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[Kirian]

I open Estate/Estate, then edge case the hell out of something.  Checkmate.

[dondon151]

I'd open Silver/Silver.

My first $5 is counterfeit, for $6 I want a Hoard.
Then I want Venture ($5), Gold ($6) or bank ($7)
$3-$4 will always be Silver.
For $9 I don't have any objections against platinum, especially relatively early, but if hoard is in play, I'd probably prefer Province+Gold.

I don't really believe in thinning here, and therefore I don't really believe in loan and/or venture.
If my opponent tries to thin too much with loan then I think I'll get an extra hoard, and focus on depleting Provinces.

I'd think you would also prefer Venture over Gold. Venture puts important Treasures in play more often, so I think it would be rather pointless to buy more Golds and increase the Gold density when you have Ventures to hit the few Golds that you can have in your deck.

[popsofctown]

I think by the time he prefers Venture over Gold, he prefers Hoard over Venture over Gold, so it was moot and not worthy of comment.

[Beyond Awesome]

Counterfeit, Venture, Bank seems the strongest strategy to me. To those who say ignore Loan, I have to agree on that. No real point to it. Counterfeit will be fast enough and will always hit the coppers you want it to hit. And, the + buy makes a huge difference.

[dondon151]

I think by the time he prefers Venture over Gold, he prefers Hoard over Venture over Gold, so it was moot and not worthy of comment.

I'm afraid that I don't see this at all. You would prefer Hoard over Venture on your first $6 hand, probably, but not on subsequent $6 hands. -Stef-'s post says that he would get Venture, Gold, Bank at $5, $6, $7, which indicates that he doesn't prefer Venture over Gold, but I'm saying that you should prefer Venture over Gold. And if I had $10 and 2 buys, I would prefer 2 Ventures over Platinum.

[-Stef-]

I think by the time he prefers Venture over Gold, he prefers Hoard over Venture over Gold, so it was moot and not worthy of comment.

I'm afraid that I don't see this at all. You would prefer Hoard over Venture on your first $6 hand, probably, but not on subsequent $6 hands. -Stef-'s post says that he would get Venture, Gold, Bank at $5, $6, $7, which indicates that he doesn't prefer Venture over Gold, but I'm saying that you should prefer Venture over Gold. And if I had $10 and 2 buys, I would prefer 2 Ventures over Platinum.

You may have a point, but I'm not sure at all. My impression is you don't have the time to go for a really nice venture chain.
My main problem is: what will you do with early $3-$4 hands? If you skip or go low on Silver (and you kind of have to if you want to chain those ventures) how will you reach $5 often enough?

Add something like a wishing well to the set and I'd agree with you 100%.
But now I think I really want lots of golds in there.
Venture over gold seems ok though, Venture won't be worth less that often and denying them to my opponent is ok too.
And who knows they may find my hoards/counterfeits.

[eHalcyon]

You can get early Silvers and Counterfeit them later?

[dondon151]

I don't think it is necessary to build something like a deck that has only Ventures. That is a bit overkill. But I think that hitting a few Ventures into Counterfeits and Banks yields the potential for some big turns. Also consider that a Venture is basically a copy of another Treasure in your deck, except it puts an additional Treasure in play and yields +$1. So it's better than Gold a lot of the time, especially if you're gaining them through Hoard.

[Geronimoo]

Simulator suggests a simple Venture + Bank/Platinum with a slight detour for a single Counterfeit. Loan is horrible. Gold and Hoard are bad as well.

[NoMoreFun]

Simulator suggests a simple Venture + Bank/Platinum with a slight detour for a single Counterfeit. Loan is horrible. Gold and Hoard are bad as well.

The simulator has Dark Ages cards now?

[Schlippy]

Why no Contraband?

It's a gold with a +buy on a board with options like this. Block gold and I could still buy Platinum, Venture, Bank, Province, Colony, etc.

I think I would do:
Loan/Loan
If I get lucky and hit $5 grab a Contraband. Otherwise a Silver to get to Contraband fast.
Then a Counterfit. (Which you eventually use to kill you Contraband)
Then Venture/Bank/Plat in a super thin deck. (The cycling from the loans get you there quick)

You should be able to double Colony at least once. Single Colony a bunch. Double Province by the end.

Venture will put Contraband into autoplay, which is kind of bad. Especially because the probability increases with more Ventures. This leads to the situation where the chance of being able to double Colony (and even single Colony) decreases when the amount of treasures in your hand and in play increases, which is kind of terrible on a board with only treasures. :-Þ

[meandering mercury]

There's been a lot of theory, so I tried a few of these strategies out on Serf Bot (closest thing to solitaire available, I guess). My play wasn't perfect, and in particular I wasn't always thinking about the interaction between Venture/Bank/Counterfeit, so sometimes I would draw a Bank without having played my other treasures; sometimes I would draw a Counterfeit having already played the Coppers I would have liked to trash.

In each strategy I recorded final score/points, as well as # of turns to about 50 points (4 colonies + a province) which might be typical of human vs human play.

1) Ednever's strategy, opening Loan/Loan: 23 turns to 69 points, 20 turns to 53 points. Note: the bot usually proscribed Gold and then Colony, which seemed reasonable to me, but a human would do better.

http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20130517/log.51018592e4b02b7235c3841f.1368801976553.txt

2) Geronimoo's strategy, single Counterfeit into Venture/Bank: 21 turns to 76 points, 19 turns to 53 points.

http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20130517/log.51018592e4b02b7235c3841f.1368802370043.txt

3) My own "by feel" strategy, using double Counterfeit: 23 turns to 85 points, 20 turns to 48 points. This had a bad start wherein I drew $7 and bought a bank on t3, and then had trouble reaching the critical $5 for many turns. Did have a cool turn towards turn 19 where I had >$45 and 3 buys.

http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20130517/log.51018592e4b02b7235c3841f.1368802765434.txt

I'm sure you guys could do better if you sat down and tried, but I don't know if there's a very obvious winner.

----------------------

A few general comments:

(1) Thin decks really would like +buy, but +buy is not reliable. Contraband is awkward to use, Counterfeit does not always appear in your hand when you would like it to.

(2) While I would not recommend Loan/Loan, it didn't do nearly as bad as I would have imagined. Contraband is also not a bad idea but does compete with Venture and Counterfeit.

(3) Knowing what to Counterfeit is a significant question. It's kind of like using Apprentice: obviously at the start you trash junk, but later on, when do you trash your good cards? Once the deck is thinned, Counterfeit on Venture can get huge cash (and you also have the +buy to use it).

(4) I don't think Hoard is viable here because of Colony. Stef comments that against a thin deck you could deplete Provinces and this sounds good, but I'd estimate offhand that BM + Hoard would take 15? 16? turns to get to 4 Provinces, and then another ~6 turns to get to 8 Provinces. All in all, I'd estimate 22 turns to 8 Provinces. In my attempt, Counterfeit/Venture/Bank managed to get 7 Colonies in 21 turns.

[Mic Qsenoch]

There's been a lot of theory, so I tried a few of these strategies out on Serf Bot (closest thing to solitaire available, I guess).

You can play solitaire games in the Secret Chamber lobby.