I noticed a few days ago 2 Combos that I never saw here on the forums, AFAIR, at least not in detail.
I admit, I never played any of these, so I don't know if these are actually a thing. So I'm not sure if this is correct in the Articles subforum, but I have a pretty clear idea of those combos and how they are played and looking for simulation results and other feedback. I'm also not best in playing Big Money, so please correct me where I'm wrong.
1.) Trader / Noble Brigand
Trader BM is decent, Noble Brigand BM is weak against engines and stronger against Big Money mirror matches.
On boards where Noble Brigand BM is valid, Trader is a pretty good addition.
How to play:
You want to start Trader BM and then transition into Noble Brigand BM.
Start Trader/Silver and trash your Estates. In the next shuffles get a Noble Brigand and another Trader and a second Noble Brigand soon afterwards.
The thing is the following. You soon get hands like Trader / Noble Brigand / 3x Copper. You can now play Noble Brigand and attack and have $4 to buy another Noble Brigand and attack again. Then you can reveal Trader to get a Silver instead of a Noble Brigand. When your deck is growing you might want a 3rd Noble Brigand. At that point you should also have many Silvers and a few Golds in your deck to get to Provinces easily. If a Trader collides with a Gold or Province early you could even trash it and gain a lot of Silvers what means you could buy Noble Brigands in this thick deck in hands where you don't have enough for a Province.
Why i think it's strong:
You don't worry about colliding NB and Trader, so you can use the benefit of both BM enablers. 2 Noble Brigand attacks in one turn is pretty strong and what makes NB a strong BM strategy, but can easily substitute the NB and get even more Silvers. I'm pretty sure this beats straight forward NB BM.
Other synergies and notes:
This is also pretty resilient to strong attacks like Cursers and especially Mountebank and Swindler. Discard attacks on the other hand hurt you.
2.) Watchtower / Feodum
Watchtower BM is weak. But using its on-trash and top-deck-ability with Feodum is pretty nice.
How to play:
Open Double Watchtower as you don't care about colliding. The goal is to have $4 with a Watchtower in hand. Then you can buy a Feodum, trash it and top-deck 3 Silvers, almost guaranteeing you a Province next turn.
- If you have 2 Watchtower in hand: Play one and you'll likely have at least $4 to do the above described thing.
- If you have 1 Watchtower in hand: Play it if you have $6 or more in hand for a likely Province, otherwise just buy another Feodum and top-deck 3 Silvers.
- If you have no Watchtower in hand: Buy a Watchtower with less than $6 (after your second reshuffle) otherwise a Gold
Normally you want to "rush" the Provinces. But, what's nice is, depending on your opponent (e.g. when it's 3/3 on Provinces), you can in the later game (if your opponent didn't contest the Feoda) easily buy Feoda as they will be worth 4-6VPs each.
Other synergies and notes:
Because you open Double Watchtower, this is very resilient against Cursers. Also, some Curses don't hurt you that much because you can continue to top-deck 3 Silvers regularly for a good economy and nearly-guaranteed Provinces. Discard attacks don't hurt you either that much. You then have to play the Watchtower to draw and can't use it for trashing the Feoda, but maybe you draw Watchtower dead, so you can do that. On a side note: I the case where you have $6-7 and draw a Watchtower dead, I guess 3 top-decked Silvers are preffered to 1 top-decked Gold.
