Hi, I think this is the right place to post this.
I'm new to Dominion (between 10 and 20 IRL games, largely with other beginners*), and we recently played the recommended map (set?) from the (base game's) rule book Big Money. We played two games (one 2 player, one 3 player) and I won both of them largely via the use of Adventurer.
However, when I went online to see what people thought about the Big Money map (aside from learning Big Money is perhaps the standard/benchmark strategy), what I discovered was that Aventurer is generally considered to be an absolutely awful card or, at least, so overpriced that it is not worth using (except very rarely... they didn't say it but maybe against other beginners is such a case). The general argument presented was that Adventurer is simply not worth as much as gold (a gold test versus the silver test). Maybe this becomes obvious with experience, skill and/or expansions but it seems rather un-obvious to me.
When you consider Adventurer, as a card, it does two things. One, it ensures you have at least $2. Two, it allows you to cycle through your deck (and maybe even your discard pile) until you find your at least $2 (the two treasure cards). The natural implication, and the one that everyone seemed to talk about, is that if you could somehow ensure you had no coppers in your deck then suddenly Adventurer guarantees $4 (and if you only had gold, $6). This is only part of what Adventurer does but it is all people reduce the card to.
The cycling through of the deck means that a small number of treasure cards becomes, in effect, a lot of treasure cards if you have several Adventurers (or such a small total of cards that you basically pick up your single Adventurer once in every three hands). Think about it. If you had three silvers and two golds, you could have $12 in your starting hand as an absolute maximum. But, say, you have an Adventurer, green card and any three of these treasures in your hand. Now, by playing the adventurer you are back at $12 and, quite possibly, don't have a deck any more... just a whole bunch of cards you have to discard. Add in a few things that give you some additional buys, something like a throne room which allows multiple adventurers a turn and maybe another four or six treasure cards (minimum silver) and suddenly basically every turn you do nothing but spend upwards of $6. But what is more, you simply bypass all the green cards you want to have but don't want in your hand (which is the big difference to simply having a whole bunch of coins).
I suppose, although I didn't try this when I was playing this way, you could in fact start trashing cards you used to get yourself in this situation... those spare chapels or bureaucrats etc.... but you probably don't have them in your hand much (one reason why I didn't trash them). If you have a mine, for instance, you could also convert your silvers into golds (which I did once or twice, possibly with a throne room).
So, basically, I am suggesting that Adventurer could be a decent card to get if you start off with a chapel to start removing your coppers and estates, and either a Bureaucrat or a silver and then move towards an Adventurer as soon as possible. Ultimately, you then acquire markets (for the additional buy) and throne rooms before ultimately switching to a point to buy green cards (that you only have to worry about if you somehow manage to pick up five at once).
Now, I clearly don't have the experience (and frankly I lack the skill too) to comment on the actual viability of such a strategy/proposed value of the Adventurer... hence this post. Where am I wrong?
*One of my friends who introduced me to Dominion used Adventurer fairly successfully too but this was with a custom map that I can't quite recall. I also can't remember how important gardens were in his victory over one of the variants of said custom map (we actually ran out of coppers or possibly estates). I don't know how experienced he is.
