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[liopoil]

In a solitaire game, what is the most money you can have in one turn at some point during your buy phase, without having any cards in play. You can choose the kingdom, and assume perfect shuffle luck. The BM deck can have as many cards in it as you like, but they all must be there to serve a purpose (putting more cards in supply, playing in big turn, for use in previous turns to make deck state possible.) NOT to make Pstone worth more.  No possession, though I'm not sure how you would use it. At the beginning of your turn you choose what your deck state is, as long as it is legal based on the kingdom. Dark ages cards are allowed.

I have a specific Kingdom in mind which I think is nearly optimal a good baseline. It is posted in spoilers near the bottom of page one.

Feel free to post your answers on this thread, but use spoiler tags please. Challenge has no fixed end date.

Hint to get started; Mint/Mandarin and Madman...

[sudgy]

I thiiiiiink I got the answer (that took longer than I thought it would).  I might be wrong, as I only have three of the expansions.  I just looked on the wiki to try to find a bunch of other cards that would help.  So here goes:

$4767 $4367 Coins.  I was surprised too.

The kingdom was Hoard, Bank, Mint, Fool's Gold, Cache, Contraband, Mining Village, Counterfeit, Black Market, Hermit.  Also include the platinums and colonies.

The black market deck was Tournament, Loan, Quarry, Talisman, Horn of Plenty, Ill-gotten gains, Venture, Harem, Bandit Camp, Royal Seal, Death Cart, Stash, and some other card that never gets used.

First, you buy every black market card and all but one of all the other treasure cards (buy all of the counterfeits and banks, though), get a diadem from the tournament, all of the spoils from the bandit camp, and on a turn, play all of the madmen to draw your deck, play the mining villages, trashing them all, playing the death cart for the five coins and trashing it, then play all of the treasures, (the Venture and Loan can't do anything extra, and the horn of plenty is to make the banks worth more).  At the end, play each Counterfeit on all the Banks, getting more than around $400 coins for each of them.  The last one is worth $444 $414 coins, and it all adds up to $4770 $4470.  The mint (now costing $3 because of the quarry) trashes everything and pulls the final total to $4767 $4467.  (EDIT: I forgot spoils aren't in play when you return them, so the banks weren't worth as much)

[WanderingWinder]

I thiiiiiink I got the answer (that took longer than I thought it would).  I might be wrong, as I only have three of the expansions.  I just looked on the wiki to try to find a bunch of other cards that would help.  So here goes:

$4767 Coins.  I was surprised too.

The kingdom was Hoard, Bank, Mint, Fool's Gold, Cache, Contraband, Mining Village, Counterfeit, Black Market, Hermit.  Also include the platinums and colonies.

The black market deck was Tournament, Loan, Quarry, Talisman, Horn of Plenty, Ill-gotten gains, Venture, Harem, Bandit Camp, Royal Seal, Death Cart, Stash, and some other card that never gets used.

First, you buy every black market card and all but one of all the other treasure cards (buy all of the counterfeits and banks, though), get a diadem from the tournament, all of the spoils from the bandit camp, and on a turn, play all of the madmen to draw your deck, play the mining villages, trashing them all, playing the death cart for the five coins and trashing it, then play all of the treasures, (the Venture and Loan can't do anything extra, and the horn of plenty is to make the banks worth more).  At the end, play each Counterfeit on all the Banks, getting more than $400 coins for each of them.  The last one is worth $444 coins, and it all adds up to $4770.  The mint (now costing $3 because of the quarry) trashes everything and pulls the final total to $4767.

Shouldn't you be able to get multiple multiple plays out of at least some of the spoils, via pillage? Like, at least you have room for that in the black market deck, if nothing else, and actions to play it with, yes?

[liopoil]

Wow, that is very close to the kingdom I got. You're forgetting one key treasure card though I think... with which you can do some other things with which make a few other things which you can put in the black market deck to squeeze out a few extra coins. I also only have three expansions (base, dark ages, and prosperity) but luckily most of the cards in this puzzle are from those expansions.

 I don't think pillage works. spoils start the turn empty (they don't count as a supply pile) so playing pillage during the action phase doesn't do anything, and once you've played your spoils you can't play pillage.

