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[WanderingWinder]

Dude, you've bloated the article even more. Edit it down!

What would you snip?

"Now let's discuss specific interactions" and everything after that.

EDIT: I am not kidding or exaggerating, by the way. I know you spent a lot of time writing all those interactions, but the article does not need them. Save a couple of choice ones for separate combo articles or something. As it is, this article seems way too long.

I agree with this, except I would keep most of "Does well with" and that which follows.

[LastFootnote]

I agree with this, except I would keep most of "Does well with" and that which follows.

Right. That stuff's always nice to have.

Also, wero, if you want to play some more Rebuild games, with or without Saboteur, let me know. I'm still not convinced that Saboteur is a great counter even in the hands of a skilled player, although I would like it if it were.

[werothegreat]

I slimmed that section down.  I do feel the ones I left should at least be mentioned.  Are you free to try Rebuild/Saboteur now?

[KingZog3]

I played a Rebuild game yesterday, so here are a few things that have been mentioned but I would like to say from experience.

- In terms of choking on green cards: Rebuild doesn't really choke. With no sifters you don't play Rebuild as often, but you should have a serious lead that it doesn't matter.
- Buying the Duchies it the best way (that I have seen so far) to counter Rebuild. The Rebuilder now suffers from hitting Estates (since he just discards cards, possibly other Rebuilds) and has no point gain. I feel that Duchy gainers like Count (and maybe Transmute, but probably not. I wouldn't know since with my friends we just take it out of the randomizer deck) will do well against it. But Count is strong in general and the Rebuilder can go for it too.

- I honestly don't think attack cards counter Rebuild much. Swindler would speed the game up by hitting provinces, and Saboteur lets the Rebuilder get more Duchies. If the Duchies are out then Saboteur can be good, except that the game is probably almost done anyway, so how often will you play Saboteur? Probably not enough to make it worth it. That extra Duchy is probably a better counter.

Great halls: they seem quite good to me in a rebuild deck. Without them I'm probably forced to buy some estates into my own deck, and I really don't like that. Buying great halls in stead should be much better.[/li][/list]

Great halls make you pick up cards. You don't want to risk drawing Duchies, so I think Great Halls would be just as dead as Estates.

[clb]

My friend loves Rebuild, but he plays it by buying Estates. He gets 2 Rebuilds and then Duchies whenever he gets $5, but plans on not having that much and just buying Estates.
What is the consensus on this approach? Too slow because of the added step?
What if the Rebuild player takes this approach and concentrates on Estate -> Duchy (naming Duchy) to eliminate the choke point and win the Duchy split in a mirror?
Maybe I have been playing Rebuild wrong (or relying on it too heavily), but I often have a hard time hitting $5 consistently when I am focusing on building a cycling deck to get back around to my Rebuilds.

Great halls: they seem quite good to me in a rebuild deck. Without them I'm probably forced to buy some estates into my own deck, and I really don't like that. Buying great halls in stead should be much better.[/li][/list]

Great halls make you pick up cards. You don't want to risk drawing Duchies, so I think Great Halls would be just as dead as Estates.

I don't think you will be likely to draw all of your Duchies into your hand - chances are you will have more than one or two, and the cycling can only help. Every hand that doesn't have $5 or a Rebuild wants to do all it can to get to one of those, and I think the Great Halls will help. Perhaps Navigator is a particularly strong Rebuild enabler?
[sorry if I am repeating things from the discussion - January was too long ago for me to remember.]

[KingZog3]

My friend loves Rebuild, but he plays it by buying Estates. He gets 2 Rebuilds and then Duchies whenever he gets $5, but plans on not having that much and just buying Estates.
What is the consensus on this approach? Too slow because of the added step?
What if the Rebuild player takes this approach and concentrates on Estate -> Duchy (naming Duchy) to eliminate the choke point and win the Duchy split in a mirror?
Maybe I have been playing Rebuild wrong (or relying on it too heavily), but I often have a hard time hitting $5 consistently when I am focusing on building a cycling deck to get back around to my Rebuilds.

