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[philosophyguy]

I'd appreciate feedback on this game:

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120724-135829-a9eb41a7.html

Key cards are Mandarin, Talisman, and Duke, with some potential support from Farming Village, Border Village, and Salvager.

Opening 2/5, I decided to go for Mandarin/Talisman. I was planning on Duchy/Duke from the start; I saw Farming Village for skipping through green cards, Mandarin could help hit $5 and smooth my cash, and Talisman is at worst a Copper (which is fine in Duchy games) and at best a free Silver early on.

I'm pretty sure I misplayed by getting Farming Villages with a Talisman in play instead of Silvers, but otherwise I'm not sure where this strategy fell apart. Was simply the tempo loss from the Mandarin put back effects enough to give me opponent the lead? Should I have played for a different strategy?

[methods of rationality]

Copper is "fine" in duke-duchy games if your getting it for free with an extra buy. It is not really as good as silver though since with silvers you can buy duchies and dukes even in hands with green in them. So I would not buy talisman. I also don't see the point of farming village. Yes, it will "skip over green" but that's only relevant if your trying to sift through your green to get some power card you want to play. Here, your only real "power card" is silver, so you could just buy that instead. Well I guess Mandarin is sort of a power card, but I don't think its strong enough to justify buying farming village over silver.
Also, I think you could have used 1 or 2 more mandarins.
I also don't really see the point of savager since you want your coppers so while you can use it for estates and boarder villages, there are allot less of those so allot of times you might draw it and find you have no use for it. I guess I could see getting 1 to trash estates and give you extra copers, but 2, in my mind, is overkill.   

[RisingJaguar]

Copper is "fine" in duke-duchy games if your getting it for free with an extra buy. It is not really as good as silver though since with silvers you can buy duchies and dukes even in hands with green in them. So I would not buy talisman. I also don't see the point of farming village. Yes, it will "skip over green" but that's only relevant if your trying to sift through your green to get some power card you want to play. Here, your only real "power card" is silver, so you could just buy that instead. Well I guess Mandarin is sort of a power card, but I don't think its strong enough to justify buying farming village over silver.
Also, I think you could have used 1 or 2 more mandarins.
I also don't really see the point of savager since you want your coppers so while you can use it for estates and boarder villages, there are allot less of those so allot of times you might draw it and find you have no use for it. I guess I could see getting 1 to trash estates and give you extra copers, but 2, in my mind, is overkill.

I think library facilitates every together really well if you plan to do the salvaging border village route.  If not, salvager is just gonna end up dead in a hand far too often.  Like the farming village is JUST a sifter then. 

If you were going the BM route, i'm guessing something like 2-4 mandarins followed by a duchy should work better? Only grab talisman if you hit $4 (and even then, I would think farming village is better unless you open with talisman on $4).

[thirtyseven]

What if you bought a handful of Mandarins in a row, then aimed for a Forge to eventually turn them into Duchies and Dukes? Just brainstorming here.