[WanderingWinder]

Wow, that is very close to the kingdom I got. You're forgetting one key treasure card though I think... with which you can do some other things with which make a few other things which you can put in the black market deck to squeeze out a few extra coins. I also only have three expansions (base, dark ages, and prosperity) but luckily most of the cards in this puzzle are from those expansions.

 I don't think pillage works. spoils start the turn empty (they don't count as a supply pile) so playing pillage during the action phase doesn't do anything, and once you've played your spoils you can't play pillage.

Right. I was thinking you do the old black market trick, but then, black market would be in play. Of course, pillage itself wouldn't be the problem....

[liopoil]

I finally calculated my strategy all out. It's pretty much the same as sudgy's, just with a few extra cards. It is more than his, but not much more. I think it could still be slightly improved upon. If you are all ready for me to post it I will.

[Grujah]

I am pretty sure you can do more, if you buy Mandarin and draw everything again and do mint thing (I don't know how much is possible to draw with Madmen alltogether). Also, yeah, something for spoils, too.

Nevermind, it was buy phase and not Black Market phase.

[Grujah]

But, you can get extra trasures in by:
a) Putting Hermit in Black Market, and Also put Graverrobber in BM. Than you can gain all madmen easily. Than, move ill gotten gains to kigdom (it is actually worth 4, due to banks!)
b) put any looter in BM, for spoils
c) put YW in BM, and make Fool's gold it's bane. Now you can move Royal Seal to kingdom

[liopoil]

But, you can get extra trasures in by:
a) Putting Hermit in Black Market, and Also put Graverrobber in BM. Than you can gain all madmen easily. Than, move ill gotten gains to kigdom (it is actually worth 4, due to banks!)
b) put any looter in BM, for spoils
c) put YW in BM, and make Fool's gold it's bane. Now you can move Royal Seal to kingdom

Madman can draw thousands of cards if played consecutively
a)Good idea! However, ill-gotten gains is not the card to move in. You will already have all the copper in your hand!
b)Well, not a looter, a spoils-giving card (looter is for ruins I think). Bandit camp is in the BM in both of our solutions.
c)Already done in my solution.

There is still one treasure card nobody has mentioned yet; and it adds quite a bit of money....

[liopoil]

In my solution I put mining village and death cart in the kingdom. I am thinking this is a mistake because if I use a treasure that gets less money I will get money from my banks. Death cart also makes me put ambassador in the BM to replenish the ruins pile

[Grujah]

Phil Stone? But it is worth 0?

Another way to get extra money in, not sure if it is worth 2 slots:

Put Cultists into kigdom, and also Mandarin, and also Watchtower in BM. Play everything Buy a mandarin, put everything back, buy 10 cultists, trash them with Watchtower, draw 30 again (make it plats and FGs and Ventures, that draw Gold, and a Gold)

[Jimmmmm]

Another way to get extra money in, not sure if it is worth 2 slots:

Put Cultists into kigdom, and also Mandarin, and also Watchtower in BM. Play everything Buy a mandarin, put everything back, buy 10 cultists, trash them with Watchtower, draw 30 again (make it plats and FGs and Ventures, that draw Gold, and a Gold)

You can't play more cards after you've bought something.

[sudgy]

You can't put Philosopher's stone in, already thought of that.  The Madmen only draw not quite everything, or everything.

Also, I realized I was off by $300 coins because the spoils don't count towards the banks (I think).  Also, I thought about putting death cart in the kingdom, but realized it was going to make the banks worth less.

[Grujah]

Another way to get extra money in, not sure if it is worth 2 slots:

Put Cultists into kigdom, and also Mandarin, and also Watchtower in BM. Play everything Buy a mandarin, put everything back, buy 10 cultists, trash them with Watchtower, draw 30 again (make it plats and FGs and Ventures, that draw Gold, and a Gold)

You can't play more cards after you've bought something.

Yeah, I'm an eejit. Disregard that one.

[Rabid]

I think you can get Philosophers Stone to work.
Play lots of treasure, then HoP to gain mandarin putting lots of treasure back on deck, then play PStones.
Also gives you potion to help out the banks.

