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[Mean Mr Mustard]

Apothecary is a card with many subtle uses, and here is a combo that I discovered that is very fast to put together and is extremely easy to pull off.  Using Apothecary and Vault together, you can pretty much eschew trashing, Silver and Gold and pretty much everything else and move extremely quickly into the greening stage of end game.

<a href=http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201109/01/game-20110901-003205-d7d0f892.html>This game</a> is not a superb example because both my opponent and myself made some glaring errors, but it illustrates the power of this combo.  I focused solely on buying several Apothecaries and one Vault and rode the combo through to a win.  It started to clog up pretty severely in the end and a cycling card or another Vault might have helped, but it was enough to win.  At any rate, the mistakes of my opponent do not detract from the point that this engine bought four Provinces by turn twelve without either trashing or buying any Gold or Silver.

[Thisisnotasmile]

Apothecary works brilliantly with any discard-for-benefit cards. Such an underrated card.

[HiveMindEmulator]

I'm not sold on this combo. It doesn't really seem better than just vault+money. Especially in this game where you got a 5/2 split, if you had opened vault/nothing with the same draws (vault in place of potion), you'd have bought gold on turns 4, 5, and 6. Sure you got a bunch of provinces without gold, but you'd have got just as many with gold and without the potion and apothecaries. Yes apothecaries help cycle, but you could also just buy another vault. And yes they pick up a little extra money, but you could just buy gold instead. With vault it's even easier to get gold than it is to get apothecaries (you need to draw a vault OR $6 instead of needing to draw your potion).

[ackack]

I'm not sold on this combo. It doesn't really seem better than just vault+money. Especially in this game where you got a 5/2 split, if you had opened vault/nothing with the same draws (vault in place of potion), you'd have bought gold on turns 4, 5, and 6. Sure you got a bunch of provinces without gold, but you'd have got just as many with gold and without the potion and apothecaries. Yes apothecaries help cycle, but you could also just buy another vault. And yes they pick up a little extra money, but you could just buy gold instead. With vault it's even easier to get gold than it is to get apothecaries (you need to draw a vault OR $6 instead of needing to draw your potion).

One thing I think you're neglecting is Apothecary's Scout ability. If you ensure that Vaults are pulling greens, that's really very nice.

[HiveMindEmulator]

I'm not sold on this combo. It doesn't really seem better than just vault+money. Especially in this game where you got a 5/2 split, if you had opened vault/nothing with the same draws (vault in place of potion), you'd have bought gold on turns 4, 5, and 6. Sure you got a bunch of provinces without gold, but you'd have got just as many with gold and without the potion and apothecaries. Yes apothecaries help cycle, but you could also just buy another vault. And yes they pick up a little extra money, but you could just buy gold instead. With vault it's even easier to get gold than it is to get apothecaries (you need to draw a vault OR $6 instead of needing to draw your potion).

One thing I think you're neglecting is Apothecary's Scout ability. If you ensure that Vaults are pulling greens, that's really very nice.

That basically just amounts to "cycling". It gets your victory cards and coppers out of the way quicker. But with vault, it doesn't matter if you drew those cards in your original hand or as the +2 card draw. The scout ability works well with stuff when you care what you draw, but with vault you don't. The only thing you care about is how often you draw vault and/or gold. Apothecary has synergy with cards that cares what you draw, but vault is not one of those cards.

[ackack]

That basically just amounts to "cycling". It gets your victory cards and coppers out of the way quicker. But with vault, it doesn't matter if you drew those cards in your original hand or as the +2 card draw.

The point of it is that you strongly increase your chances of getting money out of the greens while simultaneously making sure that they don't show up in your next hand (where you most likely don't have a Vault anyway). That's substantially more than just cycling.

[Mean Mr Mustard]

When Apothecary fires, you move the greens to the top and leave an Apothecary for the next hand while wasting the greens with the Vault.  Try it in a solitaire match and you will see what he means.

[HiveMindEmulator]

No, I get it. Apothecary lets you arrange your cards so you get estates with vaults more often. But you know what else can do that? More vaults. The thing with vault decks is that you don't really care that much where your estates show up. There are plenty of other decks where it's important to draw some cards with other cards, but vault decks are not really in this class.

My point is that I don't think apothecary helps accomplish anything better than if you just buy vaults and money. You can do cute things, but I doubt it's actually any stronger. Sure you can use apothecary with vault, and if I got one masqueraded or ambassadored to me, I'd be happy, but I don't think it provides enough of a benefit that it's worth buying a potion and delaying getting vaults and golds for.

[DG]

Before any tries this to check it out with the simulator, remember that the simulator bot always discards 2 for 1 when an opponent plays a vault. This can often be more like an attack than a benefit so vault performs much stronger than it would in a real game.

[Geronimoo]

Current play rules for Vault in the simulator:

-discard all garbage for +$1 (including coppers, victories, curses and actions if actions left = 0)
-then opponent will always discard if it has at least 2 garbage cards (victories, coppers, curses) UNLESS he's holding a Vault, in which case he will NEVER discard
(-some play rules to enable the "play Tactician each turn with Vault")

[HiveMindEmulator]

I also imagine the simulator can't play apothecary smartly enough...

[DG]

The vault rules are reasonable for the simulator but do often result in turn3 : play vault, opponent discards copper and estate, opponent draws estate.

You also see things like: play vault, opponent discards copper and estate, draws silver, now has {bishop, silver, silver, silver} in hand. Opponent plays bishop, trashes silver, buys silver and the vault bot is heading for a win.

This isn't a complaint. We know the simulator has limited decision making and doesn't evaluate combined actions. We can save people's time however so that we don't all have to discover the limitations individually.

[Geronimoo]

I really need to add a page to my simulator blog with all the cards' play rules, but I'm sooooo lazy...

[Mean Mr Mustard]

<a href=http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201109/03/game-20110903-055027-81f5e312.html>This game</a> supports HME's assertion that the Apothecary is needless window dressing.  The shuffle luck was extremely good.

[Yariv]

This game shows a case where this is a combo, in a Colony game with Tactician (Vault alone would normally get you only 9$, some additional draw is needed and Apothecary is very likely to provide it). This is more of a Tactician/Vault combo with something extra, but it does work.
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201109/05/game-20110905-084828-d3ae483d.html

[Fangz]

The real problem, as I see it, is acquiring those apothecaries without disrupting the rest of your game. If you can pick up a decent amount from time to time, sure, they are a help, but with vault guaranteeing you a gold, when choosing between an apothecary and a gold I'd usually opt for a gold (or a vault).