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[ftl]

That is possibly the smallest, most marginal utility I can imagine a card having.

Good find, good find.

[Axxle]

At very least, start with a list of cards that cannot ever do anything good for you if there are no actions that actually do anything in the supply.  Here's what I have going through this thread, along with one it seems people forgot:

Scheme
Village
Walled Village
University
Throne Room
Quarry

Are there any others?

Border Village for Duchy is very slightly useful for controlling shuffling timing.  If you draw $8+ in treasure + Border Village with no cards left in your deck, you don't play the BV and get to shuffle your good treasure back into your greening deck for your next hand instead of having it miss the shuffle.  If you just bought the Duchy, you'd be forced to shuffle without that $8 in treasure.

I think I remember someone mentioning that Loan is a horrible buy in a BMU game.

[Epoch]

So, what's the goal, here?  Are we saying, "cards that in practice, you would ignore," or are we saying, "A perfectly optimal player would ignore them"?

Because, in practice obviously nobody's going to buy BVs on the theory that they'll be controlling shuffles.  But, sure, a perfectly optimal player could potentially eke some kind of small advantage out of that.

Similarly, any VP card at all, even Fairgrounds that are only worth 2VP: it's pretty easy to imagine scenarios in which the right play is to buy this card.  Example:

You and your opponent have depleted the Duchies pile.  You have exactly $6 and know that if you have a 2 VP advantage, your opponent will not be able to take the final Province without handing you the game.  Clearly, the proper play is to take the Fairgrounds.

Or, hell, a magical VP card that cost $11 and was worth only 1 VP: still there are scenarios in which you should buy it (Duchies and Estates are depleted, you need more VPs, and the last Province will cause the game to end and you to lose: you should buy our hypothetical Bad VP card).

So, no VP cards at all can be in the Kingdom.

[DStu]

I think that Modifed-Dstu's first-post is still the best answer:

1.  Talisman
2.  Quarry
3.  King's Court
4.  Throne Room
5.  Village
6.  Walled Village
7.  Hamlet
8.  Worker's Village
9.  University
10.  Golem

So, the questions are:  Do Talisman or Quarry, interacting with the +buy of Hamlet or Worker's Village, lead to... something?

I don't THINK that they do.  Quarry: no Actions in this deck actually do anything.  KC->a village leads to minor card advantage, but surely not enough for the opportunity cost.

Talisman:  The only target for Talisman is Silver.  If Talisman + BMU < BMU, I can't see how Talisman + +buy + BMU > BMU.

Sleeping about it, I think $2s are dangerous, esp. Hamlet. You will pick them up with $2, Hamlet is no error and may help you to buy Province-Estate or something like that. I think in a pure BM game I'll be happy to have a buy just for tactical reasons. So maybe +buy at all is dangerous. A WV might be also interesting in the late midgame, for the same reasons.

[chwhite]

So, no VP cards at all can be in the Kingdom.

You might be able to get away with Vineyard, if there's no other practical reason to go Potion.

[ftl]

So, no VP cards at all can be in the Kingdom.

You might be able to get away with Vineyard, if there's no other practical reason to go Potion.

If you try adding in Vineyard, then Quarry and University become useful, no point to adding it in if it just kicks out more than one useful card.

[DrHades]

At very least, start with a list of cards that cannot ever do anything good for you if there are no actions that actually do anything in the supply.  Here's what I have going through this thread, along with one it seems people forgot:

Scheme
Village
Walled Village
University
Throne Room
Quarry

Are there any others?

This is very good start. I think I can add 4 cards that will still be inferior to BMU:

Workshop
Talisman
Golem
Contraband

[DG]

Golem-scheme can fire every turn so be careful of 6 card hands and other benefits. Both scheme and golem actually rule out a lot of possible cards from the kingdom.

[DStu]

Golem-scheme can fire every turn so be careful of 6 card hands and other benefits. Both scheme and golem actually rule out a lot of possible cards from the kingdom.

Of course that's harder to simulate, but I don't believe in Golem->2xScheme or Golem->Scheme+Village/Workshop. You pass on a 3 Silvers (Potion, 2x Scheme) and 1 Gold (Golem) to get 6 card hands in the endgame.

[Davio]

This might actually belong in the puzzles forum.  I think this is a great challenge.

Here's my attempt:

Quarry
Talisman
King's Court
Throne Room
Village
Walled Village
Transmute
Herbalist
University
Spy

Maybe Herbalist is not bad as a $2.  Maybe Develop instead, then?

Replace Herbalist with another, but much more expensive Potion-coster and you're there, I think.
How about Possession? Every Possession you could buy would be a Province if you'd bought a Silver instead of a Potion.

And I'm not sure about Spy. Isn't there a point where it becomes better than Silver?

[Thisisnotasmile]

This might actually belong in the puzzles forum.  I think this is a great challenge.

Here's my attempt:

Quarry
Talisman
King's Court
Throne Room
Village
Walled Village
Transmute
Herbalist
University
Spy

Maybe Herbalist is not bad as a $2.  Maybe Develop instead, then?

Replace Herbalist with another, but much more expensive Potion-coster and you're there, I think.
How about Possession? Every Possession you could buy would be a Province if you'd bought a Silver instead of a Potion.

And I'm not sure about Spy. Isn't there a point where it becomes better than Silver?

Not with Quarry available 

http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=1067.0

Edit: Thinking about this a bit more, how about replacing Herbalist with Alchemist. Alchemist without a payload/Herbalist is too slow in a Province game, isn't it? Maybe TR/KC change that though?

