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[Qvist]

... at least in my experience. I've played this game now twice against AdamH and both times I felt pretty lost. This is for me THE Guilds defining board as it has crazy overpaying with Stonemason and coin tokens in Baker and Butcher. You can see both games here and here. This is the kingdom (Shelters and no Colony):

I think the basic idea is pretty clear. You want to trash down to a pretty thin and action heavy deck as soon as possible. Overpay for Stonemason by $4 or mostly for $5 to get all those shiny action cards. Meanwhile you get Gold out of the trashing from Market Square. This leads to the sugar sweet Stonemason/Market Square Combo where you can trash Golds for 2 Actions cards costing $5 (or Duchies of course) while you easily replace the Gold with more Golds by revealing Market Square. So far, so good.

1.) How is the order of buys here? Especially the opening is puzzling me. Baker makes the opening more complicated. Do you want a Market Square right away to get your economy up while trashing to starting overpaying for Stonemason sooner? Do you want Steward, Butcher or even Salvager as trasher or a combination of those?

2.) In the second game you see a different approach on how we build the engine in the mid-game. My deck seems stronger, but somehow I fall behind pretty quickly. I don't buy any village and try to chain Heralds together to get draw and +Actions while Adam gets Bazars and Jouneymen for those purposes and adds some Heralds later. Do you want even Journeyman in this deck or is Herald and Steward (when the staring cards are trashed) enough of draw?

3.) The end game is really complicated. There are 2 different approaches. You may want to try to rush the Provinces faster than your opponent. This probably includes probably butchering (or maybe even salvaging) Golds into Provinces and use the +Buys from Market Square and coin tokens to buy them. I see a 4 Province turn pretty easily possible. On the other hand, the piles are running so fast. Stonemason buys gets you 3 cards, stonemason plays also gives you 2 cards, then you can butcher cards even to equal value and use the +Buys from Market Square and coin tokens from Baker and Butcher to buy out the piles. It should be pretty easy to get over 10 cards this way in one turn. This makes it also hard to calculate how many cards you should leave back on each pile to not peril a possible 3-pile ending. What should you aim for? Or more especifically: Build longer or green earlier?

I'm really looking forward to hear some thoughts.

[gman314]

So, I was about to suggest that an opening of Butcher/Market Square, Butchering Estates to a Steward and more MSs while starting to save tokens might be interesting, but then I saw that you had Shelters.

I have no idea what to do on this board.

[shark_bait]

My first reaction is Market Square is the pivotal card here.  Of note is that you can use Butcher on a Gold to gain a Province and then discard a Market Square to gain the Gold right back.  With proper draw, this is a self sufficient combo that will gain a Province a turn, get a deck with 2 Butchers and multiple Market Squares and you can get 2 Provinces a turn.  Meanwhile, you can use your buys to continue to build your deck/buy other green.  I think that the first to set up this combo will be the winner.

[dondon151]

I think Butcher/Steward is the best opening here.

EDIT: $7 is kind of the magic target to hit when it comes to buying Stonemason. You probably do want a little bit of terminal draw here even despite heavy trashing, and I don't like Herald because it can force you to play Butchers, Stonemasons, and Market Squares when you won't want to.

[Obi Wan Bonogi]

The coin ramping up with Market Square will be very hard to compete with.  Depending on the draws you can load up on gold pretty quickly.  I don't think you have to bother with Butcher, but I'm not sure.  It can turn a gold into a province late game, but you will already have a Stonemason that can turn the same gold into two Duchy.   If you don't get Butcher you will have to compensate with more +buy from excessive market squares, like three of them at least.  I would burn $4s on farming villages so you can spare $5s on something better than Bazaar.  I still don't have a good feel for Stonemason but I think you would want at least two maybe three big stonemason buys here.  I would strongly consider opening 2(3)Stonemason for Market Sqaure + Market Square + Steward(or even Steward, Steward, Market Square).   I think this start will clean quicker than a butcher start and be more likely to combo the Market Square to get the golds going.  The Stonemason would be pretty clunky in the first shuffle but after that I would Stonemason the Golds early and often for engine parts.  Journeyman is pretty amazing for a mid game terminal draw which is where this game will be won/lost.

I'm really liking Baker games.

