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[philosophyguy]

What kind of decks benefit from Cache? Obviously decks that can handle the extra Coppers (e.g., Apothecary, Trader, Watchtower) are going to do just fine, and decks where Copper is a benefit (e.g., Gardens, Dukes) are no-brainers to pick up Cache. In the absence of those cards, though, what makes Cache viable? Is strong deck cycling/sifting like Warehouse enough? Stables? Other scenarios?

[DStu]

absence of everything is enough.

BM-Cache beats BM

edit: That's also true for BM-Smithy, and I would guess for most drawers.

[Papa Luigi]

I think you pretty much covered it. It fills a role similar to Contraband, a cheaper $3 treasure that only costs $5 to buy, balanced by some disadvantage. Of course it's much easier to get $5 than it is to get $6 so the cost savings is a major point in its favor.

I suppose it could also find a niche if your opponent is buying/playing Noble Brigand a lot, since Cache is immune to it (unlike Gold). Unfortunately, the wording of the card makes you gain the coppers whenever you GAIN it, not just when you buy it, so no skirting around it using Remodel or something.

DStu - That's interesting... I'd think that without a way to trash the extra coppers, it would be worse than buying silver since you're getting an average of $1.67 per card ($5 / 3 cards). Same argument I've heard for Hoard not being very good (1 Gold + 1 useless green card = $1.50 per card). But I suppose it also increases variance.

[theory]

I like it in tough games, like Sea Hag games, where you can't really get to $6 and the Coppers aren't that bad.  I also like it as an early pickup with Spice Merchant.

[DStu]

DStu - That's interesting... I'd think that without a way to trash the extra coppers, it would be worse than buying silver since you're getting an average of $1.67 per card ($5 / 3 cards). Same argument I've heard for Hoard not being very good (1 Gold + 1 useless green card = $1.50 per card). But I suppose it also increases variance.

I don't want to look it up, but we had this discusson in some topic some months ago. Think it was about variance and Cache was an heavy example.
The point is, 1.67 is (a little) more than you need on average you need for a Province. And even more than the average/card you usually get to in optimized BigMoney, which is about $7/hand or $1.4 per card.
Silver gets you 1 card with average $2, but Cache gives you 3 cards with average $1.66. Both are about the average, but you add more cards with Cache. You add $5 to your deck in total with Cache, but only $2 with Silver.

Additionally, there is variance, which usually is a good thing, especially if your average money is below $1.6. Cache gives you a $3, and with a little bit of the rest of the hand adds to a Province, if not at least a Gold. Silver gives you a $2, from there it's harder to get up to $8, even to $6.

AND Copper is not that bad of a card for BigMoney, at some point you want to green, the more cards you have the less the green influences your deck.

And finally, Cache it not magic, it's like 55:45 for BM-Margrave (randomly opened in the background at the moment), and maybe 60:40 for others (don't know), so it's not a killer, but it's a slight improvement.

[WanderingWinder]

With trader in hand, it's basically better than gold, because you get two free silvers with it. It's quite good for alternate VP, apothecary, (coppersmith?) and other copper-friendly strats.

[Kore]

It's not a bad combination with a trimmed stables deck. Nothing worse than having to discard a silver or gold to your stables to keep the combo going and having a few extra coppers won't hurt you when you can reversibly draw most of your deck.

[HiveMindEmulator]

I think people generally overrate how bad Copper is for money decks. It's really not that bad. It's obviously terrible in engines where you're trying to draw multiple different cards together, but with money, it's meh. You don't want to buy it, but you don't want to go out of your way to trash it, and you don't care that much if you have to take it. Getting Gold (or the Cache card) is much more important, since hands with Gold almost always can buy a Gold or Province.

An example of how unimportant copper trashing is is that while Moneylender+money beats pure money, it hardly beats anything else. There's no optimized Moneylender bot in the simulator, but the optimal play can't be that far off from the computer-generated bot, which loses (pretty badly) to basically any other cheap terminal+money, including cards generally looked down upon, like Chancellor, Navigator, Fortune Teller, and Moat.

[DG]

I think people generally overrate how bad Copper is for money decks. It's really not that bad.

When gaining a copper is worse than gaining nothing, you just don't want it. With the cache the benefit of the 3 coins from the card itself does indeed compensate for adding copper do your deck. Buy the cache when you're happy to expand your deck and avoid the cache when you're trying to contract the deck.

[randomdragoon]

Try opening Cache/?? on a 5/2 split with no other strong strategy that pops out at you. It's much stronger than you might think. (And you don't have to worry about the ?? being a terminal, either. Use pawn's +1 card/+$1 without fear!)

[Voltgloss]

Try opening Cache/?? on a 5/2 split with no other strong strategy that pops out at you. It's much stronger than you might think. (And you don't have to worry about the ?? being a terminal, either. Use pawn's +1 card/+$1 without fear!)

Duchess, of all things, might be the strongest $2 here. 

In fact, the presence of Duchess may make Cache more attractive overall, as she helps reduce deck-clog when you're leveraging all those Coppers into Duchy buys.

