Played this game during my league match with SaintO yesterday.
Crossroads, Oracle (bane), Philosopher's Stone, Young Witch, Bandit Camp, Cultist, Margrave, Market, Venture, Harem, Bank
Link to log I opened: Young Witch/silver
SaintO opened: Young Witch/oracle
I proceeded to buy some more silver and focus on racing the cultists, while trying to give out curses in the process. My thought process was that junking him was more important and that I could grab some P stones in the mid game.
He skipped cultist altogether, went potion on turn 5, and then just bought as many P stones as he could, while cursing me with Young Witch and buying silver and crossroads when he couldn't get P stone.
I ended up giving him all the ruins, and bought my first of two P stones on turn 14. I lost the curse split 7/3 due to my cultists drawing my young witch dead (and him blocking with a bane or two). By the end it was very hard for me to get anything but duchies, while he had 5 p stones that could spike him provinces. I had no hope. I feel like skipping cultist has to be wrong, but I could be over-estimating it here.
I think I went wrong in one of these ways:
1) Should have gotten p stones earlier, skipping or focusing less on cultists... maybe p stone is really that good here
2) Should have just skipped p stone altogether and just bought money and cultists... may be the case that mixing two strategies is worse than going all in on either one
3) There was something better here altogether that we both missed!
Would love to hear your thoughts!