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[Jimmmmm]

Royal Carriage/Bridge

Can playtesters confirm this to be a respectable 2-card combo?  My instinct says that you usually won't be able to get enough RCs bought and into your tavern quickly enough for this to succeed.  Note, I totally think that this plan is viable with other support, but I don't think it will be a combo on its own.

I know it's not particularly scientific, but I decided to run a single simulation of this. I bought 2 Bridges then Silvers, with obviously Royal Carriages on 5. On turn 9 I managed to buy 4 Carriages by calling the two that I had. After that I bought a couple more Bridges while loading up my Tavern, then an Estate and a Duchy while waiting for a Bridge, and finally bought 8 Provinces on turn 16.

I then tried it with Chapel, holding on to 1 Bridge, 1 Silver and 1 Copper as well as the Chapel, and bought the Provinces on turn 15.

I then tried it with Horse Traders and bought the Provinces on turn 18.

So based purely on these single games, I'd speculate that Bridge/Royal Carriage is competitive with say BM+Smithy, so long as you get a mini-megaturn, Bridge/Royal Carriage/Chapel is a bit better, and Bridge/Royal Carriage/Horse Traders isn't as good as it sounds, since even though you are getting to $5 often, it takes too long to get them in your Tavern. What you want is to get 2 RCs, then call them both on a Bridge to get 3-4 more in one turn.

For the record, as long as you get there in time, this will beat 5 Provinces or 4 Provinces and 3 Duchies, and in fact should do even better since there will often be 'wasted' turns near the end where you just buy a Duchy or Estate because there's nothing else to do.

[AdamH]

I wanted to sleep on it to help me decide

As promised, here is my spiel.

So when I look at a board, one of the things I do is look for combos. Yeah there's the big stuff like NV/Bridge, Hermit/Market Square, those you just build your whole deck around. But then there are other ones like Apprentice/Fortress, FV/Wharf, Apothecary/NV, Tactician/Black Market, and lot of the stuff mentioned here -- synergies strong enough that even though they don't dictate all of your strategy, they are incorporated strongly into it.

The way to get better at knowing these explosive synergies is to just know about them. I thought a thread that lists a bunch of these good ones would be useful.

So that's what I wanted from this thread. Anything else I've said was just a (probably misguided) attempt to keep the discussion from going off to some other direction.

So like, what is the right thing to do here? I kind of hoped that the community could just have an on-topic discussion without the need for me to moderate it and someone could just scroll down the pages and read lots of really cool tidbits of knowledge. Instead, they have to weed through a bunch of sarcastic suggestions, or maybe some suggestions that turned out to not be so good after some discussion. Whether or not I like that is irrelevant, that's what's going to happen.

So in order to have the resource I wanted, what I'm supposed to do is not only try to keep discussion on track, but find the combos that were deemed "good enough" and compile them on a list in the OP. As you can see, I'm bad at that. Because I'm bad at it, I'm less motivated to do it because it frustrates me -- all for personal reasons that are totally irrelevant. If I'm going to contribute to the community, I should just do what I'm good at, which is probably making videos. And not doing this.

Maybe there are some other people who are more motivated to do that. Sure, they should go ahead and do it, I certainly won't be offended. I'll even contribute when I think it's meaningful.

[pacovf]

I think the first thing you should do is change the title of the thread.

[iguanaiguana]

I think the first thing you should do is change the title of the thread.

Yes,

and I'd be happy to compile a list of constructive additions to the thread thus far.

[Witherweaver]

I would say "keeping the discussion on track" is not a useful endeavor: what if some deemed "off track" discussion leads to useful insight?  Also, there are things to be learned from "bad" ideas or suggestions as much as "good" ones.  Maybe someone didn't understand why an apparently synergy seems to antisynergize because of some misunderstanding of lack of understanding of some aspect of Dominion, but after some criticism and discussion, they come out enlightened, and that's a good thing. 

I think it would be useful to edit into the OP the ones that seem good, as you've said.  Though, that does takes some time/effort, and it's okay if you're not up for that. 

PPE: Hooray community.

[AdamH]

I'm happy to do things now, but the ongoing work is not the stuff I'm good at.

I wouldn't know what to change the thread title to, and someone other than me should be able to edit that post as new things come up. So maybe the answer is just to start another thread?

