Hi everyone, I am a new player; Only been playing a few weeks now. I started IRL with some friends, and really enjoyed it. So, I looked up some strategy articles, and found goko, and have been playing and reading quite a bit. I think I've now got a pretty good grasp on the basics of the game, but i'm still confused on something regarding engines and payloads.
Now, I Only have the base set, which might be my first problem. But, that aside, I have been experimenting with building different "engines" (at least that's what I'm calling it, correct me if I'm wrong). Basically, for me, that looks like some combination of village/smithy, throne room/lab, or something like that. Then, get some way to have +buy, trash when I can, and throw an attack in here and there. I try to get to the point where I'm drawing my whole deck and can buy 2 provinces in 1 turn. If there's trashing I try and get to the point where the only treasure I have is like 3-5 Gold, and maybe a couple silvers. with no trashing I try and buy as little treasure as possible, and only as much as I need to buy 2 provinces so as not to "clog up" my "engine". I read the "first game engine" article which was really helpful, and I follow a lot of the stuff from there. It works great sometimes, and fails pretty bad others, but it's been fun.
Where my question comes in is: I read that if you get to the point where you're drawing your deck, but it's only treasure, you might as well went with BM. I read a post on payload cards, and that the main point of an engine is to be able to play those powerful cards in high volume, but none of those cards are in the base set... I will eventually get some expansions, but I guess my questions is:
Is this even a worthwhile strategy? Is it a true engine that I'm doing? if not, is there even a true engine in the base set?