[tlloyd]

I think we have to decide if we are trying to find a kingdom in which BM is the statistically-superior strategy, or (I find this more interesting) one where no combination of kingdom cards could ever provide any benefit.

For example, no sane person would go through the effort of buying a golem in order to play two villages, but doing so would increase your hand size.

[theory]

I think the OP is asking for a set where the dominant strategy is a bot that buys Treasure only.  So Tunnel can't be in the set, because a bot that buys Treasure only will lose to a bot that buys Treasure only but Tunnel with $3 after more than 4 Provinces are bought.  OTOH, I'm pretty sure that a Golem-Village-Village bot would lose to a Treasure-only bot.

[FishingVillage]

Other people already proposed it, but I'd like to bring up Fishing Village again. If the supply doesn't have any other useful actions, then it's just a Copper this turn and the next, which isn't very useful for its $3 price. It isn't much better when TR'd or KC'd, when one could consider getting 2 Silvers (cheaper and more useful at once vs TR+FV) or 2 Golds (slightly more expensive but still more useful at once vs KC+FV). Using Golems with FVs has pretty bad cost efficiency as well.

A supply with Golem and Tunnel would be hilarious though. Just buy Golems and a bunch of Tunnels (and no other actions), and you'll earn tons of Gold each time you play the Golems.

[Geronimoo]

There are quite a few cards that are bad people haven't mentioned yet:

-Spice Merchant
-Loan
-Lookout

And pretty much all Villages are bad as well.

[FishingVillage]

I think Spice Merchant would be useful. It can reliably get rid of my Coppers for me and I can draw or get more coin than I would've out of the Copper originally. It's better than Moneylender since it works on any kind of treasure, so I can kill Silvers as well if I get to the point that I don't need them. Loan and Lookout are less reliable, but I might gravitate towards them if there's no other way to trash.

[Tmoiy]

I'll propose this:

• Native Village
• University
• Fishing Village
• Loan
• Scheme
• Village
• Quarry
• Talisman
• Throne Room
• Walled Village

[Forge!!!]

I'll propose this:

• Native Village
• University
• Fishing Village
• Loan
• Scheme
• Village
• Quarry
• Talisman
• Throne Room
• Walled Village

it's...it's beautiful.

[ftl]

Quick! Someone submit that to the Kingdom Design Challenge!

I would love to see the faces of the players if they got that board. (Unfortunately, though the faces would be interesting, the game would not be...)

[DG]

Talisman/nothing with treasure is as good as big money on a 5/2 split. The simulator suggest you have to go very deep into the vp purchasing rules to split them.

[Epoch]

You might be able to get away with Vineyard, if there's no other practical reason to go Potion.

Nope, not if our standard is, "Perfectly optimal player will never even consider it."

I mean, there are plenty of potential situations where it is SIMPLY IMPOSSIBLE to win with the remaining standard VP cards, but in which the game is not over, and it is theoretically possible to win given another source of VP.  So at that point the perfectly optimal player will look at getting Potion, Actions, and Vineyards, as the only possible route to victory.

Now, of course, it would be one game in a million -- or possibly much less -- where that actually comes about and leads to anything other than utter defeat.  But it's possible, so the perfectly optimal player would consider it.

[Tmoiy]

Talisman/nothing with treasure is as good as big money on a 5/2 split. The simulator suggest you have to go very deep into the vp purchasing rules to split them.

Fair point. I would probably replace it with Lookout or Outpost then. Or maybe Inn?

[WanderingWinder]

I think Spice Merchant would be useful. It can reliably get rid of my Coppers for me and I can draw or get more coin than I would've out of the Copper originally. It's better than Moneylender since it works on any kind of treasure, so I can kill Silvers as well if I get to the point that I don't need them. Loan and Lookout are less reliable, but I might gravitate towards them if there's no other way to trash.

In a big money game, you never want to kill silvers.

[Tables]

Talisman/nothing with treasure is as good as big money on a 5/2 split. The simulator suggest you have to go very deep into the vp purchasing rules to split them.

Fair point. I would probably replace it with Lookout or Outpost then. Or maybe Inn?

A little testing in the simulator shows BMU+Inn goes pretty much equal the BMU, if the Inn is bought at the right time. This program went 46.3-45.5 up against BMU.

<player name="Big Money Ultimate + Inn" author="Tables" description="Testing to see if buying an Inn can improve BMU">
 <type name="Optimized"/>
 <type name="UserCreated"/>
 <type name="Province"/>
 <type name="Bot"/>
 <type name="BigMoney"/>
 <type name="TwoPlayer"/>
 <type name="SingleCard"/>
   <buy name="Province">
      <condition>
         <left type="getTotalMoney"/>
         <operator type="greaterThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="18.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Duchy">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="4.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Estate">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Gold"/>
   <buy name="Duchy">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="6.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Inn">
      <condition>
         <left type="getTotalMoney"/>
         <operator type="greaterThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="18.0"/>
      </condition>
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Inn"/>
         <operator type="equalTo" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Silver"/>
</player>

Lookout and Outpost... I couldn't get to work. So possibly replacing Talisman with Outpost/Lookout should work?

[chwhite]

I think Spice Merchant would be useful. It can reliably get rid of my Coppers for me and I can draw or get more coin than I would've out of the Copper originally. It's better than Moneylender since it works on any kind of treasure, so I can kill Silvers as well if I get to the point that I don't need them. Loan and Lookout are less reliable, but I might gravitate towards them if there's no other way to trash.

In a big money game, you never want to kill silvers.

Obviously this is true for Province games.  But what if Colony is out?