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[theory]

Suppose both of you run out the NV/Bridge pile and end up with your whole decks in your NV mat, each ready for your megaturn.  But because you can only get 6 buys with 5 Bridges on this megaturn, neither of you is able to end the game or interested in buying much else.  Is this going to be an uncommon thing that happens only on very special boards, or something to watch out for in NV/Bridge?

[Galzria]

With 5 bridges in play, and your original 7 coppers, you have 12 coins. Province's cost 3 each. That's half of them at the very least, and there's a good chance you've snagged at least one silver. If you've gotten 3, that's worth 2 more Province's, making 6, giving you a 24 point advantage if he gets the last two. That means he'll need all the Duchy's to tie. So I think you still just have to launch first, and not worry about a stalemate.

[WanderingWinder]

It's not a stalemate.
You have a number of options in this scenario. First, you can just pop your NV, buy 4 provinces and 2 duchies, best they can do is match you. Or if you're second player, not even that. Other options including buying money, and then shifting that into your mat every turn. The only issue you might have is getting down to 1 NV in deck, then having the possibility of missing that NV as your 6th card, thus not being in your hand. On the other hand, if you have some particular reason for doing this instead of popping NV, this probably isn't going to be a big deal.
Depending on what's on the board, you can slam down some more engine components - particularly any other source of +buy is critical. Just make sure that your opponent can't end it on you - keep track of how many buys they can slam down at any moment, how much money they have, etc.

[WanderingWinder]

With 5 bridges in play, and your original 7 coppers, you have 12 coins. Province's cost 3 each. That's half of them at the very least, and there's a good chance you've snagged at least one silver. If you've gotten 3, that's worth 2 more Province's, making 6, giving you a 24 point advantage if he gets the last two. That means he'll need all the Duchy's to tie. So I think you still just have to launch first, and not worry about a stalemate.

'There's a good chance you've gotten a silver' - not really. Certainly not 3.

[Galzria]

I find unless I get great draws, I can't smoothly buy 5 bridges while tucking away with nv every turn. Especially as picking up the NV's becomes so simple with bridge in play. It's VERY rare I don't have one silver. Usually I get two. 3 may be a bit high, but is hardly a stretch if you see mirror. You recognize early that having them is going to be an advantage.

At worst, with just one and a spare copper (not hard to grab as the NV pile will empty so quickly, and you're left with spare buys), that's 5 Province's, 1 Duchy. Since he needs a 12 point swing to tie after Provinces, that's still 3 and 5 for him - more than he can get in one turn.

The point stands that most likely the person to fire first will come out on top.

[tlloyd]

No matter how many times I try the NV/Bridge strategy, my mat invariably gets filled primarily with NVs, forcing me to empty my mat in order to avoid a choked deck.

[Ozle]

No matter how many times I try the NV/Bridge strategy, my mat invariably gets filled primarily with NVs, forcing me to empty my mat in order to avoid a choked deck.

Snap

And surely you can still buy other stuff and build up your Native Village Mat until you can buy more?
You could snipe Dutchys making it a race and back to card drawing luck?

[Toskk]

No matter how many times I try the NV/Bridge strategy, my mat invariably gets filled primarily with NVs, forcing me to empty my mat in order to avoid a choked deck.

It sounds like your buy priorities might not be quite right.. I've stalled out a NV/Bridge deck once or twice, but it should be very rare.

In general, you don't want your number of Bridges and Native Villages to ever get too unequal. To facilitate this, your T3 and T4 buys really need to be 1 Bridge and 1-2 Native Villages. After that, you want to slightly prioritize Bridges over Native Villages (e.g. with two coppers and 1 Bridge in hand, buy 1 Bridge instead of 2 Native Villages), making sure that you don't ever get more than 2 Bridges or Native Villages ahead. At two Bridges ahead, it's usually pretty easy to double-buy Native Villages to catch up (which you want to do asap).. ideally, you need to place *at least* 8 cards on the Native Village mat in order to mega-turn, and accomplishing this quickly is imperative. Too few Native Villages and your mat won't build up quickly enough (also, *never* take the cards on the mat off early.. I've tested it extensively.. it's always bad). Staying two Native Villages ahead for more than a turn or two is also very bad. You become more and more likely to send too much of your economy onto the mat.

