Last league match against Rubby:
Comment on game 3 (that Forager/Ironmonger/Wharf/GM game):
I would have opened Forager/Ironmonger as well because the Ironmonger can help you to hit an early Wharf and serves as village later, but it might be close.
He was lucky to get the Wharf with his Ironmonger right after the shuffle. I also think you maybe should have gotten a first Wharf over your first Grand Market. But I think you were just behind at that point due to his early Wharf. Maybe you could have considered an Ironmonger over the last two Fool's Golds, as you said yourself: You don't really need to win that split - but you did.
I would go one step further and say you really don't
want to win that FG spilt. Winning it hurts you - a lot. I don't even want to have 4 FG, 3 is plenty. Maybe another one very late if my opponent doesn't like them either.
I don't like a forager/forager opening, and in fact prefer Ironmonger/Forager. Not because I want to hit $5 - Ironmonger/Forager is pretty bad at hitting $5 and your opponent certainly got lucky here. The reason I don't like a forager/forager opening is because I want to prioritize trashing (!). I am hoping on turn 3/4 to trash one card and add another forager and another ironmonger. Only after that I start adding fool's golds - no more than 3.
When opening Forager/Forager I can't realistically expect to add double ironmonger on turns 3/4. A 3rd forager is also clumsy, so a far more reasonable scenario (and what actually happened) is buying 3 fool's golds. But at this point my deck is really hurting. I just significantly lowered the frequency of my foragers, and I'm not hitting big hands yet. So you're kind of forced into adding even more fool's golds and then thinning gets delayed way too much.
There are a lot of turns where you got fool's gold and I would have taken ironmonger.
Turn 5 qvist: ironmonger over double FG.
Turn 6 qvist: ironmonger over double FG
Turn 6 rubby: ironmonger + FG over double FG.
(
log)
What you are doing here - opening double forager into lots of fool's golds, that can work on slightly different kingdoms but not this one. If you take that route you should add a couple of wharves and go straight for provinces. More like fool's gold BM with some trashing. Here you will get outraced by the ironmonger/wharf/grand market deck, so I think you're right in not going for that. But what you do now is like building an engine, except you add the payload first and build the engine later.