I played an RL Adventures and Nocturne game last night:
Kingdom piles:Events:Heirlooms:I lost badly.
Both I and opponent wanted Inheritance on Shepherd. Both I and my opponent opted for Gold from Leprechaun as our economy. But there we diverged.
My opponent opened Magpie/Leprechaun, and used the flood of Magpies to get Wishes instead of Hexes after a shuffle or two. They only bought one Shepherd, and one Estate. But they ramped up to Province turns pretty quickly.
I instead opened Peasant/Leprechaun, intending that the Peasant would give me double-Estate turns early on and double-Province turns later. While waiting to spike $7, I bought Estates, and a couple of early Shepherds to lubricate things.
Annoyingly, two of my first three Hexes were War, trashing one of my Shepherds and Locusts, turning an Estate into a Curse. And I reached $6 three times before I managed to spike $7. Meanwhile, my opponent's shuffling seemed to be alternating Magpies with Treasures an uncanny proportion of the time. By the time I'd managed to Inherit and get my engine going, my opponent had choked on green... but it was too late.
Each of us once used Alms to buy Cemetery and trash Copper. Opponent took out four Copper that way; I trashed three Copper and held back my Haunted Mirror. I'm not sure if that was a mistake, or if it could have paid off if I'd got going more quickly. A Ghostly Shepherd feels like a fine start to a turn!
It feels like the luck went heavily against me, but did I also choose the wrong line of play? My instinct was to focus somewhat on winning the Estate split, but then my opponent didn't compete. Neither of us bought Artificer; if I'd got going two or three shuffles sooner I expect I'd have picked one up as a way of parlaying all that spare green into a Province once I'd started drawing my deck.
Opponent used one Wish to gain a Hireling. I'm not sure that was a smart choice, but they were winning comfortably by that point anyway. With hindsight, I wish I'd picked up one Ratcatcher instead of an Estate early on, to thin things out a bit. (And to trigger Haunted Mirror more easily than Cemetery can.)
Nobody even thought of touching Crypt or Exorcist.