So I finally saw Trader and Gardens on the same board today and decided to try it out. Contraband was also out so I bought a few, since it gives a plus buy and the drawback is no big deal in a Gardens deck. And Island was available. I played it pretty inexpertly but I beat the Province player by one point with 53 cards in hand. That was only buying one trader until fairly late in the game (mostly because I was using my 4 hands to grab Gardens and Islands initially). But in the late game, when I started Trader-ing my Contrabands to gain four cards before the buy phase, I realized there might be an optimal way to play this strategy by buying golds and other expensive cards rather than the normal Gardens play of buying two cheap cards and then just turning everything into silver once you have all the Gardens. It's especially cool because that flood of Silver helps keep your deck from becoming the usual mire of green you get in a Gardens deck (though granted, the Islands were pulling their weight their too.)
So recognizing that my game was not exactly a textbook case (nor was it fantastically successful), I'm wondering how everyone feels about Gardens/Trader. Has anyone made it work really well? Has anyone failed spectacularly with it? Has anyone tried to simulate it? (I think figuring out optimal play would be super hard; I've only begun to tinker with Dominiate, my programming experience is one course in java in college, and this is well beyond my expertise).
Does this have Combo of the Day potential when the blog gets back in swing?
