http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20130622/log.50e938a8e4b0750f9b39d407.1371893166693.txtBase only game. I open Chapel/Silver to Chapel/Spy. No economy opening is a little questionable, especially with Witch in the kingdom, but Spy has a huge reward if it hits Chapel.
Turn 3, we both get a Witch. The difference is that his Spy discards my Chapel, which was already going to miss the reshuffle, and his Chapel doesn't miss the reshuffle. Pretty bad, but then my Witch then gets discarded on turn 5, my Chapel misses the reshuffle, and I finally get to play Chapel on turn 7. Meanwhile, my opponent has already played Chapel and Witch once...
I mean, it's difficult to think of worse starting luck. It could be worse, but it's already quite awful.
At this point, my opponent starts buying Golds and Provinces. My only chance is to build an engine the best I can. There's enough parts (Festival, Lab, Throne Room, Spy), but the issue is getting it started up from such a bad position. This leads to some interesting decisions: on turn 10 I buy a 2nd (!) Chapel, which I haven't done in a long time. I need to trash now, before Witch makes it impossible to catch up. This ends up working really well (see turns 12/14), and soon I have a half decent engine. Unfortunately, it comes together a bit too slow, and I can't win by 2 VP on my last turn.
So, I guess the lessons here are:
1. That if there are Cursers and trashing, it is very important to trash a lot, more than you would normally. If you don't trash enough, and start greening too early, the opponent can get to a small deck that plays a Curser every turn, and then your deck is getting bloated twice as fast.
2. That you can overcome a lot of luck, if you make smart enough decisions.