[liopoil]

Yes, Pstone! Not only does it add potions, which add to bank, but you can make them worth 15 by having all the green cards, mints, black markets, non-treasure cards in BMdeck, curses, and ruins. you can avoid drawing them by playing not all the madmen, and fine-tuning that by playing terminal actions (death cart) in between them.

Jimmm is right. You would draw the treasures but would be able to play them. however I think you could;

play all the silvers, banks, coppers, and pstones. play horn of plenty, gaining mandarin, top decking those. Then play four different treasures, then play the rest of the horn of plenty's, gaining cultists, trashing them and drawing the banks and pstones. You can get some more of those treasures with venture. That should increase your money by quite a bit...

[liopoil]

rabid is right too. But you can make it so the madmen only draw what you want them to. Play six, which would draw a bit over three hundred. Play death cart and in between them to lower your hand size. (mining village too where necessary for more actions)

[liopoil]

Thanks for the ideas guys, I'll totally re-work my strategy tomorrow. This puzzle is quite a bit more complicated than I thought.

[liopoil]

This was my original solution.  I will update with horn of plenty tricks and other things later today.

The kingdom: bank, mint, philosopher's stone, death cart, hermit, (madman) counterfeit, cache, contraband, black market, fool's gold, mining village, platinum, colony, potion, ruins, spoils.

Black Market deck: Young Witch, Tournament, embargo, bandit camp, feast, ambassador, harem, loan, talisman, quarry, royal seal, venture, hoard, ill-gotten gains, stash

Deck; All cards in supply except one from each supply pile. All cards in BM deck. All spoils. All prizes. All banks and counterfeits. 7 madmen, 2 hermits. All cards that will not be used are in discard pile (actions that don't trash themselves, victory cards and curses)

Play these cards in this order; (M=madman, DC= Death Cart, MV=Mining Village); M DC M DC M DC M DC M DC MV DC M DC MV DC MV DC M.

This brings us to 254 cards in hand, exactly enough to draw only the cards we need. Death cart was used to lower hand size to make the madmen draw exactly how much we want. Mining village was for extra actions to play death carts with. Of course, the death carts and mining villages were trashed, and the madmen returned to the supply.

Next we play another mining village, then embargo, then feast, gaining the last cache and with it the last copper. Then we play the rest of our mining villages, reshuffling and getting obscenely lucky and drawing the cache and copper. (when I said we need 254 cards, this was accounting for the draw of mining village, and the two cards from feast. And one from venture.)

Now we play all the treasure except bank and counterfeit. there are 77 cards still in our deck, so P-stones are worth 15 each. Diadem should be worth 5. We also play all the potions. This gives us 636 money. Then we play all the counterfeits on each other, then on the banks. The first two banks are worth 212 per play; 424 when counterfeited.. The third bank is worth 211- 422. Then 420, and so on. The banks add up to 4168. The counterfeits are worth 19 total. Finally we subtract 3 by buying a mint (we played a quarry). 636+4168+19-3=4820 money in all.

[jomini]

Okay gaining Hermit and Grave Robber out of the Black Market means that we can get 10 madmen with a total drawing potential of 3074 cards. We can either buy a Mint or we can use a Horn of Plenty to gain a Mandarin, the former is likely to be slightly higher as we don't need a treasure card to have zero value. Either option requires us to use a Kingdom slot for something we can't have in play.

Bank is the most obvious Kingdom card, you can get shockingly high coin counts.

Counterfeit allows you to double play each bank (chaining them is NOT advised as leaving each Cntrft in play increase each bank play by 1 coin for a total of 110 extra coin)

Venture allows you to draw an extra 10 cards (bringing our total potential treasure count to 3084), this also allows us to play any treasures gained during the buy phase.