Great halls: they seem quite good to me in a rebuild deck. Without them I'm probably forced to buy some estates into my own deck, and I really don't like that. Buying great halls in stead should be much better.[/li][/list]

Great halls make you pick up cards. You don't want to risk drawing Duchies, so I think Great Halls would be just as dead as Estates.

I don't think you will be likely to draw all of your Duchies into your hand - chances are you will have more than one or two, and the cycling can only help. Every hand that doesn't have $5 or a Rebuild wants to do all it can to get to one of those, and I think the Great Halls will help. Perhaps Navigator is a particularly strong Rebuild enabler?
[sorry if I am repeating things from the discussion - January was too long ago for me to remember.]

Buying the Estates is ok, but depends more on a slower board. I have also found it gets hard to hit $5 later in the game with Rebuilds, since so much of your deck is Rebuild and VP.

The naming of Duchy was mentioned and I think it's probably a better way of playing Rebuild that just gunning for the provinces.

And I didn't think of Navigator. I never use it, but it's probably pretty good with Rrebuild.

[Lekkit]

Reviving this. In my experience, the most important thing is to aquire as many Duchies as fast as possible. If you get 5 Duchies, you'll most likely get to 5 Provinces before your opponent does. And if you don't, you still got the Duchy points, which will counter a bad Province split. Rebuild games are fast and most importantly, not dependant on economy. Also, I don't see why it would be good with Duke. It seems like one of those things that at first glance looks good. But then you realise you'll be killing your Duchies when trying to get Dukes. And while you're doing that detour, your opponent will just Rebuild all the Provinces.

Although thinking about it now, I feel like the addition of more $5 VP-cards could skew up the importance of getting a majority of the Duchies. If you use Dukes as a stepping stone to get to Provinces.

[SCSN]

Rebuild-Duke is very, VERY powerful.

You obviously should always protect your Duchies

What makes it especially great is that once the Duchies are gone, Estates aren't the usual silly baggage; they are now great assets that can be Rebuild into Dukes, and that you want to keep buying for that reason.

[StrongRhino]

My opponent just tried countering my Rebuild with Saboteur, but I won anyway. It might just have been their suboptimal play though. It really hurt to get a province hit when the duchies are gone.
(Log: will be here once I get it from Drunken Sailor)

[achmed_sender]

I don't understand Rebuild very well, but I'm quite sure about how Rebuild like the different alternate VPs.

IN GENERAL: Rebuild is good in accelarating the game. It's able to beat engines, not because it's strong, but because it's fast. Some strategies might be able to get 4 Provinces in like 15 turns, but Rebuild do that AND trash 4 Duchies and maybe some Estates, which is a big deal, because if you take the same example with 5 Provinces, an engine player isn't able to catch up any more (3 Provinces, 3 Duchies isn't enough), but he could if there would still be the duchies. That's where alternate VP get important.

For an engine player, Alternate VP is great to catch up a BM-Player. The same for the Rebuild vs. Non-Rebuild-Player. But let's look at the individual cards:

Tunnel: Rebuild-Tunnel is insanely fast. Just get golds from 4-5 Tunnels about 3 turns and your deck has plenty of golds. Now you just buy Provinces and Duchies while getting some more golds and rebuilding the duchies into provinces. Very powerful combo.

Feodum: Feodum is not such a great Rebuild supporter like Tunnel, but if you take the risk of a longer game by taking an extra step via feodum, you have plenty of silvers to grab the duchies more quickly (and maybe even buying provinces)

Gardens/Silk Roads: Theres the first alternate path to victory. These cards will help Rebuild almost nothing, but they are generating more points to catch up. Gardens are not that great, because if you're not running a rush or slog deck, they are not worth much and the Rebuilder can destroy them (ok, it takes longer time for him but...) without fearing that you can change your strategy quickly. But Silk Road is great to catch up as late VP-Cards, when the big VPs are gone, to be able to catch up a Rebuilder with 5-6 Provinces.

