So I just played an IRL 4 player game of all Nocturne cards. The Kingdom was:
Pooka, Werewolf, Guardian, Skulk, Blessed Village, Cursed Village, Druid, Necromancer, Cobbler, Tormentor.
The other players were someone who plays a lot but not online / competitively; someone who played a good bit I think, but didn’t know anything about Nocturne; someone who had played a few games of Dominion before but needed reminding of even the basic rules; and myself.
Anyway, I got off to a slow start; having got a $3 and a $3 because of Cursed Gold, instead of a $4. Eventually got 2 Pookas and was able to trash down. Lots of Hexes flying around. I was starting to put together a pretty good engine with both Village types; Werewolfs, a Druid, 2 Guardians for 1 per turn, a Necromancer, and a couple Skulks.
The problem was, by the time I was really doing anything good, 2 of the other players had bought several Provinces and started on Duchies, with the third having some as well. There were 4 left when I got my thing to be reliable, and even then it wasn’t fully reliable. So buying a Province was just bad for me, but I also had a really strong deck in terms of Hexing... and with my opponents having not trashed down; they couldn’t do much of anything.
So we went around like this for several rounds... they would buy low-level VP when they could; I would hex them a bunch if they hadn’t gotten a Guardian out, and I had no actual chance of winning at all. So... what should I have done? Although it was fun, I felt bad about the way I was playing... basically dragging the game on a bunch by just slowing them all down a whole bunch without actually increasing my chances of winning. Should I have just started buying Provinces even though it would eventually help end the game with my own loss? The game ended up taking a really long time, and most of it was due to me.