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[Eggplantation]

I had this challenge idea a while ago when the Cornucopia fan card design contest was running, when this fan card was submitted:

Hydra
Types: Action – Reaction
Cost: $999
+1 Action. +1 Card per Hydra you have in play (including this).
When another player plays an Attack card, you may discard this. If you do, gain a Hydra.

Obviously the end card wouldn't have costed $999, but the author submitted it this was to avoid comments saying it was too weak/strong for its certain cost.


 HOWEVER, my challenge is to work out a way to gain the Hydra, at its original cost of $999, without using coin tokens. Assume perfect shuffle luck and a solo game of dominion. Pile numbers have to be taken into account. Is it possible? Who knows?! Who is worthy enough to take on this mighty challenge!!?

[Grujah]

10 coppersmith 10 coppers is the easiest way out. Or Pirate ship 1000 times (player B has Graverobbers and resurects his treasures).
 
Edit: and this is how much a single play of a single card can get you:
http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=4374.0

Now, as you can do multiple cards + KCs..

[soulnet]

I would say that with 9 Wharves played from last turn and 9 KCed Madmans is possible to draw the entire kingdom in your hands. That being said, getting all Coppers+Silvers+Gold+Potions+Platinum+a couple of Kingdom treasures in play and then playing Counterfeited Banks for more than it would be "easy". 59 Coppers (the Opponent may Ambassador theirs) + 39 Silvers + 29 Golds + 14 Potions + 11 Platinums + 9*5 Kingdom Treasures (leaving room for Wharf, KC, Madman, Counterfeit and Bank) + 10 Counterfeits = 148, so each of the 20 plays of a Bank is worth more than $148. With Counterfeit, you get more than $138*20, which is plenty.
30 plays of Madmen gets more than to 4*(1.75)^30 cards in hand (almost doubling each time, because you need to play a Madman), so you do not need Wharf. 10 plays gets to 4*(1.75)^10, which is also enough, so you do not need KC and have room for more Kingdom treasures. It may be worth it to put Marauder in, because there are more than 10 Spoils.

Anyway, the maximum would be quite hard to find, but this gets waaaay above 999.

30 plays of Madmen gets from 4 cards to 4*2^30, so...

[scott_pilgrim]

If gains count, you can Forge 11 Colonies, 11 Provinces, 11 Platina, 8 Forges, 10 King's Courts, 10 Banks, 9 Expands, 39 Golds, 11 Harems, 11 Fairgrounds, and 11 Nobles into a Hydra.  Totally worth it.  There's even enough room left in the kingdom for Hermit/Council Room, so hopefully you can draw all that stuff.

[Grujah]

Anyway, the maximum would be quite hard to find, but this gets waaaay above 999.

Pirate ship + Graverobber gives you infinite.


Edit: how do you play 30 madmen? you can't KC them.

[soulnet]

Edit: how do you play 30 madmen? you can't KC them.

Right. Scratch that.

[Eggplantation]

I would say that with 9 Wharves played from last turn and 9 KCed Madmans is possible to draw the entire kingdom in your hands. That being said, getting all Coppers+Silvers+Gold+Potions+Platinum+a couple of Kingdom treasures in play and then playing Counterfeited Banks for more than it would be "easy". 59 Coppers (the Opponent may Ambassador theirs) + 39 Silvers + 29 Golds + 14 Potions + 11 Platinums + 9*5 Kingdom Treasures (leaving room for Wharf, KC, Madman, Counterfeit and Bank) + 10 Counterfeits = 148, so each of the 20 plays of a Bank is worth more than $148. With Counterfeit, you get more than $138*20, which is plenty.
30 plays of Madmen gets more than to 4*(1.75)^30 cards in hand (almost doubling each time, because you need to play a Madman), so you do not need Wharf. 10 plays gets to 4*(1.75)^10, which is also enough, so you do not need KC and have room for more Kingdom treasures. It may be worth it to put Marauder in, because there are more than 10 Spoils.

Anyway, the maximum would be quite hard to find, but this gets waaaay above 999.

30 plays of Madmen gets from 4 cards to 4*2^30, so...

Sounds like a good place to start. Now is the trouble of getting them all into your hand at once!

If gains count, you can Forge 11 Colonies, 11 Provinces, 11 Platina, 8 Forges, 10 King's Courts, 10 Banks, 9 Expands, 39 Golds, 11 Harems, 11 Fairgrounds, and 11 Nobles into a Hydra.  Totally worth it.  There's even enough room left in the kingdom for Hermit/Council Room, so hopefully you can draw all that stuff.

Huh, never even though of that. I like your thinking. Still need to be gotten into your hand.