Fairgrounds: Fairgrounds is similar to Silk Roads. It doesn't help much for the Rebuilder, but they could be an additional province pile for you. The Rebuilder can destroy them with Duchy-->Fairgrounds-->Province, but that will slow his rebuilding down a lot, and now you'll just buy Provinces instead of Fairgrounds, so you will always profit therefrom.

Colonies: Colonies generate massive extra VP. In our example of the 5 Province-Rebuilder, the engine player isn't able to catch up without gaining all remaining estates, but in case of a 5-Colonies-Rebuilder, the engine player can win with, 3 Colonies, 3 Provinces and some Duchies. Not talking about lots of extra time the Rebuilder need to rebuild these Provinces into Colonies.

Vineyards/VP-tokens: These are like the elite counters against rebuild. Rebuild cannot destroy them, only buy them itself. An engine with vineyards equal/more worth than provinces or a strong goons engine just outraces Rebuild.

Duke: I'm not sure about this. It's obviously strong with Rebuild, but also quite much extra VP for the opponent. A plus for the Rebuilder is maybe that he's able to rebuild dukes or duchies into provinces if he lost the split.

The other VPs (Great Hall, Island, Harem, Nobles) don't have much impact on a Rebuild game. But an interesting case can appear, if there are any $3 or $4 cost VPs AND any $5 or $6 cost alternate VPs, because the duchy split loses importance, because you can jump it over (e.g Great Hall -> Harem).
In that case, Great Hall and Harem are quite helpful (more helpful than Tunnel, Island, Fairgrounds or Nobles), because they don't hurt much in the deck if your drawing them

[eHalcyon]

Fairgrounds, Nobles and Harem are all great for Rebuild because they provide an alternate card to buy once the Duchies run out.  It wouldn't make much sense to go Duchy->Fairgrounds->Province.  Just buy the Fairgrounds directly as fodder.

[dondon151]

Directly buying Fairgrounds is not easy. My gut feeling is also that Rebuild gets worse with more alt VP in the kingdom. Rebuild is all about VP denial, and it's very hard to do that when you introduce another stack of Victory cards.

[KingZog3]

Directly buying Fairgrounds is not easy. My gut feeling is also that Rebuild gets worse with more alt VP in the kingdom. Rebuild is all about VP denial, and it's very hard to do that when you introduce another stack of Victory cards.

That's what I've noticed in my games (that its about VP denial), but everyone keeps saying alt VP make it better. Rebuild wants to go straight for all the Duchies, then provinces once they run out, preferably with no Estates left in your deck. It's simple in my mind.

[Awaclus]

Rebuild/Counting House: combo or nombo?

Rebuild rarely leaves you without many Coppers in your discard pile, so obviously the cards work well together in theory. But in practice, CH is competing with Rebuild and Duchies for $5 buys, so I'm not sure if this is worth mentioning.

[KingZog3]

Rebuild/Counting House: combo or nombo?

Rebuild rarely leaves you without many Coppers in your discard pile, so obviously the cards work well together in theory. But in practice, CH is competing with Rebuild and Duchies for $5 buys, so I'm not sure if this is worth mentioning.

Is CH better at getting money than Silver would be? Most of the time you'll pass over it with Rebuild anyway, and I don't think it'll get you to $8 for a lead with a Province. I think its a nombo.

[Awaclus]

Is CH better at getting money than Silver would be? Most of the time you'll pass over it with Rebuild anyway, and I don't think it'll get you to $8 for a lead with a Province. I think its a nombo.

I imagine it would be a lot better than Silver, and you'll pass over with everything with Rebuild anyway so that's not a point against Counting House. Getting $8 takes some luck, but it's certainly possible.

[Holger]

Is CH better at getting money than Silver would be? Most of the time you'll pass over it with Rebuild anyway, and I don't think it'll get you to $8 for a lead with a Province. I think its a nombo.

I imagine it would be a lot better than Silver, and you'll pass over with everything with Rebuild anyway so that's not a point against Counting House. Getting $8 takes some luck, but it's certainly possible.

