I apologize if this is obvious to you, but when people are suggesting Vault/Tunnel, it's not so much to trash Gold into Province with the Farmland purchases. Rather, a hand with Gold and Vault guarantees $8 for a Province, presuming that you play the Vault and discard everything but the Gold.
Actually that totally slipped my mind, even though it
is obvious.
Log? I don't know how strong this could actually be, since BV and Farmland conflict at $6 and Vault won't get you to $6 unless you discard everything or have enough Silver or Copper. Vault-Tunnel sounds much faster to me.
Sorry, no Log. This was a "real world" game.
Also i see there might be stronger strategies. Maybe i won because the others played bad. Maybe this was not worth a puzzle. Sorry in that case.
Once the engine was set i played BV, Vault, Vault almost every turn, which left me with 7 cards in hand, one of them ideally being a BV or Farmlands. I also bought Farmlands when it was not possible to keep a card in hand, or no 6$ - i got two Gardens out of Estates by this. So yeah, maybe it was the Board as a whole, not only those three cards. Attacks for example would be some other thing that could break this strategy.
Tunnel + Vault sure is nice. It gives the money needed and comes with free 6$-cards to work with Farmlands, so no decision between concurring 6$s. But i think it lacks the free Vaults the engine needed to go faster, so i would either have had to buy more Tunnels, losing time, or buy more Vaults, losing time. With a 3/4 split, that's a totally different thing, of course.
The rest of the board could be relevant. Gardens does make BV more attractive... then again, activating Tunnel is probably better for Gardens too!
I'm thinking about what you said, and you have a point. I could have bought a Tunnel on turn 3, and possibly another Vault
or Tunnel on turn 4. The problem with this is that i would still be stuck with either
one Vault or only
one Tunnel. So after discarding up to two Tunnels for Gold, maybe buying another one and another Vault on turns 5 and 6, i could have bought a Province every other turn from about turn 7 on. Without Tunnel i started a bit later, but with a higher chance of getting one - i did not need luck to have a Vault in hand every turn, i just had so many of them, and also could play more than one every turn to fasten cycling.
Tunnels also give extra VP - but while buying a Province gives you 6 Points, trashing BV for one by buying Farmlands gets you 8. So this is evened out (more than that, actually - at least in our game).
I also could probably have started buying Farmlands erlier, myself - i did not play perfect. But you might be right that it's a close call. I'd like to see it in a game with somebody who is really good at Dominion.
I don't remember the Board as a whole, but Gardens (and maybe Squire) were everything that actually mattered.
