Poor House can net you Provinces, but to do so you need a way to get rid of your treasures, and you need +actions. It's also good to have drawing ability, and it's very nice to have +buys (for extra Poor Houses and other engine cards early, and extra provinces toward the end). So combos like Poor House + Worker's Village + Chapel seem promising to me. But lately I've been exploring whether I can get Poor House to work without Chapel (or other heavy trashing), and a combo that has surprised me is Poor House / Hamlet. Hamlet gets rid of Coppers by discarding them, and gives you a card, up to +2 actions, and +1 buy.
The simulators don't play it very well, but I've found that buying only Poor House, Hamlet, and Province seems to beat big money. An early-midgame turn might look like "play Hamlet, Hamlet, Poor House, and buy 2 Poor Houses and a Hamlet", and a lategame turn can look like "play 3 Hamlets and 4 Poor Houses, buy 2 Provinces".
The thing is, I'm not a good enough player to know if this can be tweaked into an actual good strategy. I know it can be swingy from having too many cards in the deck. I may not be playing it as well as I could, and I'm sure the strategy could be improved with other cards to buy: a light trasher (e.g. Forager) might be useful, though a heavy trasher would just negate the advantage of Hamlet. What do you guys think? Is this a workable combo?
