Log:
http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20150522/log.50a43f07e4b0addfc4f4304a.1432330167376.txtNative Village, Stonemason, Warehouse, Ironworks, Pirate Ship, Plaza, Talisman, Treasure Map, Counting House, Forge
I look at this board and see no draw, no +buy, weak trashing. No way to build an engine, and I decide that some BM strategy (what would that be here?) would lose to Pirate Ship. I am not sure I am right in that, but I think that it will be easy enough for the PS player to play pirate ship enough that they will pull it out. So I open warehouse/pirate ship. My opponent does too! So the race is on... and it's not simple.
I don't think Talisman, Ironworks, Treasure Map, Counting House, or Forge ever have a reason to be bought in this kingdom, except perhaps forge in weird circumstances. Anyway, I go the route where I try to trash my coppers with stonemason, while he goes for native villages. Despite this my opponent gets an early PS token lead, but I have significantly fewer coppers left. On turn 13 he picks up his mat, which I think was a mistake because he doesn't need to. He also starts to green, but he still has 3 coppers in his deck and only 3 PS tokens! On my turn 13 I get my 4th token and have a 5-card deck with stuff on the mat. On turn 14 I pick it all up, because I want the second pirate ship, and because I can easily get a coin token off the copper and then trash it, and also put two of my estates back on the mat. Now my deck is ready to green, and so that's what I do. From there I am able to play my two pirate ships pretty much every turn and buy a province, while setting aside green with native village. Warehouse was key here. On the one turn where I only have one pirate ship, I use my coin token to get an important duchy. In the end I manage to catch up and win it.
I thought that this board was pretty darn cool, if pirate ship really is the right choice. It's very tricky to play just right. I wonder what would happen if both players went for stonemason to trash the coppers, then each player might only get a couple tokens. That wouldn't really be enough to use pirate ship for economy, but we can't just build back up, so the game might stall out, and maybe even 3-pile on the 2-costs.