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[GendoIkari]

Case in point: http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120522-201820-42b341bc.html

A Torturer chain board, made even scarier by the presence of Scheme. I don't feel like my opponent's 5/2 opening was a big help to him here. I thought for sure my Schemes were going to allow me to connect multiple Torturers quickly, but not even close. So what happened? Can anyone point how how I got so completely destroyed here? The one thing I can think of is that I should have bought more Walled Villages a bit quicker.

[WanderingWinder]

Case in point: http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120522-201820-42b341bc.html

A Torturer chain board, made even scarier by the presence of Scheme. I don't feel like my opponent's 5/2 opening was a big help to him here. I thought for sure my Schemes were going to allow me to connect multiple Torturers quickly, but not even close. So what happened? Can anyone point how how I got so completely destroyed here? The one thing I can think of is that I should have bought more Walled Villages a bit quicker.

I'm not the best at this stuff, but it looks to me like you get too many schemes too fast. You need to get more chain stuff up faster. If you have your chain going, you're drawing most of your deck every turn anyway. And if you have a dead turn or two in a torturer game because your hand was bad, that's not the end of the world.

[paddyodoors]

Case in point: http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120522-201820-42b341bc.html

A Torturer chain board, made even scarier by the presence of Scheme. I don't feel like my opponent's 5/2 opening was a big help to him here. I thought for sure my Schemes were going to allow me to connect multiple Torturers quickly, but not even close. So what happened? Can anyone point how how I got so completely destroyed here? The one thing I can think of is that I should have bought more Walled Villages a bit quicker.

I've found that Torture-chains get almost all of their money from Coppers.  Moneylender, being another terminal action, is not going to get played enough once the chain gets going, IMO.  And along the way, it has given you a short term benefit at the expense of the long-term source of money, the coppers.

I think to start off you need at least one silver.  Moneylender/Silver wouldn't have been bad in your case.  Scheme is just putting the cart before the horse, I think.

[cherdano]

I agree with what paddyodoors said - you really crippled your economy by trashing coppers without even buying silver, and not being able to play your moneylender for a while due to lack of action.
Imagine your first scheme being a silver, and then some of your subsequent scheme buys being Walled villages instead - you would have a much better hand. (E.g. after turn 14 you have 3 Torturues, 2 WV, and 5 schemes, which is definitely not enough villages for turn 14 in a torturer game!)
Also, you took way too many curses - several times I noticed you taking  a curse instead of discarding a copper and a dead card.

[GendoIkari]

Also, you took way too many curses - several times I noticed you taking  a curse instead of discarding a copper and a dead card.

I think anytime I took a Curse it was because I was pretty sure that another Torturer was on its way... which I think maybe twice I ended up being wrong about.

Thanks for all the comments, all 3 of you!

[ehunt]

I have a somewhat different perspective here. First (I don't think anyone disagrees with me here), the moneylender isn't bad, it's just that it's bad in the absence of buying silver. I think silver/moneylender is a fine opening.

Perhaps the schemes actively hurt your deck (in addition to not being silvers). The disadvantage to scheme, and to any +1 card +1 action card in a torturer game, is that you lose the information about the card that scheme would have drawn for "free." In this particular game, you take a curse early to avoid discarding a scheme, and end up buying nothing on that turn; the discard would have been better, which you would have known if that scheme had been air instead. This is why e.g. pearl diver which is an autopilot pickup on many boards, are bad on discard attack boards. Of course, the scheme lets you put a torturer back on top, so unlike pearl diver (which has a very weak advantage) there's a real trade-off here.

I'm not sure how to weigh the trade-off (scheme denies you information while you're being tortured vs. scheme lets you scheme), to be honest; it's clear that the trade-off is worth it for village and not worth it for pearl diver, scheme being somewhere in the middle. But the point is that there's no trade-off for silver.

[qmech]

To answer the question implicit in the title:

The basic Torturer plan is to open Silver/Silver (or equivalent), then always buy Torturer > Village > Silver.  Do not deviate until you've either won or lost the game.

The Silver is important to let you buy more Torturers.  Schemes aren't so useful because you want to be playing lots of Torturers in one turn, not one Torturer every turn (in addition to the downsides listed by ehunt).

[eHalcyon]

The basic Torturer plan is to open Silver/Silver (or equivalent), then always buy Torturer > Village > Silver.  Do not deviate until you've either won or lost the game.

Shouldn't you pick up a few more Villages to cover the Torturers?  And in that game plan, when do you start greening?  I don't think it's quite so simple as Torturer > Village > Silver.

[O]

The basic Torturer plan is to open Silver/Silver (or equivalent), then always buy Torturer > Village > Silver.  Do not deviate until you've either won or lost the game.

Shouldn't you pick up a few more Villages to cover the Torturers?  And in that game plan, when do you start greening?  I don't think it's quite so simple as Torturer > Village > Silver.

If all goes well, your opponent will resign well before you need to start greening. 

[qmech]

Perhaps I wasn't sufficiently clear: that's an ordered list of preferences, not something you should cycle through.  You absolutely want to load up on Villages, and will only pass them up for Torturers.  The Silvers aren't relevant if the Village doesn't cost $4.

Joking or not, O has it right: the game will usually be decided before VP buying begins.

There is an element of caricature to the above, but it's a good guide much of the time.

[eHalcyon]

Perhaps I wasn't sufficiently clear: that's an ordered list of preferences, not something you should cycle through.  You absolutely want to load up on Villages, and will only pass them up for Torturers.  The Silvers aren't relevant if the Village doesn't cost $4.

Joking or not, O has it right: the game will usually be decided before VP buying begins.

There is an element of caricature to the above, but it's a good guide much of the time.

No, I understood that.  But what if you somehow manage to repeatedly hit $5 or more?  Do you just keep on buying Torturer, and never dip into Village?  At some point, you should probably prefer Village to Torturer.

[qmech]

Perhaps I wasn't sufficiently clear: that's an ordered list of preferences, not something you should cycle through.  You absolutely want to load up on Villages, and will only pass them up for Torturers.  The Silvers aren't relevant if the Village doesn't cost $4.

Joking or not, O has it right: the game will usually be decided before VP buying begins.

There is an element of caricature to the above, but it's a good guide much of the time.

No, I understood that.  But what if you somehow manage to repeatedly hit $5 or more?  Do you just keep on buying Torturer, and never dip into Village?  At some point, you should probably prefer Village to Torturer.

It's unlikely to happen, as dead-drawing Torturers will reduce your spending power.  But if you found yourself with 3 Torturers to one Village you might well want to pass up on a Torturer for an extra Village.  At that point you probably need more detail than the sketch can provide.

[eHalcyon]

It's unlikely to happen, as dead-drawing Torturers will reduce your spending power.  But if you found yourself with 3 Torturers to one Village you might well want to pass up on a Torturer for an extra Village.  At that point you probably need more detail than the sketch can provide.

So would you use the dead-draw as the gate to determine when you want more Villages?  I figured there would be some optimal ratio, e.g. after getting the first (second?) Torturer you want to make sure to have one more Village than Torturer.  Something like that.