So the ones I liked:

Quarry and Stonemason: When playing Quarry, the price of Stonemason reduces to zero, so the normal "quarry gives +$2 if you're buying one action" and "you need $2 extra to get the extra action with Stonemason" becomes much better. You get cost reduction on both the Stonemason you buy AND on the overpay!

Apothecary and Shanty Town: Any top-deck interaction will help you trigger your Shanty Towns more, this is true; but I think Apothecary stands to benefit the most from this, as it can get a lot out of using Shanty Towns early to draw your green and pushing your terminals off until later in the turn when you've got the actions to play them and trigger future Shanty Towns.

Doctor and Fool's Gold: These two have a troubled relationship, that's for sure. Fool's Gold is a card that can provide you high-income hands very early, which can lead to very beneficial Doctor overpays if you're paying close attention.

Highway and Horn of Plenty: You don't need to worry about having enough unique cards with Highway around, every Highway you play effectively counts as a unique card since it reduces the cost of whatever you're going to gain.

...and some of the more standard ones:

Highway and Ironworks Cost-reducers and gainers synergize, for sure, but these two probably deserve a special mention. Highway and Ironworks are both non-terminal so it's very easy to get lots of them to increase your chances of collision, and spamming these cards can be a way to get lots of power-$5 cards very quickly.

University and Inn: The best thing I can think of for this is that every time you have a Uni in hand, think about gaining an Inn. It's probably amazing. Sure it isn't worth it without some kind of draw, but thinking about this will have you doing much better than the other guy who doesn't.

Mint and Apprentice: Trash your coppers, reload your fuel.
University and Apprentice: Similar
University and City: empties piles easy.

Chancellor/Scavenger and Hunting Party: On an otherwise weak board with Hunting Party, you typically want to avoid cantrips like Caravan. However, if the best terminal on the board is Chancellor or Scavenger, this is a non-issue. (This doubles as an edge case where Chancellor > Scavenger. Unfortunately, it's rare.)

Ghost Ship/Wishing Well - you can guarantee a hit after getting hit by a Ghost Ship attack, which mitigates a lot of the attack. Similarly, Farming Villages lets you topdeck Victory cards and skip right past them

Ghost Ship/Fortune Teller - if you can play both in 1 turn, you deny allowing the opponent to topdeck good cards, and mess up the previous Well and/or FV interaction. You may allow them to topdeck Coppers which get discarded though, so be careful (want to make sure they at least have 1 Victory card in their deck.)

Develop/Herald - You can guarantee a Herald hit since the action you want to hit can be placed 2nd from the top.

An interaction I like is Courtyard/Native Village. Not great for increasing handsize, but having them both in your engine deck ensures you can set the green cards you gain aside on the NV mat every turn. Similar to how Apothecary/Native Village works, but you can set aside the green cards in your starting hand too.

Swindler/Peddler: If the Peddlers are likely to run out, your Swindlers could end up turning opponents' Peddlers into Provinces; otherwise they could turn their Provinces into Peddlers.

Counterfeit/Fool's Gold is a fun and potentially useful one

BM+Poor House - play BM and all the treasures with it, thus maximizing the worth of your Poor Houses

Here are two strong combos I saw recently that are probably well known, but that i had to learn about the hard way by losing to them.                           

Scheme/conspirator: simple. just get two schemes and have them topdeck themselves. Now your conspirators are always activated every turn. Example game: http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150402/log.54485813e4b0342f4922b1e1.1428010853731.txt                                 

University/watchtower: play universities to gain actions and topdeck them with watchtower. Then play the watchtower to put the gained actions into your hand and play them with the plus actions provided by university. If you gain a second watchtower and some handsize decreasing actions, you may be able to do this more than once in a turn. Example game: http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150406/log.5062f3dc51c3843e7939eb9f.1428344689079.txt

Quarry/Grand Market.

Not sure if this one was mentioned, but this is a combo I miss very often. With just a little bit of trashing, lining up multiple Quarries is not too hard. Then Grand Markets with the +Buy creates a very nice feedback loop.

Stables and Crossroads - one of my favorite draw engines.

Council Room/Pillage: Council Room vastly increases the potency of Pillage's attack, the chances of you hitting a hand that was bad anyways decrease quite a lot. You can also play multiple Pillages on your opponent in a turn which is much more potent as well (though that's probably only feasible with Throne Room and the like). Plus, the draw and buys that Council Room gives you help you make use of the Spoils you get.

