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[Tables]

You're playing a two player game, and your partway through your turn. You've done things already, and as a result the game is ending this turn. And ending the game this turn was probably pretty stupid - you're 85 VPs behind, and you only have a single card (action) in hand and nothing on deck or in your discard. Sighing, you play that one action. After fully resolving it, you do nothing else in your turn (end your action phase and skip your buy phase), and win the game

What was the card, and what happened?

(As far as I know there's only one solution, although you can change some of the details to get slightly different results. As a bonus, what's the maximum VPs you can win by?)

[DStu]

You probably want to exclude something like that (turn 5)

Edit: Not exactly like that, but you should get the point. Having KC and Bridges in play, and doing some weird infinite Ironworks gain. Or was that the solution?

[Tables]

The puzzle already excludes that... as you explicitly only play one action then end your turn.

edit: Although I should mention more clearly that you don't have any 'open' KC's or Throne rooms in play (i.e. you can't play your action 3 times)

[Thisisnotasmile]

You probably want to exclude something like that (turn 5)

Edit: Not exactly like that, but you should get the point. Having KC and Bridges in play, and doing some weird infinite Ironworks gain. Or was that the solution?

I'm guessing that's not it as you don't do anything after playing your single action card, so you can't gain stuff and then go on to play that stuff.

My guess is that the solution involves playing Masquerade, passing nothing and getting something big in return such as a Colony which drops yous opponent's Gardens by a point each and increases your Fairgrounds and Silk Roads for a huge point swing

Not going to calculate it though because I'm not a huge fan of the "add up a whole load of small numbers and see if you can get the biggest number" style puzzles.

[Deadlock39]

Certainly not the answer, but it's the only thought that came to my mind.

You are currently being Possessed.  Your opponent directed you to trash 86 or more VP from your deck during your turn. The action (he made) you play at the end of the turn doesn't matter.  Your VP get returned to you at the end of the turn, the game ends and you are ahead.

I don't know if I can really claim that you are technically 85VP down when your cards are temporarily in the trash or not, but oh well.

[Deadlock39]

Masquerade, passing nothing and getting something big in return such as a Colony which drops yous opponent's Gardens by a point each and increases your Fairgrounds and Silk Roads for a huge point swing

I don't think it is possible to not pass any cards with Masq if your deck contains any victory cards, but idea should work the same way by decreasing the value of your opponents Fairgrounds, ect.

I'm not sure we can get there...
20 point swing from the Colony
8 points from Gardens
16 points from Fairgrounds
8 points from Silk Road

This gets us to a 52 point swing.  Am I forgetting any VP cards that can be affected by losing a Colony.  Vineyards would have to lose an action, which is going to be less points than the Colony swap, so I think it is out.

A 3 player game could get another 16 points from Gardens, SR, and Fairgrounds, but that is still short at 68.

Edit:
With a full Black market deck in the game, you might get Vineyards, Gardens or Fairgrounds up to enough points that trading one would cause a massive VP swing

Checking a previous puzzle, I see Vineyards can get up to 57 points.  That might go up a few points from expansions that have been added since then.  It is worth 0 to you as the recipient, but it can still decrease your opponents Fairgrounds, Gardens and Silk Roads.  32 points from there + a loss of 57 from a Vineyards gets to a 89 point swing, so it would be enough to satisfy the puzzle. 

I suspect the intended solution is simpler.

[Thisisnotasmile]

Masquerade, passing nothing and getting something big in return such as a Colony which drops yous opponent's Gardens by a point each and increases your Fairgrounds and Silk Roads for a huge point swing

I don't think it is possible to not pass any cards with Masq if your deck contains any victory cards, but idea should work the same way by decreasing the value of your opponents Fairgrounds, ect.

