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[Young Nick]

What type of deck must you build such that you can ensure your opponent continually has to play hands with 0 cards despite having 5 or more cards in his or her deck? That is to say, even though your opponent has purchased cards, they never play a hand with more than 0 cards.

Hint: It requires your opponent to draw an unusual hand to initiate the lockdown.
Bigger Hint: Your opponent must draw a 5 VP hand to start the combo.

Remember to not post correct answers in full size font, it ruins the puzzle for other people reading the comments.

PS: I began to discuss this in another topic that I posted in. Do not use that to cheat!

[guided]

Based on your hints you're probably talking about a solution that involves Bureaucrat, but pins involving that card (while interesting) are not practical. The combo of 2 King's Courts, a hand-reduction attack like Militia or Goons, and Masquerade, on the other hand, can actually be executed to win real games against reasonably skilled opponents... though it's still quite difficult if they see it coming.



edit: hooooooooooooooooooooooooly crap it's annoying to change text sizes from minuscule-o-vision in the WYSIWYG editor....

[theory]

FYI, the spoiler tag is now active so we no longer have to use Eye-Strain-O-Vision (TM) to mask spoilers.

[guided]

FYI, the spoiler tag is now active so we no longer have to use Eye-Strain-O-Vision (TM) to mask spoilers.

Got it.

BTW, it sure would be nice if the non-WYSIWYG editor was usable. I know you've said it works for you if you reload it, but it spills off the side of the frame every time for me.

[Personman]

Cutpurse would work too :)


And getting a little further afield, so would Possession when their deck is Island Chapel


Actually, this gives me an idea for an extension of this puzzle that's actually pretty tricky: What is the biggest deck your opponent can have at the beginning of your turn that you can reduce to 0 cards by the beginning of their turn?


My initial thoughts:
You want to King's Court as many Possessions as possible, but not so many that you don't leave them some King's Courts to play on their Ambassadors. You'd also like to TR/KC all the Saboteurs and have them hit 3s when the copper and curse piles are empty, but since that's only 1 card per action played while Ambassador is 2 and Island is somewhere in between, I think the duplicators will be better used on those. Though let's see, you can only play 60 total copies of those two actions (20 KCs), which can only be generated by individually TRing every KC. Which wouldn't work, because you need to at least KC possession once to be able to Ambassador all the KCs and TRs you used on turn 2 and then Island the Ambassadors on turn 3. Except you need to do even more than that, because you'd also need to Island all the +actions you used to do it.


This is hard!

[mischiefmaker]

You mean Cutpurse, right?

[DStu]

Cutpurse does not really work (unless the opponent's deck only consists if coppers ), as this will only discard the Coppers and you would redraw other cards for the next turn. Bureaucrat however, will put the victory cards on the discard, so that he will redraw them the next turn

[Young Nick]

While you guys are close, none of you have mentioned a key card needed to get the pin in place. To get the repeated pin is a bit more complicated, but I imagine that someone will figure it out relatively soon.

[DStu]

Guess you are missing Watchtower to trash the Silvers . And an Island would be nice to get rid of the trasher. Or an opponents Bishop.

[Jack Rudd]

King's Court - King's Court - Rabble - Minion - Bureaucrat has a decent chance of leaving your opponent with a useless one-card hand.

[Personman]

I don't see how we're only close. Playing 5 Bureaucrats every turn works just fine. As does playing 5 Cutpurses when they only have copper.

[guided]

While you guys are close, none of you have mentioned a key card needed to get the pin in place. To get the repeated pin is a bit more complicated, but I imagine that someone will figure it out relatively soon.

Well, I did offer a different (and indefinite) pin that is actually practical in real games

[theory]

FYI, the spoiler tag is now active so we no longer have to use Eye-Strain-O-Vision (TM) to mask spoilers.

Got it.

BTW, it sure would be nice if the non-WYSIWYG editor was usable. I know you've said it works for you if you reload it, but it spills off the side of the frame every time for me.

It should be fixed now.  I turned off the WYSIWYG editor. 

[Young Nick]

The indefinite pin is the one I am going for. Have fun playing 5 Bureaucrats, but being able to do that ad infinitum (is that how you use the phrase?) is key. I imagine that there are more ways to do it than I originally thought, but mainly cards that top-deck victory cards are key. Those like Bureaucrat, Rabble and Ghost Ship.. If someone could help me create a better puzzle with just one solution, it would be much appreciated. The only reason this one occurred to me is because it almost happened in game.

[guided]

2xKC + Goons + Masquerade is an indefinite pin, and eventually it trashes every single card in your opponent's deck.

[mischiefmaker]

To be more explicit, having a five-card deck of King's Court-King's Court-Bureaucrat-Bureaucrat-Watchtower guarantees an infinite pin as soon as they draw 5 victory cards. But it's highly impractical, since your opponent needs to draw the 5 VP, and you also need a trasher and an island to get rid of the trasher, in order to construct that deck.

Young Nick, are you thinking of a different solution?

[DStu]

2xKC + Goons + Masquerade is an indefinite pin, and eventually it trashes every single card in your opponent's deck.

But it's not an infinite pin "despite having 5 or more cards in his deck".

If someone could help me create a better puzzle with just one solution, it would be much appreciated.

I wouldn't care too much about multiple solutions. There often is an alternative way to get them solved. When you look at the 2 puzzles on the blog, they both had multiple solutions, but that was also kind of fun, because after you solved them, you still could think about the other solution.

[Young Nick]

@Mischiefmaker: That is slightly different than the one I was thinking of. It works just as well, I guess. Mine, infact, involved 2 other cards without using one of yours. I was flirting with Bishop instead of Watchtower so that I could eventually, uh, win the game. The one I used substituted Lookout for Watchtower and Ghost Ship for one of the Bureaucrats, but yours is perfectly valid.