Also editing the OP, you can assume perfect shuffle luck when coming up with a solution, and also assume you are playing solo. Unfortunately that leaves out the pirate ship technique, which was a good one Grujah, forgot about that one when I stated that you cannot use coin tokens before. Also changing it from 'buy' the Hydra to 'gain' the Hydra.

[Kirian]

I think Grujah was on the right track with Coppersmiths.  If we're allowed perfect shuffle luck, then Scrying Pool can draw the following:

10x KC, 10x Coppersmith, 9x Beggar

10 KCs can triple all of those, making Copper worth $31 this turn, and the Beggars give us 53 Coppers in hand (the other seven can be anywhere in the deck).  That's $1643.

[Kirian]

And because why the hell not:

http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20131212/log.50635cc651c3843e7939ece8.1386911314276.txt

[KingZog3]

And because why the hell not:

http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20131212/log.50635cc651c3843e7939ece8.1386911314276.txt

$1395... I buy two Provinces...

[Aidan Millow]

Beginnings of a probable max money solution (since that's where this is going):

Kingdom: Black Market, Hermit, Philosopher's stone, Coppersmith, Cache, Contraband, Counterfeit, Stash, Bank, KC

Start with all the Coppers in you discard pile (somehow). Use things from black market deck to get all your Phil Stones, a black market and a Scrying Pool in hand (with at least 3 spare actions (or using kc somehow). Play BM and all your phil stones, get a lot of money, play Scrying Pool to draw all your actions, Counting House to draw all your Coppers and madman (or two) to draw everything else. Play all the money-giving actions you can including KC-Coppersmith. Play all your treasures, (Counterfeiting the Banks last).

You'll get well over 5000.

[florrat]

http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20131212/log.510876c7e4b0ac7a7a0bb212.1386918369216.txt



(I had 350470 coins, really! The 35047 is a lie!)

[soulnet]

Sounds like a good place to start. Now is the trouble of getting them all into your hand at once!

Huh, never even though of that. I like your thinking. Still need to be gotten into your hand.

I think I've said it already. With 10 madmen you can get the entire deck in your hand. As it was mentioned in the linked related thread, Native Village can also do it.

[Davio]

What surprised me more than you guys actually getting some results on Goko was the fact Goko didn't crash.

[Kirian]

(I had 350470 coins, really! The 35047 is a lie!)

That... is impressive.  Basically a ton of Coppers played over and over after boosting them to $54 each.  But that only gets up to about $30k... where does the other $300k come from?

Oh, wait, I get it.  Never mind.

[werothegreat]

And because why the hell not:

http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20131212/log.50635cc651c3843e7939ece8.1386911314276.txt

You could have played one more Beggar!

[Kirian]

Now I'm wonder if Procession, BoM, Coppersmith, and Graverobber couldn't do this a couple steps better.  It would need a ton of support though.

[florrat]

It is definitely possible to play Coppersmith more than 54 times a turn. Actually in my turn I could have gained the last BoM and Coppersmith (in the right order) earlier in the turn which would give me ~1000 more coins. And you can play coppersmith even significantly more than that (see here), but I'm not sure whether that is worth it:

(1) You need pretty much kingdom cards to play all your copper multiple times: Black Market, HoP, Mandarin, some mega-drawer (madman or countinghouse + discarder. The discarder can be chancellor, scavenger, sage, rebuild, hunting party, golem and probably some others). If you only use madman, then you probably cannot do this 10 times, because you probably also need ~2 madman to draw your deck initially. But that may be okay, and the fact that Madman is a village is also very nice, because...

(2) Most things you're trying to do is terminal, so even with KC the number of actions you have is pretty limited.

Also, for the optimal solution you need to be able to control the Black Market deck, which you cannot do currently (without hacking into the code yourself). But yeah, you might get some better results by adding Procession + Graverobber (and maybe Rogue and/or Throne Room) for some of {Scheme, Counting House and Chancellor}. The other 7 kingdom cards are really necessary (and life will be much harder without Scheme, but maybe you can do it with just 1 Scheme from the BM-deck)

This post may be a bit incoherent, because during the post my opinion changed from "meh, that won't work because I need all kingdom cards" to "ditching Chancellor+Counting House might actually be worth it"

[Warfreak2]

HoP doesn't need to be a kingdom card as you can just use the same one repeatedly - it can come from the Black Market. Another obvious point is adding Young Witch to the Black Market deck, giving an 11th kingdom card pile.

[florrat]

HoP doesn't need to be a kingdom card as you can just use the same one repeatedly - it can come from the Black Market. Another obvious point is adding Young Witch to the Black Market deck, giving an 11th kingdom card pile.

Good point about HoP. I have thought about adding YW to the BM-deck, but if I'm correct you cannot currently control what the bane is in that case, which makes it rather useless...