Pstone - now we need to discuss rules for base coin cards. If we have arbitrarily large copper, gold, silver, plat, potion piles then P.stone can be arbitrarily valuable (just leave 10,000,000 coppers in the discard); this would also suggest that optimal play would be double playing the Pstones instead of the bank. If we make rather simple card cutoffs (e.g. 60 copper, 40 silver, 30 gold, 12 plat, and 16 potions) then we won't use up all our madmen draw and this suggests we want 9 kingdom treasures (the rest can be Black Market and Mint). In this case, we can leave in the discard all the non-treasure and non-kingdom cards - 9 Mints (so as to not trigger game end), 9 Bm, 10 Estates, 7 duchies, 7 provinces, and 7 colonies, and 9 curses (this can be slightly higher for 3er setup);, 4 prizes (one is a treasure that that will be used with the banks), 10 Mercenaries (Bm deck contains Urchin & another attack, like a Looter) and 9 ruins (I believe you can just buy them if we make one Bm card a Looter). Thus each Pstone can be worth 16 coin (88 cards in discard, this leaves some wiggle room).

HoP - in order to avoid game end we need to leave one each treasure type left unbought (barring 2), this reduces our potential payout. However, with HoP we can gain treasures (other than P-stones) and then draw them with venture, letting us pile out Plat, Gold, Cache, etc.

So from here we have 4 Kingdom slots left. These should be used for the highest value kingdom treasures, notably:

Fool's Gold - this pile is worth 37 coin, 4 per treasure at the margin

Cache - worth 3 a treasure

Contraband - worth 3 a treasure

Stash - worth 2 a treasure

This leaves: Harem, Igg, Loan, Quarry, Talisman, Royal Seal, Hoard in the Bm deck.

Spoils are another source of treasure: We can gain 15 from a Looter from the Bm deck, worth 3 each.

So let's count up the treasures we can have in hand after mass madmen:
60 Copper (gain the last with Igg)
40 Silver (gain the last with Hop 8, draw with Vent
30 Gold (gain the last from Market Square)
12 Plat (gain the last with Hop 2, draw with Vent 2)
16 Pot (Gain the last from Hop 10, draw with Vent 10)
10 Vent (gain the last with Hop 9, draw with Vent 9)
10 Hop (gain from Hop 1, draw with Vent 1)
10 Cache (gain the last with Hop 3, draw with Vent 3)
10 Cntrbnd (gain the last with Hop 4, draw with Vent 4)
10 Fg (gain the last with Hop 5, draw with Vent 5)
10 Stash (gain the last with Hop 6, draw with Vent 6)
10 Pstones
10 Cntrft (gain the last with Hop 7, draw with Vent 7)
10 Banks
15 Spoils
1 Harem (swap this for Stash if 3er setup is in play)
1 Igg (use to gain last Copper)
1 Loan
1 Quarry
1 Talisman
1 Hoard
1 Royal Seal
1 Diadem
=270 Treasures

So we need to draw 260 cards with Madmen and 9 with Ventures.

We can alter Hand size with Feast, Death Cart, Embargo, Pillage, Urchin (when you play Pillage), and Treasure Map all decrease hand size by one. Island can decrease it by two. Mining Village (trash) - discard Market Square can allow us to decrease hand square by 1 as well.

So our magical starting Hand is Madman x3/Mv. Play as: Mv (trash it for +2 coin, discard Market Square, gain gold, draw Madman) -> Madman (draw to 6) -> Dthcrt (+5 coin) -> Madman (draw to -> Embargo (token on Mint, +2 coin) -> Madman (draw to 12) -> Feast (gain last Black Market) -> Madman (draw to 20) -> Urchin -> Madman (draw to 36) -> Pillage (trash Urchin, gain final Mercenary) -> Madman (draw to 68) -> Treasure Map -> Madman (draw to 132) -> Madman (draw to 262). We have +9 coin from defunct actions.

This then allows us to play the treasures (which we conventiently drew):
Play all treasures except Hops, Vents, Cntrfts, Banks, and Pstones. Diadem is worth 5. The Igg's gains our our final Copper to hand (which we play). Now begin playing Hops. The first Hop is drawn by the first venture. Play the other 9 Hops to gain the last of each treasure and then play the other 8 ventures to draw & play the the other treasures. Now play all the Pstones.

Play all the spoils & weep as they disappear.

Now we play Cntrft -> Bank. This makes the first bank with 242 * 2, the second 243 *2, etc. This makes all our banks worth 4930. Now how much did our Pstones end up being worth? Well we had 7 treasures we pulled from the Bm deck and we trashed 7 out of the deck as well, but we gained another Bm from the feast and have two leftover Madmen. Ignoring the Black Market deck, we have 84 surplus cards, one of which is drawn to hand. This gives us 16 coin Pstones.

