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Combo: Apothecary/Vault

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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:

--- Quote from: HiveMindEmulator on September 01, 2011, 12:21:21 pm ---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).

--- End quote ---

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:

--- Quote from: ackack on September 01, 2011, 12:43:47 pm ---
--- Quote from: HiveMindEmulator on September 01, 2011, 12:21:21 pm ---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).

--- End quote ---

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.

--- End quote ---
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.

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