I was introducing a new player to the game last night, and after explaining the rules and a tiny bit of strategy I dealt out a random base-only game:
Thief, Council Room, Festival, Library, Adventurer
Cellar, Chancellor, Bureaucrat, Feast, Spy
The Festival/Library engine appealed to me, but with no trashing I wasn't sure whether it would actually work. I've certainly underestimated Council Room + money before, so I suggested she play that while I discover whether the engine is better.
It turns out to work pretty well, with a few Cellars to compensate for Library drawing me a ton of useless garbage. I also think I got some pretty lucky draws, while hers were quite bad: CR missed the shuffle often, and she was hitting 5/5/3 instead of 6/3/3 at a time when another CR wasn't really good for her. In the end I won by a lot (21-39); with more reasonable shuffles I think the engine's margin is not as high, but it clearly wins.
So I have two reasons for sharing this game. One is that it's the first time I've played base-only in like six months, and I was just really pleased to see how much better a player I am now than I was then: my deck was much more focused and smooth, because I was able to formulate a plan from the beginning, and anticipate what I would be needing in the next shuffle. The other reason for sharing is to ask for advice: I'm curious if there are any big pitfalls or opportunities that a more experienced player would see. How would you open, and what's your schedule of buys look like in an ideal world?
I opened Chancellor/Feast, so that I could get up to the $5 cards without having to buy any treasures ever. My next two turns I drew Chancellor with four coppers, so I discarded my deck and bought a Festival each time. Then I picked up a Library, two Cellars (with $4 and two buys), and alternated Festival/Library at about a 1.5:1 ratio (I got another Cellar at some point). At one point I had $4 and decided one Spy would be better than two more Cellars: this seemed really questionable to me, but it worked out okay. Maybe even Thief, to ruin the money player's deck, would have been good? I didn't try it, but I think once the engine is up and running you'd rather just slurp up Provinces than attack.