Sentry + VassalHappyFish recently beat me with this strong Base 2nd Edition synergy. Even in the absence of a village,
Sentry can help set up safe
Vassal plays while thinning your deck of junk cards. This synergy is pretty strong without support. Open Vassal + Silver and get Sentries as quickly as possible (at least 3). Use Sentries to trash your starting cards, but also use them to line up Vassal into another Sentry, so you can keep playing non-terminal Vassals. Once you have 3+ Sentries and 4 Vassals (or 3 Vassals and a Silver), you can start greening. If you dud, pick up an additional Sentry. This strategy is pretty fast, greening beginning around turn 9 and getting 6 Provinces in 14-15 turns. This strategy scales up to
Colony and
Dominate pretty handily, though the Sentry and Vassal piles might be contested in those cases. There are a bunch of cards that can improve the strategy; most $2-4 cantrips will be better than Silver, though non-terminal +buy is the best. This strategy is also very resistant to handsize and junking attacks. HappyFish was able to shrug off my
Mountebank attack by investing in a couple extra Sentries. Being forced to discard out of hand can even help trash starting cards or balance out your Vassals and Sentries. Trashing attacks (especially
Swindler and
Knights) can wreck the strategy, though.