Muwahahaha. Your nefarious plans are finally coming together. The pieces are in place and now it is time to execute them. But wha't this? Everything fails to come together at the right time? That contemptible hero has thwarted you yet again with nothing more than dumb luck and a stupid face. AND he gets the girl. Where is the justice in this world? If only your nefarious plans had been nefarious ... schemes. Then your plans would be impervious to blind chance.
Scheme is, quite simply, awesome. It's basically like the stage crew for a rock band. It's never standing in the limelight, and really isn't anything special on its own, but it works to let the main players do their job. Without it the band has much less time to rock out and compose killer riffs and snort coke and ...i think this analogy got away from me. Anyway, Scheme is very often worth a pick up as it lends itself very well to most engines and can be used for sever very clever plays.
The Reliable EngineWe've all had games where we play a Torturer only to draw 3 Villages you cant use. Well Scheme gives you all the benefits of a complex engine, while reducing the variance of shuffle luck, sometimes to zero. Being able to top-deck a Village/Smithy pair or a couple of Hunting Parties or whatever else it is that makes your engine go is an amazingly useful ability. Almost any engine can benefit from the addition of some Schemes.
Of course, there is a balance to strike. Every time you buy a Scheme, you aren't buying another engine component. So in a sense, Scheme sacrifices raw power for reliability. Normally this is a good thing, but it can be taken too far. If you find yourself returning way more actions than you need to draw your deck or the Schemes themselves because you don't have enough other things to return, you've likely over-invested.
The Non-Colliding TerminalsIn Big Money type decks which only buy a few actions, Scheme can, essentially, act like a second copy of whatever flavor of terminal action you're using. By getting to top deck your terminal for use in consecutive hands, you reduce your collision chance to zero (or closer to 0 when you have blind draw). This, however, comes at a price. Whenever you draw your Scheme after your terminal, you only get to play the terminal once that reshuffle. Had the scheme been an actual second copy of the action, you'd have gotten two plays. Over the course of a game, the double terminal deck gets more plays of the terminal action than the scheme/terminal deck. So typically, you favor a second terminal over a scheme.
However, when a card is more important to play early, where the chance of collision is higher, scheme/terminal becomes the better option. Specific examples of terminals which benefit from a scheme include Jack of all Trades, Sea Hag, and Witch.
Particularly Good Combos: Almost any action in the game could find some benefit from scheme in the right engine. I could spend all day listing them, but I've just highlighted a few particularly interesting or powerful uses.
King's Court - This is definitely the king of Scheme combos. KC/Scheme doesn't actually need any other actions to be useful. KC/KC/Schemex3 lets you start every turn with 9 cards, guaranteed. Though the odds of having no other useful action are slim. Replace that third scheme with, lets say, ALMOST ANYTHING, and you are poised to do some truly ridiculous things.
Outpost - Scheme/Outpost needs a third card to work, but scheme effectively neutralizes the typical drawback of outpost by ensuring your 3 card hand has what you need in it.
Hunting Parties - Hunting Parties let you set up some really fast combos that can reliably get a Province per turn, until, of course you don't draw a Hunting Party. Then your deck with a single gold and a ton of green can't do much of anything. And since you really only need one silver in your deck, there is no lost opportunity cost for picking up a scheme when you fail to hit $5. Scheme turns the already reliable and fast Hunting Party stack into a true juggernaut nearly immune to greening.
Conspirator - Normally, the correct way to play scheme is to top-deck your other actions. In a scheme/conspirator deck you want to put back 2 schemes every turn. This guarantees that every conspirator you play is activated.
Remake - open Remake/Scheme and trim your deck super fast while still building up economy by turning estates into silvers. Then as you transition into an engine, you already have a Scheme to help smooth it out.
Double Tactician - These kinds of decks, when properly set up can do some amazing things and lead to extremely fast games. But if you fail to draw a tactician to play, you can easily find yourself playing catch up. Scheme will thoughtfully place that old Tactician right back on top for you to keep it going.
When Not to BuyScheme isn't a card you always want to buy. It's typically a great addition to any engine and can potentially boost a Big Money deck but there are some specific times when you might want to avoid them.
The one true counter - There is one card which absolutely destroys Scheme. I am referring of course to Minion. Not only does it force you discard the nice things you top-decked, but because you are discarding your good cards, the pool you have to draw your new 4 card hand is weaker. Double Ouch.
Discard attacks- While not enough to completely forgo scheme, discard attacks do discourage it a little. First, you don't want to top-deck too many cards because you'll just have to ditch them. Second, you might want to hold on to Schemes when you get hit, but the blind draw on them could mean you end up discarding a better card from hand than what you draw, which creates a bit of a dilemma.
Already reliable engines - As I said before, Scheme sacrifices power for reliability. But when you have an already reliable engine, and particularly when you have engine components at the same price point, you can probably forgo schemes altogether. Something like Wharf/Fishing Village is a good example.
Happy Scheming