Very few times do I consider Pillage to be a legitimate attack, but Council Room is probably the best enabler out there.

Quarry/Talisman: Relatively well-known, but the big bummer about Talisman is that it can't gain $5+ cards, and Quarry fixes that. Sure, other cost reduction works for this, but Quarry is also a treasure, stacks easily for Actions, and lets you get $6 cards too.

Menagerie/Warehouse: Menagerie is enabled strongly by cards that allow you to discard selectively from your hand, but Warehouse gets a special mention because it's much, much better than other cards for enabling Menagerie decks. You can draw most of your deck without Copper trashing, you can green heavily and not really stall all that much, which are things you're hard-pressed to do with other discarders.

[Dingan]

As promised, here is my spiel.

So when I look at a board, one of the things I do is look for combos. Yeah there's the big stuff like NV/Bridge, Hermit/Market Square, those you just build your whole deck around. But then there are other ones like Apprentice/Fortress, FV/Wharf, Apothecary/NV, Tactician/Black Market, and lot of the stuff mentioned here -- synergies strong enough that even though they don't dictate all of your strategy, they are incorporated strongly into it.

The way to get better at knowing these explosive synergies is to just know about them. I thought a thread that lists a bunch of these good ones would be useful.

So that's what I wanted from this thread. Anything else I've said was just a (probably misguided) attempt to keep the discussion from going off to some other direction.

So like, what is the right thing to do here? I kind of hoped that the community could just have an on-topic discussion without the need for me to moderate it and someone could just scroll down the pages and read lots of really cool tidbits of knowledge. Instead, they have to weed through a bunch of sarcastic suggestions, or maybe some suggestions that turned out to not be so good after some discussion. Whether or not I like that is irrelevant, that's what's going to happen.

So in order to have the resource I wanted, what I'm supposed to do is not only try to keep discussion on track, but find the combos that were deemed "good enough" and compile them on a list in the OP. As you can see, I'm bad at that. Because I'm bad at it, I'm less motivated to do it because it frustrates me -- all for personal reasons that are totally irrelevant. If I'm going to contribute to the community, I should just do what I'm good at, which is probably making videos. And not doing this.

Maybe there are some other people who are more motivated to do that. Sure, they should go ahead and do it, I certainly won't be offended. I'll even contribute when I think it's meaningful.

FYI:

I suggest the OPer put the most useful/simple/interesting interactions into the OP, to make them easy to find later.

[eHalcyon]

So combos that need a splitter are cool after all?

Also, you quoted Ghost Ship/Wishing Well which is a counter, not a combo.  So I am more confused about what you're looking for than before. 

[Jimmmmm]

Also, you quoted Ghost Ship/Wishing Well which is a counter, not a combo.  So I am more confused about what you're looking for than before. 

He's looking for interactions, which cover combos, counters and also other things like Swindler/Peddler.

[werothegreat]

Inheritance/Baron is a pretty obvious, but nice, interaction.

[Jack Rudd]

Inheritance/Baron is a pretty obvious, but nice, interaction.

At first I thought:
"What? The point of Inheritance is to play your Estates. Baron discards them instead."

And then I realized:
"Ah, the point of this combo is to use Baron to gain Estates."

[iguanaiguana]

Also baron makes it a lot easier to hit 7 and gives you something to do with estates before they are upgraded...

[Witherweaver]

Also, you know, Inheritance and Estates... neat interaction.

[Jack Rudd]

Fishing Village/Wharf is very strong, agreed, but it's a generic rather than a specific combo, yesno? It's village + terminal draw, just two expletiveing excellent examples of said types.

[werothegreat]

Fishing Village/Wharf is very strong, agreed, but it's a generic rather than a specific combo, yesno? It's village + terminal draw, just two expletiveing excellent examples of said types.

FV/Wharf is particularly strong because it doesn't need payload, really - FV provides coin, and Wharf provides +Buy.  You really just need these cards, and maybe some Treasures.  Anything else is just gravy.  Gravy you don't mind having, but still gravy.

[Jimmmmm]

Death Cart/Vineyards is nice. Clearly you wouldn't build a deck around it, but if you have a strong Vineyards deck anyway, not only does Death Cart pump up your Vineyards by 1 each time (as long as Ruins remain), but they can help you end the game since you only need 5 of them to empty a pile.

