Just played a Colony game which I think is a nice example of King's Court not being the dominant card. The board was:
Bank
King's Court
Hoard
City
Rabble
Horse Traders
Smithy
Tournament
Wishing Well
Woodcutter
Edit: The game in question:
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110824-065113-9cbbcdc0.htmlMy opponent opened Silver/Tournament. I opened Silver/Horse Traders, with the plan that that should get me to $5 often enough to empty the City pile. I bought the last City on turn 12, for a total of 8 Cities. Turn 13 I played 6 of them, resulting in $13, with 2 buys, and the first time I'd hit $7 or more for the game. Normally King's Court makes my first $7+ an obvious choice (unless it's time to buy Victory cards), but I figured with the enormous hand sizes I was now getting, a Bank could pull in some big coin. I would need more buys to spend my money, and I planned on having discardable green cards in the near future, so I bought a Bank and another Horse Traders. Turn 14 I bought another Bank, and a Wishing Well to help me find my Cities.
Turn 16 I played all 8 Cities, my 2 Horse Traders, and my 2 Banks for $9 and $10. I bought 3 Colonies.
Turn 17, 2 more Colonies.
Now my opponent had bought an early Province or 2, and now had Trusty Steed, Princess and Followers, and was regularly King's Courting, usually with either Rabble or Tournament, although once with Followers. He was not doing too badly, and at one point caught up to my score with only 1 Colony left.
But a few turns later, I bought the last Colony, and my only Province, to finish the game 67-51.
So the game was close. It was essentially my 8 Cities, 2 Banks and 2 Horse Traders against his 3 King's Courts, 2 Tournaments and various prizes.
Of course my deck would have benefited from a King's Court or 2. But all it would really do would be to make it even more certain that I could draw my whole (quite large) deck, and I was doing that without them.
The point is, my Cities/Banks/Horse Traders proved to at least match, if not exceed the King's Courts. And had I bought King's Courts instead of Banks, I almost certainly would have lost. Also, when he bought his first King's Court when there were still 6 Cities left, it could have scared me into buying Silvers and Golds so I could afford a King's Court. But I stuck to my guns, and it paid off.
I guess it just goes to show, picking a good strategy and sticking to it goes a long way towards winning games, and sometimes the "4th worst $6+ card" can be a much better buy than the "best $6+ card".