[Hks]

It's useful in games with cache, salvager/spice merchant and no other +buys or gainers. Buy a cache, next turn trash them with salvager/spice merchant and you have 4 buys.

[def]

It's useful in games with cache, salvager/spice merchant and no other +buys/gainers. Buy a cache, next turn trash them with salvager/spice merchant and you got 4 buys. Works with Border Village too.

What do you mean? Trash what next turn, the cards you just bought? How, when they probably aren't in that hand? And why do you have 4 buys?

[Hks]

It's useful in games with cache, salvager/spice merchant and no other +buys/gainers. Buy a cache, next turn trash them with salvager/spice merchant and you got 4 buys. Works with Border Village too.

What do you mean? Trash what next turn, the cards you just bought? How, when they probably aren't in that hand? And why do you have 4 buys?

Well, for example in games with king's court, where you can draw the whole deck. You have nothing to trash with the salvager/spice merchant, but they are the only sources for +buy. Instead of buying a province every turn, buy a cache, next turn trash cache and the two coppers, buy three provinces and another cache.

[Papa Luigi]

It's useful in games with cache, salvager/spice merchant and no other +buys/gainers. Buy a cache, next turn trash them with salvager/spice merchant and you got 4 buys. Works with Border Village too.

What do you mean? Trash what next turn, the cards you just bought? How, when they probably aren't in that hand? And why do you have 4 buys?

Well, for example in games with king's court, where you can draw the whole deck. You have nothing to trash with the salvager/spice merchant, but they are the only sources for +buy. Instead of buying a province every turn, buy a cache, next turn trash cache and the two coppers, buy three provinces and another cache.

That seems like a pretty specific case. So Cache is good when the kingdom also includes King's Court, engine cards, and Salvager/Spice Merchant as the only source of +buy?

[Hks]

It's useful in games with cache, salvager/spice merchant and no other +buys/gainers. Buy a cache, next turn trash them with salvager/spice merchant and you got 4 buys. Works with Border Village too.

What do you mean? Trash what next turn, the cards you just bought? How, when they probably aren't in that hand? And why do you have 4 buys?

Well, for example in games with king's court, where you can draw the whole deck. You have nothing to trash with the salvager/spice merchant, but they are the only sources for +buy. Instead of buying a province every turn, buy a cache, next turn trash cache and the two coppers, buy three provinces and another cache.

That seems like a pretty specific case. So Cache is good when the kingdom also includes King's Court, engine cards, and Salvager/Spice Merchant as the only source of +buy?

Ok, ok, maybe it was an too unusual case to be mentioned. It doesn't require king's court, that was just an example.

[Dsell]

I've had some success with cache when you miss $6 for gold in BM-Vault games. A bit of bloat doesn't really matter and you just need to connect your vault with gold/cache for province.

[Robz888]

How about Cache with Philosopher's Stone?

[HiveMindEmulator]

I've had some success with cache when you miss $6 for gold in BM-Vault games. A bit of bloat doesn't really matter and you just need to connect your vault with gold/cache for province.

While Cache is generally better than Silver in BM games, the problem with the Vault situation is that you could also just buy another Vault with $5, so I'm not sure Cache gains you much, if anything. It probably becomes preferable after the third Vault which is a bit late to make a noticeable difference.

[Dsell]

I've had some success with cache when you miss $6 for gold in BM-Vault games. A bit of bloat doesn't really matter and you just need to connect your vault with gold/cache for province.

While Cache is generally better than Silver in BM games, the problem with the Vault situation is that you could also just buy another Vault with $5, so I'm not sure Cache gains you much, if anything. It probably becomes preferable after the third Vault which is a bit late to make a noticeable difference.

In the game where cache/vault worked nicely, I actually did buy the cache after three vaults, but an earlier witch battle was slowing us down and making it a little tough to hit 6, even with vaults. After the cache buy, I had three province turns in a row, matching up my three vaults with my two golds and a cache (it also let me buy a province later) and the rest of the game I was greening with either duchies or fairgrounds. Maybe a bit situational, but it was a good buy for me there.

[paddyodoors]

... but an earlier witch battle was slowing us down and making it a little tough to hit 6, even with vaults. ...

Not sure what this means.  Aren't you guaranteed 6 every time a vault is in your starting hand for the turn?

[Voltgloss]

I've had some success with cache when you miss $6 for gold in BM-Vault games. A bit of bloat doesn't really matter and you just need to connect your vault with gold/cache for province.

While Cache is generally better than Silver in BM games, the problem with the Vault situation is that you could also just buy another Vault with $5, so I'm not sure Cache gains you much, if anything. It probably becomes preferable after the third Vault which is a bit late to make a noticeable difference.

In the game where cache/vault worked nicely, I actually did buy the cache after three vaults, but an earlier witch battle was slowing us down and making it a little tough to hit 6, even with vaults. After the cache buy, I had three province turns in a row, matching up my three vaults with my two golds and a cache (it also let me buy a province later) and the rest of the game I was greening with either duchies or fairgrounds. Maybe a bit situational, but it was a good buy for me there.

