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[grobblewobble]

Inspired by this post, I wonder if it is also possible to build an engine that consistently beats big money strategies in the second standard setup. This setup is called "Big Money" (to make things confusing) and it contains the following cards:

Chancellor
Feast
Mine
Market
Laboratory
Bureaucrat
Chapel
Throne Room
Moneylender
Adventurer

The adventurer helps big money decks and they can go for laboratories or maybe a market when they have $5. The moneylender is okay for a big money opening, I guess.

So I wonder, is it possible to build an engine out of these cards that consistently beats such a big money deck? At first sight it looks promising, with laboratories, throne rooms and a chapels being present. But in practice I found it surprisingly difficult to get such an engine to work well. The problem is to generate enough money in the beginning to start buying labs. When you just stripped down your deck with a chapel, you first need some silver, then you need to buy more stuff to increase your income.. before you know it, you're too slow. Once your engine runs, adding a bureaucrat does work out nicely because it not only slows down your opponent(s), but you'll probably be able to play a lab afterward to pick up the silver and then you can mine it into a gold right away. But again, it tends to take just a little too long for me to get the engine running that well.

So I wonder if anyone has good ideas on how to do better? The main problem is what to do in the first turns. What do you buy with your $4? A silver, a moneylender, maybe even a feast? Also when do you start buying Throne Rooms and how many of them?

I do realise you can throne room a feast to gain two $5 engine pieces at once, maybe it's possible to exploit this in a big way?

[Davio]

I think the key is to find a right balance between overchapeling and underchapeling, maybe even no Chapeling, but Moneylender instead?
Estates can always go, but if you trash too aggressively you find yourself lacking economy to get some of those nice $5's.

If you're beginning to draw a good chunk of your deck with some Throned Labs you can always Chapel superfluous stuff later and enter double Province territory.

But by the time you're entering double Province territory, the BM deck will have like, 3 Provinces or something?
So let's say you get 2, he gets 1 and now if you get 2, you're losing on the trashed Estates. And even if he gets a Duchy instead, do you want to risk getting 2 Provinces allowing him to get lucky and grab the last one on a win?

Bureaucrat might help stalling the bot in the end, but the Silvers are of course extra non-drawing cards to clog your engine.

[grobblewobble]

Thanks, yes replacing chapel with moneylender is an interesting idea too. After some testing / thought I think that if chapel is going to work at all, the $4 buy should definitely be silver. Moneylender can collide with chapel and it's nothing but a terminal silver +1 trash - but chapel trashes fast enough, and the moneylender itself will in the end be a wasted buy round in this case. So the opening (assuming 3/4 split) should either be moneylender + silver or chapel + silver. Maybe I should figure out this bot scripting thing this weekend.

[LastFootnote]

The adventurer helps big money decks and they can go for laboratories or maybe a market when they have $5. The moneylender is okay for a big money opening, I guess.

Dude, at what point does this deck stop being Big Money and start being an engine? A Market and 3 Labs? A Market and 4 Labs? Define "engine".

[grobblewobble]

Good point. What I have in mind is a deck that draws itself every turn (or can potentially do that) with enough throne rooms + laboratories.

Big money I would define as a deck that will mainly buy gold. Now that you mention it, maybe adventurer doesn't fit in there so well.

[DG]

I had a few runs of this against the Goko bots and a 4/3 opening. Silver/chapel or bureaucrat/chapel was winning although not convincingly. It was losing when the chapel went missing until turn 5 which isn't surprising. Building a lab/market deck with the chapel, bureaucrat, and some thrones seemed ok. As soon as a bureaucrat is played repeatedly it does make a difference.

It's worth noting that even with money decks you need to watch your opponent's strategy. The bureaucrat is the only attack here and a number of cards are weak against the bureaucrat (market/moneylender) and a number of them are strong (adventurer, chancellor).

[grobblewobble]

It was losing when the chapel went missing until turn 5 which isn't surprising. Building a lab/market deck with the chapel, bureaucrat, and some thrones seemed ok. As soon as a bureaucrat is played repeatedly it does make a difference.

Ack, drawing the chapel in turn 5 is horrible. How did you continue after opening chapel / silver? Do you remember what buys you went for in the few turns after that?

I wonder if it is viable to strip down to 2 silver, buy a throne room and a feast, then start a throne room / feast chain.

[HiveMindEmulator]

I went with Bureaucrat/Chapel into Labs, Markets, and Thrones with a Mine and it seemed to work against the bots. But the bots aren't necessarily playing the money strat as well as they could. A couple interesting things I noticed:
1. Bureaucrat/Chapel actually has an increased chance of the Chapel falling to turn 5 since the Bureaucrat can push it back with the Silver gain.
2. Being able to look at their hand with a Bcrat "miss" or Throne of it (as I did in turn 14 of this game) can allow you to break PPR.

http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20130628/log.5135b68ce4b07f4f52107e0e.1372434208077.txt

[grobblewobble]

Thanks for the feedback, everyone!

Setting up a throne room - feast chain seems to work out pretty well, especially because you can often immediately draw the new cards with a laboratory. This way the engine seems to gain enough buying power to buy up all provinces around turn 17, just enough to beat a money strategy somewhat reliably. The first turns are really important and nerve wracking.

Comparing this strategy with other ones will be hard to do with bots, you run into complex decisions, but maybe I'll give it a try.

Here is a typical game: http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20130628/log.516d0ff4e4b082c74d7ab732.1372447716186.txt#Game Setup

edit: Your game actually looks much better, HME. Winning the game in spite of a turn 5 chapel, ending it on turn 15 and playing bureacrats much earlier on. Well done.

[sudgy]

On that board, I usually open chapel/silver or chapel/market, buy a few silvers, get a market as soon as possible, get gold until you have $11 in deck, buy a bunch of labs/gold (to get to $16), a few throne rooms if you want, then double provinces.