At $5, CH doesn't have to compete with Silver, but with Rebuild and Duchy. Since the optimal Rebuild strategy is to  buy Rebuild over Gold, CH would have to be worth more than $3 on average to possibly be worth it.
I don't think Rebuild really increases the average number of Coppers in the discard pile that much - whenever Rebuild finds a valid target, it will on average put at most half the deck (minus hand cards) to the discard pile, and often reshuffle the existing discard pile; so the discard pile is hardly large than if you hadn't played it. And when Rebuild doesn't find a valid target, you should probably have bought a Duchy instead of a CH.

[Awaclus]

At $5, CH doesn't have to compete with Silver, but with Rebuild and Duchy. Since the optimal Rebuild strategy is to  buy Rebuild over Gold, CH would have to be worth more than $3 on average to possibly be worth it.
I don't think Rebuild really increases the average number of Coppers in the discard pile that much - whenever Rebuild finds a valid target, it will on average put at most half the deck (minus hand cards) to the discard pile, and often reshuffle the existing discard pile; so the discard pile is hardly large than if you hadn't played it. And when Rebuild doesn't find a valid target, you should probably have bought a Duchy instead of a CH.

If Rebuild does reshuffle the deck, then Counting House isn't necessarily very powerful that turn, but if it doesn't trigger a reshuffle, Counting House is probably very powerful that turn. Being worth more than $3 on average isn't necessary, it can be good even it if it's worth $1 on average as long as it's worth $7 once, since buying one Province can turn a game that you would have lost into a game that you win. Of course you shouldn't buy it before Duchies, it's not important to buy Provinces at that point.

[Beyond Awesome]

I think buying CH is a bad idea. You risk losing the Duchy split or getting that extra Rebuild that wins the game. There are few $5 worth taking when Rebuild is present and CH is not one of them.

[Awaclus]

I think buying CH is a bad idea. You risk losing the Duchy split or getting that extra Rebuild that wins the game.

I'm mostly suggesting that you buy it after you have already lost the Duchy split for other reasons.

[Burning Skull]

I'm mostly suggesting that you buy it after you have already lost the Duchy split for other reasons.

Yes, if duchies are gone already and you have five, CH may be really a good idea, no matter whether you lose the Duchy split or not, since CH is gonna be much more better then silver on average.

[SCSN]

Last year I did extensive simulations on various Rebuild situations. In particular I was surprised to find that "2 Rebuilds > Duchy > Gold > Rebuild > Silver" beats the no-Gold version by

49.7306% win for the Gold Digger
47.6548% win for the Pure Rebuilder
2.6146% tie

over 1 million games.

Since the advantage is exclusively due to occasionally buying a Province directly, I'm positive that replacing Gold by a Counting House would do better still.

[Kfm]

When should I buy Rebuild?  As soon as possible

This implies you should buy rebuild on 5/2 opening.  In my experience, buying rebuild on 5/2 makes it tough to buy more rebuilds and duchies.  I'd recommend silver or terminal silver on 5/2, and more silver in the first few shuffles when you dont hit 5. otherwise get 2 or 3 rebuilds, then duchies till they are gone.  And as someone else said, its critical to track which vp cards are in your deck (and not in hand).

[Holger]

When should I buy Rebuild?  As soon as possible

This implies you should buy rebuild on 5/2 opening.  In my experience, buying rebuild on 5/2 makes it tough to buy more rebuilds and duchies.  I'd recommend silver or terminal silver on 5/2, and more silver in the first few shuffles when you dont hit 5. otherwise get 2 or 3 rebuilds, then duchies till they are gone.  And as someone else said, its critical to track which vp cards are in your deck (and not in hand).

A 4/3 opening is probably preferable on a Rebuild board, but still I think you should still buy it over Silver on turn 1 with a 5/2 opening (though a really good $4/$5 Rebuild support might be better). It does slow you down, but at least you already have a Rebuild bought, which might not happen on T3/4 even when opening Silver/-.

[c4master]

Maybe Knights and Trading Post would be better buys, but generally, I do like Rebuild first. But I'm often wondering about the second Rebuild before the first Duchy, though.