Sounds like the lesson there is to try to keep your Vaults and Golds in parity, and if you've more Vaults than Golds but are looking at a $5 hand, maintaining that parity (via buying Cache) is more of a benefit than those two extra Coppers are a detriment. 

It also sounds like the average treasure density in your deck may have been less than $1 (thanks to the Curses and green), in which case the Coppers themselves were overall an improvement.

[Kuildeous]

I dislike this thread. Every time I see the title of this thread, I start getting hungry.

[mnavratil]

I dislike this thread. Every time I see the title of this thread, I start getting hungry.

I stared dumbly at this comment for like a minute wondering to myself what cache has to do with food before it dawned on me. Nice.

[Dsell]

... but an earlier witch battle was slowing us down and making it a little tough to hit 6, even with vaults. ...

Not sure what this means.  Aren't you guaranteed 6 every time a vault is in your starting hand for the turn?

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120411-140700-b31a88f6.html

Here's the game. Don't ask me why my opponent was going for hunting parties and ironworks. I was able to get just one gold before my first vault. Used another vault to get gold but I'm pretty sure I had some collisions in there that kept me from using vault too much. The point is that I hit five more than six...I had three vaults but only two golds. On a turn when I hit just 5 and had no vault, I thought cache might give me that ideal (in my mind) number of three "golds" and three vaults to let me put them together for provinces. I probably had a little luck in my draws after this but it worked out, and I got three provinces in as many consecutive turns. I think buying cache was a lot better than just going silver or another vault, because then one of my province-buying vaults would have been used buying another gold instead.

[paddyodoors]

I dislike this thread. Every time I see the title of this thread, I start getting hungry.

I stared dumbly at this comment for like a minute wondering to myself what cache has to do with food before it dawned on me. Nice.

And I didn't get it until you just said that right there...

[jotheonah]

Obvious one, but nobody's mentioned Watchtower. Don't want those coppers? Trash 'em.

[Tables]

Watchtower is actually pretty niche though. To get any benefit from Watchtower+Cache, you need to hit exactly $5 with Watchtower in hand ($6 could have just got a Gold for essentially the same effect). It might happen once every so often, but certainly isn't something to build your deck around. Especially if that Watchtower would have been better as a silver (hit $5+Watchtower, would have been $7 with a Silver - you don't top-deck the Gold but otherwise, the same).

[eHalcyon]

I dislike this thread. Every time I see the title of this thread, I start getting hungry.

You're nuts.

[jotheonah]

Watchtower is actually pretty niche though. To get any benefit from Watchtower+Cache, you need to hit exactly $5 with Watchtower in hand ($6 could have just got a Gold for essentially the same effect). It might happen once every so often, but certainly isn't something to build your deck around. Especially if that Watchtower would have been better as a silver (hit $5+Watchtower, would have been $7 with a Silver - you don't top-deck the Gold but otherwise, the same).

But there are lots of other reasons to have a Watchtower, i.e. if there are Cursers out, for the top-decking. And Cache is superior to Gold vs. Noble Brigand. Or if Feast is out, it can grab a Cache with Watchtower in hand but not a Gold ... OK, so they're all pretty niche.

[jomini]

There are a few other places where cache works:
1. It can help set up a Hunting Party deck - silver, cache, copper, and a terminal silver works almost as well as gold; in slow games (e.g. militia) it can be better to get to an 8 coin combo sooner than buy another HP and wait to get your gold.
2. It can work okay with counting house. One that works surprisingly well is cache/counting house in a colony game. You can buy counting houses at the end of the shuffle, particularly cards that will miss the shuffle (like a typical turn 5 purchase) and caches early in the shuffle. This provides more juice for the counting house and a gold to work with as well. It still gets beat hard by a lot of other options, but can get better with any sort of sifting (discarding coppers for benefit becomes much more powerful).
3. Draw/bank also works well with cache. Something like margrave or council room doesn't mind the bloat and having more treasures helps the bank a good bit.
4. Strong trashing. Say you open cache/chapel. The cache requires that you burn another turn or two on trashing, but increases your buying power very quickly (particularly if you have a second shuffle collision of your buys) and decrease the odds of having a sub-silver turn. Likewise, if you build a strong draw engine (e.g. border village/embassy), you can often chapel away the coppers in one go.
5. Cache is good starter food a pricey golem deck. Normally you want to buy your actions at 5 in a golem deck, but if your actions are above the 6 coin price point (e.g. goons/BV/expand/forge), or you are going to run into colliding terminals (too many council rooms early is not that great) then cache can help boot strap up to the expensive stuff. Cache works especially well with golem/sifters.

[GendoIkari]

I bought Cache the other day when my opponent was playing multiple Margraves per turn. When you only have a 3-card hand, Silver just doesn't cut it. The Cache allowed me to buy Provinces with only 3 cards.

I'd guess this would work against any discard attacks; though it's better against Margrave because the extra draw increases the chances that you leave yourself with 3 useable cards.