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[brokoli]

http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20131121/log.505ed92251c333114368f729.1385034079690.txt

Even with Rebuild, I was convinced that my opponent choosed a much better strategy than my straight (badly played) Rebuild. Menagerie, Alchemist, Worker's village, Fairground and Altar... I'm sure this is enough for an engine...

[shark_bait]

It's a tough engine to play optimally.  Fairgrounds gives it the VP it needs making it more difficult for the Rebuild player to deny VP. 

Things to consider for the engine:

1.)  Draw is present but difficult to obtain/pull off.  Menagerie and Apothecary are conditional and Alchemist is difficult to amass quickly.

2.)  Virtual money is absent except for Secret Chamber.

3.)  Trashing is limited to Altar.

Okay with that said let's consider how to play this engine optimally.  The most important initial consideration is draw and cycling.  The powerhouse for this early game is Apothecary.  Rebuild is fairly immune to Familiar so it is of greater importance to build your own deck up. 

Your initial cards you want are Altar and Apothecary.  These two cards will get you going the fastest.  You are looking to obtain WV/Menagerie with Altar.  After a few Apothecaries and a deck that can draw itself, you can get a Familiar or two, but only after you are consistently drawing/playing your entire deck.  The payload for this engine consists in discarding for +$ and then redrawing with Menagerie/Apothecary/Alchemist.  Discarding should be done in a way to maximize the drawing potential of Menagerie/Apothecary.  This means that you should keep at least 5-6 copper in your deck in order to play Secret Chamber discarding Copper => play Apothecary, draw all the copper.  Menageries can be played in a similar way.  Once you start greening, you need to make sure that you have enough Secret Chamber to continually discard duplicate Fairgrounds to keep Menageries activated.  It would be tough to do optimally, but I do believe that this can beat Rebuild.

[DG]

After opening silver/silver you had two 5 coin hands, perfect, whilst your opponent's potion missed the shuffle. Your opponent then tried to duchy race instead of taking time to build the engine and score with fairgrounds. Even so you needed first turn advantage to win.

[flies]

your opponent also squandered his money.  he was down to $6P total in the deck.

[2.71828.....]

I like shark_bait's analysis here.  Apothecary>familiar>alchemist here.  Silvers will not really be that useful to you on this board when you try to build your engine, so I would say potion/secret chamber would be best here.  You should be able to go apothecary/WV t3/t4 and get an altar by t5/t6/t7.  A second potion would really help here as you can trash it later with altar, and it would be useful to buy familiar/apothecary or familiar/alchemist on the same turn.

Once you have the engine rolling as shark_bait describes it is really powerful, you just have to be extra careful in setting up your next hand.  You don't want to discard a bunch of cards that leaves you with a terrible next hand. (getting alchemists will help fix this though)

[soulnet]

I see Apothecary+Alchemist as really powerful non-terminal drawing. Maybe add Menagerie later for support, especially add at least 1 for Fairgrounds. You should be able to deploy all 10 Curses quite fast. This will slow down the Rebuild player just a bit, but more importantly, it is +10 VP for you. If you get going fast, you can deny a couple of Duchies (keeping one for Fairgrounds) thus stopping the Rebuild player to end the game as fast (they will need to buy out Estates probably). With 6 VP Fairgrounds, you should beat a Rebuild player that cannot amass more than maybe 6 Provinces.

I agree with the general sense that Rebuild is incredibly easy to play and the engine is a tough one, so it is much easier for the engine player to make a game losing mistake. You need to track your discard and the score pretty well.

[Mic Qsenoch]

If you get going fast, you can deny a couple of Duchies (keeping one for Fairgrounds) thus stopping the Rebuild player to end the game as fast (they will need to buy out Estates probably).

Rebuild player should end this game by going Province --> Province. Does not need to pile out Estates.

edit: I'm not sure how fast the engine can be, but the straight Rebuild should end this long before turn 19.

[JacquesTheBard]

Would it be possible for the engine player to pick up a few Rebuilds with Altar and use secret chamber discarding victory to convert it into a payload card? Altaring Duchies seems like a neat trick.

[luser]

I do not think that going to engine has much chances here, mainly because apothecary/rebuild is a combo. Rebuild fixes apothecary problem of greening in two ways. First benefit is that you need to green less as you put starting estates into use. Second is that rebuild helps to unclog green, play apothecary then make rebuild skip cards you do not want. On other hand apothecary adds necessary buying power for rebuild and allows rapid cycling.

Here also potion allows mirror familiar war.

Duchy split is not very important here due of fairgrounds which should be bought instead duchy when you have 6.

[KingZog3]

Duchy split is not very important here due of fairgrounds which should be bought instead duchy when you have 6.

Straight Rebuild may have some trouble hitting $5 by midgame due t lots of VP cards and Rebuilds. They should already have enough Rebuilds and Duchies to end on Provinces. I would only buy Fairgrounds if there were no Duchies left. And even then, I might just want to buy more Rebuilds.

[luser]

Duchy split is not very important here due of fairgrounds which should be bought instead duchy when you have 6.

Straight Rebuild may have some trouble hitting $5 by midgame due t lots of VP cards and Rebuilds. They should already have enough Rebuilds and Duchies to end on Provinces. I would only buy Fairgrounds if there were no Duchies left. And even then, I might just want to buy more Rebuilds.

I said apothecary+rebuild, hitting 5 and 6 is considerably easier.