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[Titandrake]

So, I just played this game
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201112/21/game-20111221-001722-02f9bb77.html

I decide Bridge/Fool's Gold, RomaNorgy does Saboteur/-. I do a standard "buy lots of Fool's Golds, buy Provinces" deck.

Roma goes for an early Saboteur attack that transitions into a deck that wants to do heavy Saboteur damage. From what I could tell, it uses extra actions to play a bunch of Bridges and Saboteurs, uses Bridge money to buy more components, and eventually leads to Saboteurs that will only hit Provinces. Turns out that setting up that engine is too slow.

However, the interesting bit is around the early/mid-game: In a pure Fool's Gold deck, the only Saboteur targets are the Provinces. This is both good and bad: you always hit VP, but you never hit the buying power. In this game I lost 4 Provinces to Saboteur, not to mention the Golds and Duchies I lost after I gained those as a replacement.

If this game shows anything, it's that in a Fool's Gold board you can't let your opponent get all the Fool's Gold. I'm pretty sure no amount of Saboteuring stops you once you have 10 Fool's Gold. But if you bought some Fool's Gold yourself (say 3-4), and got a Saboteur as well, would that make up for the bad Fool's Gold split?

[Kahryl]

I don't think saboteur counters fools gold strategies here.  Even if it hits your provinces, the saboteuring guy isn't GAINING provinces.  If anything, he's helping run out the clock in your favor faster by replacing your provinces with gold to help you get provinces.

It's like you said - when my opponent goes fools gold, I try to grab 3 or 4 of them.  Then he doesn't have quite enough to collide.  I try to trash mine.

[mnavratil]

Also, in this case creating a bridge-saboteur combo really just took too long since a saboteur on its own was pretty much guaranteed to hit the province/gold/duchy.

As a side, but sort of related note: how well does swindler defend against fool's gold? I would imagine pretty well (fg->estate hurts) but haven't seen the 2 together.

[Voltgloss]

As a side, but sort of related note: how well does swindler defend against fool's gold? I would imagine pretty well (fg->estate hurts) but haven't seen the 2 together.

I was just thinking the same thing.  Any simulators out there curious to run, say, Double-Swindler/Big Money vs. FG rush?  Maybe even against the Nomad Camp/FG rush strat discussed in another thread?

Query also whether, instead of two Swindlers, the Swindler player could do better using one Swindler and one other attack card that topdecks the opponent's green (e.g., Bureaucrat, Rabble).  Not that you want your Swindler to hit the opponent's green - quite the opposite - but rather that, the more you're Swindling FG into green, the more often your green-decking attacks will successfully mess up the opponent.  Especially given that the FG player is looking to draw multiple FGs together.   

[mnavratil]

Okay, ran some simulations.

Double Swindler beats FG rush, but it's pretty close (52%-46%).
Best looks to be to open Swindler/FG and then just rush the FG. THis beats the bridge/FG player by 65%-33%.

So yea, it appears a combination of swindling and blocking is very effective against the FG player.

(A single saboteur replacing the swindler still loses to the straight FG rush by the way).