I'm not sure we can get there...
20 point swing from the Colony
8 points from Gardens
16 points from Fairgrounds
8 points from Silk Road

This gets us to a 52 point swing.  Am I forgetting any VP cards that can be affected by losing a Colony.  Vineyards would have to lose an action, which is going to be less points than the Colony swap, so I think it is out.

A 3 player game could get another 16 points from Gardens, SR, and Fairgrounds, but that is still short at 68.

It is vital that you don't pass anything otherwise the Gardens point drop/increase (depending on who has them) wouldn't work. Luckily the OP stipulates that "you only have a single card (action) in hand and nothing on deck or in your discard", so we're fine. I guess any non-playable cards we have are on an Island or Native Village mat.

[Deadlock39]

Whoops, I overlooked Island/NV for hiding cards.  Either way, the point gain to you or point loss to your opponent have the same max value, so it doesn't matter whose deck those are in.

[Thisisnotasmile]

Another idea to work with might be that Opponent has a vineyard and a load of generic green cards adding up to 85 points. You play Masquerade and get passed the Vineyard which causes a huge point swing because you have all 110 action cards in the kingdom + the entire BM deck worth of actions (which is where the Vineyard came from but you took your opponent's BM off him on a previous Masquerade). Does something along those lines come up with enough points?

[Deadlock39]

I think it works.  I ran through that idea in an Edit to my other post, so you may not have noticed it.I think it works if you throw in the Fairgrounds, Gardens, and Silk Roads too.  I checked max value of Vineyards from a previous post and found 57, but that was before Hinterlands, and maybe Cornucopia.

[Thisisnotasmile]

Only problem is if you have Gardens, Silk Road and Fairgrounds in the kingdom then there are less actions available for the Vineyards

Probably still just about works though.

[Deadlock39]

Good call.  With extra actions from the newer expansions and the extra 4 points that were already there, it is probably still covered as you said.  It seems unlikely that is the OPs solution though.

[Captain_Frisk]

I think having your opponent pass you the vineyards is cheating though... the opponent has 5 cards in hand... if passing any of them to you results in you winning, he'll pass something else.

Unless we're talking about a 3+ player game, in which both you the player before you have exactly 1 card in active deck?

[Ozle]

Workshop a Garden and already have a 849 card deck?

[WanderingWinder]

I think having your opponent pass you the vineyards is cheating though... the opponent has 5 cards in hand... if passing any of them to you results in you winning, he'll pass something else.

Unless we're talking about a 3+ player game, in which both you the player before you have exactly 1 card in active deck?

Not if he has 5 in his hand...

[Deadlock39]

Workshop a Garden and already have a 849 card deck?

You can only make it to that many cards if you allow "unlimited treasures".  I think that option (variant?) was discussed a bit too much in a recent puzzle.

[jomini]

Alternate victory cards can give rise to the following outcomes for passing a single standard VP card:
8 points from gardens by crossing a threshold (all gardens on the NV mat)
16 points from bumping up fairgrounds
8 points for bumping up silk roads
8 points for bumping up 8 dukes (gain a duchy only)
8 points for bumping up a vineyard (gain an action, like island)

So total possible swing from alternate VP is only 8+16+8+8 = 40 for a single card. One cannot get both a duchy & an action with a single card so you cannot get both the vineyard points and they duke points. With a 6 point swing for passing the duchy itself, that leaves us with 46 points moving. While massive, is not what the OP has in mind. The max swing from one card passing hands is 20 points for a colony, which makes it less than swapping a duchy with all dukes in play.

Passing a single VP alternate VP card have the following limitations:
Max values per card (note I'm assuming that the regular VP cards, including colony, can be used to make the distributions such that both players on right on the cusp for fairgrounds and silk roads):

Passing a garden: 24 point swing from silk roads & fairgrounds. This still leaves you needing a 610 cards in play (e.g. 310 per player) to make this hit a 85 point swing. I believe I remember there is no specified limit on treasures, so you could in theory setup with whatever you want and eventually get here.

