So, we finally got Adventures to the table this week. We were running with just Base + Adventures today, we're going to try it with more sets next week. We play by a house rule by which we always have a fourth Victory card and a fourth Treasure card (usually but not always random). We've decided that when we use events, we will select 2 (usually but not always at random). For the record we have Base, Prosperity, Seaside, Guilds, Dark Ages, and now Adventures available between the players at the table. Amusingly, Intrigue is still "probably the next set one of us should buy" (that's been true since I just had Base & Prosperity).
We did one time with the 'suggested' kingdom "Level Up", three semi-random ones, and one "let's try <insert here>" game. For the <insert here> we wanted to try the Ferry (-2 cost token) and Inheritance (the Estate token) events at the same time with some choice cantrip\non-terminal events, and one of the players talked the rest of us into a kingdom that seemed to favor the Gardens victory card - including Magpie, Treasure Trove, Port, and Duplicate. He wanted the Peasant line for Disciple too, but was outvoted because we'd already tried the Peasant chain twice and wanted to try Page.
Some overall talking points \ amusing incidents.
1> We had two separate cases where someone got 4 Silver cards at once from the Treasure Hunter.
2> Champion hasn't made it to the table yet - there were 2 in decks when that game ended - but on the Peasant line it became conventional wisdom that Disciple just might be a better card than Teacher (not being able to stack the tokens was disliked). During the second random game the Page line was out and Distant Lands was the 4th Victory stack when one of the players played them together - and ended up getting 6 DL's onto his mat (only to come in third, by 2 points, if that tells you how tight that game was). Yeah, there's no point in playing DL twice but that "play and then get a copy" thing worked out. And yes, we did see a case where a Disciple discipled a Disciple who then discipled two other action cards, the player joking that normally she'd call it bad luck to have four terminal actions in hand...
3> Plan (the trashing token event) underwhelmed, to the surprise of several of us. For us the jury is still out as to whether Amulet or Ratcatcher is the better trasher in this set (Amulet is more versatile and could potentially hit 2, but RC is targeted). We only had Raze out once and as feared the problem seemed to be that most of the cards you want to trash are 0-cost cards.
4> As an aside on Amulet, I'm hoping to run some test games with it. A couple of times there it looked like this might be a better choice in a 4/3 opener than a Silver. It sure worked out well for me in one of the games when I opened Amulet\Silver just to see what would happen...
5> I wondered if Caravan Guard would make more sense when it hit the table, and it wasn't until the "Gardens" game that the lightbulb went on. One of the players inherited it and we realized the strength is that it gives you a coin immediately instead of a turn later when an attack card comes out. It's still not my favorite reaction card by any stretch, but I think I get it now.
6> Magpie is... I won't say "evil" because we saw it its downside during the "Gardens" game but I suspect it's going to stay popular. However we almost saw it backfire spectacularly. The first time it was on the table one of the players managed a string where he gained 3 of them during the same turn, bought a Magpie, then used Duplicate on it. One of the other players then congratulated him... then held up the Swamp Hag he'd forgotten she had in play. "Oh <curse word>, is that on Gain or on Buy?!?!?" was the frightened response. During the "Gardens" game, where Ferry & Inheritance were available, two of the four players put the Estate token on Magpie.
7> So, the Gardens game came out much closer than it looked during play. During play it looked like one particular player was running away with it, and it wasn't the player buying Gardens. By the Gardens player's admission (ahem, me) he made the mistake of buying too many Magpies too early - when he should have started scoring Treasure Troves earlier. So there was a point in the mid-game where Magpie kept revealing other Magpie but there weren't any Magpies left to gain, and he had too many turns with too few coins to buy anything useful. The deciding factor turned out to be... the Soldier. See, the Gardens player ended up with 7 Gardens (thanks primarily to Duplicate and Workbench), and 48 cards in the deck. The margin of victory turned out to be only 6 points, so two more cards in deck and that player would have won. Of course, that player had twice been victimized by the Soldier's "trash it if the card is value 3 or 4" ability when, of course, the card was a Magpie. Oh, and I'd like to point out that game was 3 cards away from being ended due to 3 empty stacks when the final Province was bought.
8> The Save event turned out to be a better card than I might have thought. I'm not calling it the most powerful or best event but it went from "meh, nice enough I guess" to "hey, I just bought a Province thanks to that Gold I set aside last turn after getting just a Gold & Copper for treasures that turn" and "hey, I just got away with double-drawing terminal actions and it wasn't a waste". It had us wanting to try Gear's similar mechanic again (and yes, I read here and saw it was optional before we played).
9> One of our players tends to be more aggressive than the others - her favorite card is Thief, to the point her dad (one of the other players) does everything but disallow it
. She kept going back and forth about whether or not she likes the token penalties - they hurt just as bad and sometimes worse than the others (I think Swamp Hag is now her 2nd favorite card) but kept complaining that they don't stack - if the -1 card token is already on the deck, there's no power to a second one.
