Counterfeit is always strong too, about as much as Remake is always strong. I think you are right about Taxman+Venture, but Titandrake is pointing out small synergies the same way you were with Counterfeit+Venture (minus the Copper trashing synergy, which was already given before you joined that thread).
But man, I have no desire to get into all that again. I just thought the similarities in discussion were funny.
Yep, he just doesn't call them small, which I did from the beginning for a reason.
You don't sacrifice anything if you gain a venture on top of the deck. There is no 'sifting' from playing a venture, only cycling, and the quality of the draw deck remains unchanged. There is some extra shuffle/deck control from the choice of gaining a venture or gold on top of the deck. (all assuming you have a venture in hand).
This is false. To get to Venture you had to start with Silver in hand (ignoring edge cases with Loan or Quarry). TmanSVent gives you 2 + 1 + Next treasure for cash without playing Tman. Playing Tman -> 1 + 1 + Next treasure.
Objectively, having a Venture in hand does not obviate the penalty to current hand of Tman. Barring real edge cases, Tman is only a net gain to your current hand when you have no terminal treasures to draw off Venture chains. Barring that, at best Tman breaks even in cash.
And yes, Venture sifts in a limited fashion - i.e. the green and action cards in your deck are statistically less likely to ever be in your hand and preventing the play of treasures.
In most decks, this isn't that much or that good - you normally want actions, to play them often, and the sifting out of green is balanced by the sifting out of actions. However, if you a Venture dominant board (e.g. colonies, limited trash, Rabble), then skipping your actions may be minimally an issue.
Take the simple case - an 8 Venture deck with 8 Green. I will have all 8 Ventures in play each hand while I will have only 2.5 greens. Or take another fun thought experiment. I have a Prince of Spice Merchants. Each hand I begin with a single Venture on deck top. Every turn I will play all the cards I want to play.
I mean this is like saying Hunting Party doesn't sift, it just cycles. Yet somehow if I have over draw in a Hp deck or in a Venture deck I somehow manage to consistently leave a discard pile full of dross.
You can quibble about some useless semantics of what "sifting" is, but Venture decks (where Venture is the dominant card in the deck) do everything you want from a Sifting deck (skip the dross and play the cards that let you buy a colony).