.
Lighthouse: In a kingdom like this, I'm probably going to prefer these to silver. Whether I also go for the torturers is going to depend on a) what else is on the board, and more importantly, b) whether my opponent follows me into lighthouses or not.
Watchtower: If I'm thinking about buying this as part of my strategy anyway, I'll do that. If the Watchtower strategy is maybe not quite there, and my opponent goes for the torturer, I'll go for watchtower. It's a pretty darn good counter, so I'll consider it in SOME other situations too.
Trashers: Well, masq is going to be preferred 'cause it's really really strong as well as being a counter. Remake is probably out. Ambassador makes the torturers a big mistake to go for, so yes there. Chapel... well, trying to chapel all your curses away is generally a losing proposition, though torturer is something chapel can deal with a little bit better. My choice here is based on how strong the chapel deck will be. I also want to note that Forge generally goes well in these decks.
And yeah, if there's any really strong offensive strategy, I'll go for it - especially IW/Gardens, which should blow the torturer chain out of the water.

[DStu]

KC-Goons I would not see as  counter to the Torturer, but as an addition. You need some drawing anyway for the Goons, and if there's a Torturerchain on the Board I don't see any situation where I would look for another drawing Engine for my Goons.

[RobF]

One category I forgot was other curse-givers to blunt the effect of torturers after the curses give out.  Here would be things like Swinder, Sea Hag, either Witch, etc.

[ehunt]

Two quick things -
1. not all villages are created equal for torturer! With fishing village on the board, I'll gladly pay 5 for smithy, so the extra benefit of making the opponent ragequit is just a bonus. On the other hand, festival, which is normally one of my favorites, really might take too long to set up, and the lack of +1card can often break the chain. (Shanty town, native village, and university suffer from this problem too, but shanty town is self-correcting, with native village, you can set up a pseudo-tactician-turn, and you can expect to gain enough torturers quickly with the university to overcome the drawback).

2. As for other cursers, keep in mind also that the curses will get in the way of your ability to set up a torturer chain. I'd say any of these but swindler make torturer a bad buy (I don't really consider swindler a curser). (As has been said often here, with young witch, it depends on how good the bane is. There should be an abbreviation for that.)

[WanderingWinder]

Basically any other curser is going to make torturer a more expensive smithy, sometimes better than smithy, sometimes worse. Jester is an exception because it's so conditional, and swindler is too, except that swindler can be quite disruptive to the chain in other ways too.

[chwhite]

If Ambassador or a more direct curse-giver is out (definitely Witch, Hag, Mountebank; probably Familiar; maybe YW) then I will skip Torturer/Village (or, perhaps, delay it if I want Torturer for its Smithy powers anyway) and go that route instead.   

If there is a powerful Gardens setup you can bet I'll go that route instead.

...That's probably it.  Goons are powerful but probably too slow, depending on the other Kingdom cards.  If lighthouse is out, I'm getting one in addition to Torturer/Village.  Same with the top-level trashers (Chapel, Remake, Masq).  Good Torturer boards may even entice me to pick up a Moat or two, but I would never buy Moats instead of Torturers.

[DG]

Minions can sometimes find enough support in the kingdom to be better than torturers.

I haven't seen it happen yet but I wouldn't rule out taking jesters ahead of torturers.

There can also sometimes be enough support in a kingdom for vaults and secret chambers. Adding curses to hand can add spending for that turn and the curses become irrelevant once you gain a permanent lead on provinces.

It's also possible to grab enough villages that the torturer player is denied a good drawing engine.

Rarer combinations, such as tactician/forge, can also defeat an avid torturer.

Embargo can invalidate a torturer strategy.

[chwhite]

Minions can sometimes find enough support in the kingdom to be better than torturers.

I was just about to edit my post to add this.   Yeah, I'd probably take Minion ahead of Torturer in a 2p game with strong trashing.

Agree with embargo too; I'm skeptical of tactician/forge though.  Seems like it'd be too expensive to get rolling in the face of constant attack.

[WanderingWinder]

The point on tactician/forge is to accept a bunch of curses at the right times, and then just forge them all to nothing.

Edit: And actually village/torturer/forge works pretty well for that too.

[Thisisnotasmile]

The point on tactician/forge is to accept a bunch of curses at the right times, and then just forge them all to nothing.

Edit: And actually village/torturer/forge works pretty well for that too.

Except if you're playing Torturer/Village too, you'd rather not run out the Curses.

[Fangz]

Isn't the question a bit of a misnomer? There's no reason why any of these strategies can't be used as a complement to a torturer chain, instead of just an alternative to it. Torturer enhances the powers of a lot of cards, and at its root helps you draw them too. Torturing an opponent to make him discard to his 3 best cards, then masquerading, is very painful. Chapel too, isn't much better than a moat when drawn as a defense to torturer and helps the torturer player set up his chain much faster. I find it difficult to think of cases where, with the components of the torturer/villager chain present, it's wise to forgo torturer entirely. Only some vineyards/gardens strategy could in my mind.

In terms of curse givers, torturer is slower to get and weaker, but arguable a better attack because the +draw means you use it more often than the other attacks. If the hands are such that I can never afford a torturer or at least, not a torturer chain until most of the curses are depleted, then sure.

[WanderingWinder]

The point on tactician/forge is to accept a bunch of curses at the right times, and then just forge them all to nothing.

Edit: And actually village/torturer/forge works pretty well for that too.

Except if you're playing Torturer/Village too, you'd rather not run out the Curses.

Eh, I don't really mind. In the meantime, I'm going to be a few turns ahead of them, and that's crucial. I'm also thinning my deck a lot. In fact, I probably won't run the curses at all - I may take 4 or 5, but then MY chain is hitting every turn, for sure, in my thin deck. Also I can forge my engine cards into useful stuff later.

[tlloyd]

Here's a Chapel game where I easily absorb a King's Court-ed Torturer multiple turns in a row:

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110629-173050-439b63b7.html