Just thought I shared this game with you guys (been lurking for a while and figured it's time I contributed!)
I usually favor playing unique and unassuming strategies rather then tried and tested ones. So I tend to try crazy builds. Granted they something fail spectacularly, but in this case the result was surprising.
The basic idea: Buy 3 Bishops /3 Jacks/Enough Splitters to play all the actions. Trash your hand down to only those cards.
After that a turn would go something like this:
1) Play Splitters in hand.
2) If Silvers in hand, play Bishop to trash Silvers.
3) If no Silvers in hand, play Jack.
Do this until hand is exhausted, you should be able to consistently generate 6 VP per turn.
Here is the example game:
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20111213-084825-3eaff84d.htmlSummary:
Board had Fishing Villages as splitter. I bought Chapel to quickly clear my deck early game.
50-42. Opponent had 6 provinces. I bought 2 and trashed them. Game ended in 17 turns.
Analysis:
Obviously, this strategy works extremely well if you are using Fishing Villages/Festivals as your splitter. Those splitters allow Jack to draw more cards, split actions while also providing the player with cash. In the example game, I was constantly generating 8 gold per turn. I haven't tried this on a simulator, so I don't know how powerful it actually is with the other Villages. Also, I guess the presence of Chapel really accelerated the engine building.
As noted in the recent front page article, I suspect this engine to be very very effective against many boards with attacks (Seahag, Militia, Goons, Torturer etc). Except maybe Masquerade, but you could always buy back the card you masqueraded over at the end of the turn.
Conclusion:
I am very interested to find our how this combo works in the absence of Fishing Village/Festivals/Chapels. I haven't figured out how to use the simulators just yet, so if anyone could help with that, I would love to see how well this engine does against other dominant strategies (IGG rush for example).