Passing a fairground: This could swing up to 16 points for gardens and silk roads, this would then require you to have 175 unique cards in play per player; this would require gaining 155 cards from the black market per player.


Passing a vineyard: You can get a swing of 32 from gardens, fairgrounds, and silk roads. This leaves us needing to find 53 points to swing. That means we need 159 action cards. That leaves us with 8 kingdom stacks (bane) full of actions to exhaust 80 cards, this would require us to gain 79 actions from the black market deck assuming the vineyard was gained there as well. With only vineyards we could have 110 actions in play (bane) which would require gaining 145 actions out of the black market deck (and the vineyard itself).

I can see two ways of causing most of these point swings:
1. Masq with nothing in hand/draw & gain this card. This has the upshot of taking from one player & giving to the other. However, with vineyard only one player can have all those actions so it is pretty moot. If we don't want this to be a helpmate, then we can say that you played a bunch of cut purses on a hand of four coppers & his vineyard.
2. Swindle. If there is nothing in the supply of the correct price, you are just SoL and lose the VP card. So I swindle your only vineyard into nothing (I have exactly one swindler and one NV in my deck, everything else is VP & treasures on the NV mat) and poof go the points.

[Ozle]

Yeah, wasnt supposed to be a serious answer, thats why I didnt use spoiler tags

[Ozle]

Also, im not sure any of these Vinyard/Fairground solutions work
because You have no cards in your discard pile either. So where are you keeping all these other cards? You can only keep 8 on the island mat


hmm, thinking about it You could put most on the Native village mat, and then island off the last native village. But whats that, 100+ turns while your oppoenent is passing each round

[GendoIkari]

Also, im not sure any of these Vinyard/Fairground solutions work
because You have no cards in your discard pile either. So where are you keeping all these other cards? You can only keep 8 on the island mat


hmm, thinking about it You could put most on the Native village mat, and then island off the last native village. But whats that, 100+ turns while your oppoenent is passing each round

[superextranitpicky]You can actually store 24 cards on your Island mat (plus the 8 Islands) with King's Court[/superextranitpicky]

[jotheonah]

Alternate victory cards can give rise to the following outcomes for passing a single standard VP card:
8 points from gardens by crossing a threshold (all gardens on the NV mat)
16 points from bumping up fairgrounds
8 points for bumping up silk roads
8 points for bumping up 8 dukes (gain a duchy only)
8 points for bumping up a vineyard (gain an action, like island)

So total possible swing from alternate VP is only 8+16+8+8 = 40 for a single card. One cannot get both a duchy & an action with a single card so you cannot get both the vineyard points and they duke points.

Couldn't you get both the Duke and the Vineyards points by gaining a Duchess with your Duchy?

[GendoIkari]

Alternate victory cards can give rise to the following outcomes for passing a single standard VP card:
8 points from gardens by crossing a threshold (all gardens on the NV mat)
16 points from bumping up fairgrounds
8 points for bumping up silk roads
8 points for bumping up 8 dukes (gain a duchy only)
8 points for bumping up a vineyard (gain an action, like island)

So total possible swing from alternate VP is only 8+16+8+8 = 40 for a single card. One cannot get both a duchy & an action with a single card so you cannot get both the vineyard points and they duke points.

Couldn't you get both the Duke and the Vineyards points by gaining a Duchess with your Duchy?

In this case, we're talking about getting a Duchy through Masquerade, which is different than gaining a Duchy. You can't take a Duchess when you get a Duchy through Masq.

[WanderingWinder]

Since you're in the middle of your turn, you can actually have stored everything on the NV mat and played an NV this turn. No need for islands.

[eHalcyon]

The puzzle says really little about what has already happened during your turn.  Going with the already-proposed Masquerade idea, what if you had already played King's Court, so this "one action" (Masquerade) gets played three times?

Is that against the spirit of the puzzle?  It's a bit ambiguous to me.

[def]

That's clarified in reply # 2.