[ycz6]

My first reaction is Market Square is the pivotal card here.  Of note is that you can use Butcher on a Gold to gain a Province and then discard a Market Square to gain the Gold right back.  With proper draw, this is a self sufficient combo that will gain a Province a turn, get a deck with 2 Butchers and multiple Market Squares and you can get 2 Provinces a turn.  Meanwhile, you can use your buys to continue to build your deck/buy other green.  I think that the first to set up this combo will be the winner.

Isn't Butcher equivalent to Remodel in this scenario, only more expensive? Not saying the combo isn't valid, as I don't have much Dark Ages experience at all, but if it is then Remodel/Market Square ought to be even more dominant.

[Qvist]

Thanks for your answers so far.

I think that the first to set up this combo will be the winner.

Indeed, but how exactly would you try to accomplish this?

I think Butcher/Steward is the best opening here.

EDIT: $7 is kind of the magic target to hit when it comes to buying Stonemason. You probably do want a little bit of terminal draw here even despite heavy trashing, and I don't like Herald because it can force you to play Butchers, Stonemasons, and Market Squares when you won't want to.

Interesting thought about Herald. It never hurt me in those games, but I can see why this could be problematic.

The coin ramping up with Market Square will be very hard to compete with.  Depending on the draws you can load up on gold pretty quickly.  I don't think you have to bother with Butcher, but I'm not sure.  It can turn a gold into a province late game, but you will already have a Stonemason that can turn the same gold into two Duchy.   If you don't get Butcher you will have to compensate with more +buy from excessive market squares, like three of them at least.  I would burn $4s on farming villages so you can spare $5s on something better than Bazaar.  I still don't have a good feel for Stonemason but I think you would want at least two maybe three big stonemason buys here.  I would strongly consider opening 2(3)Stonemason for Market Sqaure + Market Square + Steward(or even Steward, Steward, Market Square).   I think this start will clean quicker than a butcher start and be more likely to combo the Market Square to get the golds going.  The Stonemason would be pretty clunky in the first shuffle but after that I would Stonemason the Golds early and often for engine parts.  Journeyman is pretty amazing for a mid game terminal draw which is where this game will be won/lost.

I'm really liking Baker games.

Oh, wow, haven't thought about Stonemason+Double Steward+Market Square opening. This seems really good.
I think Butcher is important though. It gives you a lot of flexibility because you get coin tokens from Baker too and being able to trash a Baker into a Province in the final turn can be huge, IMHO.

My first reaction is Market Square is the pivotal card here.  Of note is that you can use Butcher on a Gold to gain a Province and then discard a Market Square to gain the Gold right back.  With proper draw, this is a self sufficient combo that will gain a Province a turn, get a deck with 2 Butchers and multiple Market Squares and you can get 2 Provinces a turn.  Meanwhile, you can use your buys to continue to build your deck/buy other green.  I think that the first to set up this combo will be the winner.

Isn't Butcher equivalent to Remodel in this scenario, only more expensive? Not saying the combo isn't valid, as I don't have much Dark Ages experience at all, but if it is then Remodel/Market Square ought to be even more dominant.

See above. Coin Tokens from Baker can help Butcher here, also as there is big possibility for 3-pile ending, trash a $5 cost for a Duchy and use the coin tokens elsewhere can be important.

[AdamH]

My opinions, and they are only my opinions:

I'm convinced that any opening that doesn't include Steward has to be a mistake. Strong, early trashing on this board just has to be priority number 1 with everything else waaaaay behind. Of course, Steward is my favorite card so I may be a touch biased...

In that same vein, draw has to be important as well. The only sources of draw here are Herald and Journeyman (OK Steward is draw too in a pinch, but I'd like to think of that as a last resort). After playing those games, I find that you don't necessarily want the kind of action-dense deck that Herald needs to serve as reliably as you want for both Villagey-ness and Draw-ness. You need some Golds and you eventually need some green. Journeyman I think fits the bill here as you can always filter out what you don't want: Copper, Gold, and later Province. With so many ways to gain tons of cards, I think the opportunity cost of getting a Village+Journeyman here is lower, and you have a thin deck so colliding them isn't an issue.

I think Butcher is a real powerhouse here. Really, any trash-for-benefit would work and Butcher just fits that role the best here. Between Butcher, Market Square, and Stonemason, you really don't need any "economy" since Golds are really just cards that cost 6. I guess it's an added bonus that if you can re-draw your deck you get a few extra dollars to spend by playing them.

Anything else I don't feel certain about at all. Such a fun board to play, though :-D