[Flip5ide]

Death Cart/Vineyards is nice. Clearly you wouldn't build a deck around it, but if you have a strong Vineyards deck anyway, not only does Death Cart pump up your Vineyards by 1 each time (as long as Ruins remain), but they can help you end the game since you only need 5 of them to empty a pile.

Feels like a nombo to me.

[Gherald]

Death Cart/Vineyard is obviously a useful card interaction.. though there are certainly many better Vineyard helpers.

Death Cart/Fairgrounds also helps a bit for hitting 15 uniques with 1 buy toward the end of the game.  Probably not so notable, though.

[faust]

Not sure if this belongs here, and I'm kind of afraid to post it, but Swamp Hag/Events is an interesting interaction. Swamp Hag gives Curses for buying cards, Events are not cards. So going for Events on a Swamp Hagged turn might be a thing.

[Jimmmmm]

Death Cart/Vineyards is nice. Clearly you wouldn't build a deck around it, but if you have a strong Vineyards deck anyway, not only does Death Cart pump up your Vineyards by 1 each time (as long as Ruins remain), but they can help you end the game since you only need 5 of them to empty a pile.

Feels like a nombo to me.

In what sense? Obviously you're not going to want to actually play the Death Carts, so it's a very late-game thing. But if you want Vineyards anyway, upgrading them by a full point for $4 and a buy is great value.

[Beyond Awesome]

Death Cart/Vineyards is nice. Clearly you wouldn't build a deck around it, but if you have a strong Vineyards deck anyway, not only does Death Cart pump up your Vineyards by 1 each time (as long as Ruins remain), but they can help you end the game since you only need 5 of them to empty a pile.

Feels like a nombo to me.

Umm, no. I have played a few Vineyards game with Death Cart and most often I won. One DC buy increases each Vineyard in value by 1 point. If you tie the split, that's a 4 VP gain right there. If you somehow win the split 5/3, you're getting 5 VP right there. DC is pretty good in Vineyards  games.

[WanderingWinder]

Death Cart/Vineyards is nice. Clearly you wouldn't build a deck around it, but if you have a strong Vineyards deck anyway, not only does Death Cart pump up your Vineyards by 1 each time (as long as Ruins remain), but they can help you end the game since you only need 5 of them to empty a pile.

Feels like a nombo to me.

Umm, no. I have played a few Vineyards game with Death Cart and most often I won. One DC buy increases each Vineyard in value by 1 point. If you tie the split, that's a 4 VP gain right there. If you somehow win the split 5/3, you're getting 5 VP right there. DC is pretty good in Vineyards  games.

So it's a $4 somewhat-better-than-duchy. Seems reasonably good, but by no means game-shattering.

[Jimmmmm]

Death Cart/Vineyards is nice. Clearly you wouldn't build a deck around it, but if you have a strong Vineyards deck anyway, not only does Death Cart pump up your Vineyards by 1 each time (as long as Ruins remain), but they can help you end the game since you only need 5 of them to empty a pile.

Feels like a nombo to me.

Umm, no. I have played a few Vineyards game with Death Cart and most often I won. One DC buy increases each Vineyard in value by 1 point. If you tie the split, that's a 4 VP gain right there. If you somehow win the split 5/3, you're getting 5 VP right there. DC is pretty good in Vineyards  games.

So it's a $4 somewhat-better-than-duchy. Seems reasonably good, but by no means game-shattering.

Yeah, I guess I was more going for "Neat and potentially useful".

[enfynet]

Not sure if this belongs here, and I'm kind of afraid to post it, but Swamp Hag/Events is an interesting interaction. Swamp Hag gives Curses for buying cards, Events are not cards. So going for Events on a Swamp Hagged turn might be a thing.

Swamp Hag vs Alms? Buying Alms gains you a $4-cost but you didn't buy that $4-cost.

[werothegreat]

Not sure if this belongs here, and I'm kind of afraid to post it, but Swamp Hag/Events is an interesting interaction. Swamp Hag gives Curses for buying cards, Events are not cards. So going for Events on a Swamp Hagged turn might be a thing.

Swamp Hag vs Alms? Buying Alms gains you a $4-cost but you didn't buy that $4-cost.

Ball is also decent for this.  And I guess Seaway?