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[brokoli]

I think this is the first time I didn't open potion with familiar on the board :
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201201/19/game-20120119-030008-8011d23f.html

cards in supply: Chapel, Courtyard, Familiar, Laboratory, Mountebank, Potion, Rabble, Spice Merchant, Treasure Map, Vineyard, and Wishing Well

I opened treasure map / chapel
He opened Potion / Chapel and I think it was a big mistake. Chapel is bad if you want an early familiar... silver would be better.

So, what would you do ? Opening Potion/Silver or Treasure map/Chapel ?
In 5/2, would you take a mountebank even with familiar on the board ? I know Mountebank/Chapel is the best opening in Council room...

What about spice merchant ?

[DStu]

In 5/2, would you take a mountebank even with familiar on the board ? I know Mountebank/Chapel is the best opening in Council room...

I think twice about going Familiar with every other Curser on the board. With 5/2 and Mountebank, you have to wait an entire more shuffle till you can hand out the Curses with Familiar. Same with Sea Hag (might even discard Potion, or lead to $2p for the Familiar). And you have to buy a "Curse" for $4 the first round. And you should better not get $2p in the first shuffle. Or see the first Potion in turn 5.

So there is so much against the Familiar, and starting 5/2 I think I would not even think about the Familiar.

Simulator (just 1000 games each, but I think the pattern is clear):
MB-Familiar: 87-11 (91-8 from 5/2)
SeaHag-Fam : 91-8
Witch : 91-8
YW: 93-6 (but of course the Bane might change this)
Even unsupported Torturer wins against Familiar. Though the built-in Familiar-bot is not optimal, it also buys Fam>Silver when the Curses have run out, but changing this doesn't change much.

Edit: Even if you click through some of the other BigMoney-bots, many of them beat the Familiar.

[DG]

In this kingdom you can trash down with the chapel and expand the deck using drawing cards (labs) as well as treasure. This means that the chapel and curses will continue to be drawn together and trashed with little impact. This is a worse problem for familiars than the mountebank since the mountebank doesn't need a potion, can attack earlier and stop the opponent ever getting the deck trimmed, and the mountebank provides +2$ each turn.

If neither player buys a curse attack early on then there will still be an opportunity to add one mid game. By then the opponent the will be expanding the deck and will not be able to remove the curses so easily.