All treasures except banks = 647 coin.

Total Coin possible = 5577

Having gotten this far, I've noticed I have an 18 card Black market. I ask for dispensation of three cards.

[jomini]

I may also be off on the best shot for playing the counterfeits & banks. I haven't ever done that in game so that may push my solution higher.

[liopoil]

very nice. I originally thought you would only need a 15 card BM deck, but now I see you can use many more. From now on the BM deck can have as many cards in it as you like, as long as they all have a use. Otherwise you could put all the cards in there just to raise Pstone a little bit. will edit OP. some possible improvements:

play all the counterfeits on each other first. This gives you the same number of bank plays, but you can play two banks with all 10 counterfeits in play, and none with only one. You also get more total counterfeit plays for 19 coins instead of 10.

you don't mention it, but I assume young witch is in the BM, and fool's gold is the bane.

HOP-mandarin is better. If you put cultist in the supply and watchtower in the BM you can play a bunch of treasures, gain a mandarin, then re-draw treasures by gaining cultists and trashing them with watchtower. I'm not sure how to do this optimally, but you can do this multiple times by topdecking several HOPs and drawing them with cultists. This is only limited by the 30 cards that cultist can draw, plus venture.

I think you forgot to subtract for buying mint. Or did you take a mandarin?

The base treasures are limited by the number that you would play with normally, (60 copper, 40 silver, etc.)

[liopoil]

Madmen, spoils, and Mercenaries can start the turn empty, as they are not in the supply.

[jomini]

very nice. I originally thought you would only need a 15 card BM deck, but now I see you can use many more. From now on the BM deck an one copy each of however many different cards. will edit OP. some possible improvements:

You can always pad out your Pstones with more cards.

play all the counterfeits on each other first. This gives you the same number of bank plays, but you can play two banks with all 10 counterfeits in play, and none with only one. You also get more total counterfeit plays for 19 coins instead of 10.

you don't mention it, but I assume young witch is in the BM, and fool's gold is the bane.

You are correct on both here.

HOP-mandarin is better. If you put cultist in the supply and watchtower in the BM you can play a bunch of treasures, gain a mandarin, then re-draw treasures by gaining cultists and trashing them with watchtower. I'm not sure how to do this optimally, but you can do this multiple times by topdecking several HOPs and drawing them with cultists. This is only limited by the 30 cards that cultist can draw, plus venture.

No. Let's say you replace a kingdom treasure with Cultist, this reduces EACH double bank play by 18 coin for a total of 180 coin lost. Likewise, the cheapest replacement - stash - also loses 18 innate coin. That is 198 coin you have to make up. But wait, there's more. Of course, you have to play the Hops after the Banks, so you lose another 200 Bank coin for a new total of 398. If you use Hops to gain Cultists, you can't use them to gain & play the last card of each coin type. So there go another 180 bank coin. Additionally, you lose the innate value 23, (5 + 3 + 2 + 4 + 2 + 3 + 3 + 1) of the other cards, sure you can make up 10 value by not using Venture & using say Royal Seal, but that brings the final total up to 411.

So let's say you draw 30 treasures. We can just play 3 Pstones & then gain a Mandarin 10 times. That means you need each Pstone to be worth 14.

But ...

If you have 10 Hops that means you can only have one other pile empty - so you lose a whole bank play.

Maybe with a bulky enough deck driven by every card in the full possible Black Market, but I doubt it.

I think you forgot to subtract for buying mint. Or did you take a mandarin?

Correct again. My value is 5

[liopoil]

 About the BM deck; yes I realized that right after I posted, changed that now. I used a somewhat silly rule, "all cards in BM deck must have a purpose that isn't raising the value of p-stones"

not quite I think. We are going to be playing the HOPs many times each. We will still make sure to gain the last cards of all piles. The last HOP can be gained with feast. You are not taking into account the value of playing treasures multiple times. We can even play the banks, topdeck them and draw again. They won't be worth nearly as much as they will be at the end, where we will still counterfeit them all, but still a fair bit. Lastly, right after topdecking the treasures we will play all the pstones, then re-draw them[/.spoiler]