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[hhelibebcnofnena]

This was the kingdom:





I don't think me or my opponent played optimally here. My opponent completely ignored Dukes and mostly ignored Farmer's Market. I think my biggest mistake, though, was to buy Cathedral turn one. This was not a kingdom where I could build a deck that was resistant to greening without building it up a lot. Maybe it could have worked if I had also ignored Dukes and went for Provinces while naming Province with Journeyman to cycle through, but by the time I was actually confident enough with my deck to start greening, my opponent had bought enough Provinces that I didn't think I could win that way. I got a couple big turns where I could buy three 5-costs (either 2 Duchies + a Duke or vice versa) but my opponent finished off the Provinces before I could get my Dukes to be worth enough.

I think I probably could have won if I had used Research for trashing instead of Cathedral; half the game I was too worried about defending myself against it to actually make any progress, even though I had multiple buys from Farmer's Markets and Merchant Guilds.

I'm pretty sure if I played the kingdom again against the same opponent I could win, but does anybody have any more general advice about when Cathedral is or isn't good? It's something I can't quite figure out, and I always seem to judge it wrong.

[Awaclus]

I'm pretty sure if I played the kingdom again against the same opponent I could win, but does anybody have any more general advice about when Cathedral is or isn't good?

Generally every time when there's no handsize attacks, including here. You can pretty easily build an engine with Merchant Guild for payload.

[Chris is me]

You definitely are less likely to play Dukes on a Cathedral board. You didn't make a mistake buying Cathedral, but you don't want to play a slog immediately after buying Cathedral...

You can definitely build an engine here. You even have extra buys and start of turn sifting to make it so you can keep trashing Copper in the late game. Journeymen for draw, a pair of Dungeons for start of turn insurance, Mountain Village for Village, Merchant Guild for payload.

You shouldn't take too many turns to pile Provinces with this board, so I would absolutely skip Duke. Farmer's Market doesn't accomplish much either.

[hhelibebcnofnena]

Okay, thanks for the advice. I'd basically stayed away from Cathedral before, but I seem to lose more often when it's available and I don't buy it, so I decided to try it and it didn't work out. I'll keep trying to figure out how to play with it; it seems pretty good if you can play it right, but it's a little tricky to figure out.

A few more questions, since I couldn't find an article on Cathedral:
1. Should I buy bad cards like Coppers with extra buys to prevent a bad trash, or just not be bothered if it forces me to trash an engine component, and buy a replacement with an extra buy after the fact?
2. Should I wait for second shuffle with a 5/2 opening or pass up the Cathedral for a -cost, or get it the first chance I can? 3. As kind of an extension to the second question, what about a 4/3 opening? Do I wait for the second turn, and get a -cost?
4. What if there's no +buy or extra gains on the board (although that doesn't apply to the game I played)?

[Awaclus]

A few more questions, since I couldn't find an article on Cathedral:
1. Should I buy bad cards like Coppers with extra buys to prevent a bad trash, or just not be bothered if it forces me to trash an engine component, and buy a replacement with an extra buy after the fact?
2. Should I wait for second shuffle with a 5/2 opening or pass up the Cathedral for a -cost, or get it the first chance I can? 3. As kind of an extension to the second question, what about a 4/3 opening? Do I wait for the second turn, and get a -cost?
4. What if there's no +buy or extra gains on the board (although that doesn't apply to the game I played)?

1. Generally you don't want to buy bad cards, and if you're playing reasonably efficiently, on most boards this never becomes much of an issue. You might lose an engine component or two that you won't even have to replace because you're already drawing your deck from being so thin thanks to Cathedral, and that's fine. In this particular case, buying Coppers gives you coin tokens from Merchant Guild in the late game so it's a better idea than it would otherwise be. Also, if you're thin enough that you're almost certainly actually trashing the Coppers that you buy instead of having a bunch of Coppers junking up your deck and still having to trash engine components anyway, then buying the Coppers gets better too.

2. If you're opening Cathedral/nothing (let alone nothing/Cathedral) against Cathedral/something, you're extremely screwed so you should try your luck with a strong $5.

3. You do want to buy a t1 Cathedral for $4.

4. Doesn't make that big of a difference.

[hhelibebcnofnena]

Thanks for all the advice!