Also, you shouldn't need to add any other card to your deck beyond Bridges and Native Villages (assuming no competition, of course) unless your first (or first and second) Bridge gets sent to the Native Village mat.. in which case stopping buying Native Villages and grabbing a Silver or two is necessary.

[tlloyd]

No matter how many times I try the NV/Bridge strategy, my mat invariably gets filled primarily with NVs, forcing me to empty my mat in order to avoid a choked deck.

It sounds like your buy priorities might not be quite right.. I've stalled out a NV/Bridge deck once or twice, but it should be very rare.

In general, you don't want your number of Bridges and Native Villages to ever get too unequal. To facilitate this, your T3 and T4 buys really need to be 1 Bridge and 1-2 Native Villages. After that, you want to slightly prioritize Bridges over Native Villages (e.g. with two coppers and 1 Bridge in hand, buy 1 Bridge instead of 2 Native Villages), making sure that you don't ever get more than 2 Bridges or Native Villages ahead. At two Bridges ahead, it's usually pretty easy to double-buy Native Villages to catch up (which you want to do asap).. ideally, you need to place *at least* 8 cards on the Native Village mat in order to mega-turn, and accomplishing this quickly is imperative. Too few Native Villages and your mat won't build up quickly enough (also, *never* take the cards on the mat off early.. I've tested it extensively.. it's always bad). Staying two Native Villages ahead for more than a turn or two is also very bad. You become more and more likely to send too much of your economy onto the mat.

Also, you shouldn't need to add any other card to your deck beyond Bridges and Native Villages (assuming no competition, of course) unless your first (or first and second) Bridge gets sent to the Native Village mat.. in which case stopping buying Native Villages and grabbing a Silver or two is necessary.

That is all very helpful advice. Thanks!

[eHalcyon]

(also, *never* take the cards on the mat off early.. I've tested it extensively.. it's always bad).

But if you find yourself in the position (from incorrect buy priorities or just bad luck) where most of your NVs are on the NV mat, perhaps it might be a good idea to take the mat into hand and then play all those stored NVs at once to move a bunch of OTHER stuff onto the mat?

[Toskk]

(also, *never* take the cards on the mat off early.. I've tested it extensively.. it's always bad).

But if you find yourself in the position (from incorrect buy priorities or just bad luck) where most of your NVs are on the NV mat, perhaps it might be a good idea to take the mat into hand and then play all those stored NVs at once to move a bunch of OTHER stuff onto the mat?

With the right buy priorities, this occurrence is really really rare.. you only need 6 Native Villages (and that's if you're going for the full 8-buy mega-turn, so even in those rare cases where you end up placing a lot of NV's on the mat, you should just be able to buy 1-4 extra as needed to compensate. I've found it's usually safe to break the no-more-than-2-Native-Villages-ahead-rule once I've hit 6 Bridges (i.e. I only need 1 more), so you can grab extra NV's then, as well.

Also, extra Native Villages on the mat is usually a pretty nice occurrence.. as it likely means a hand with a few of Bridges with the NV to start the mega-turn, and a lot of chances to grab more. With 6 NVs on the mat, for example, you have 5 chances (once you grab the mat) to draw more Bridges onto the mat, and your odds of doing that are much higher with all of the NVs in your hand already.

[eHalcyon]

With the right buy priorities, this occurrence is really really rare.. you only need 6 Native Villages (and that's if you're going for the full 8-buy mega-turn, so even in those rare cases where you end up placing a lot of NV's on the mat, you should just be able to buy 1-4 extra as needed to compensate. I've found it's usually safe to break the no-more-than-2-Native-Villages-ahead-rule once I've hit 6 Bridges (i.e. I only need 1 more), so you can grab extra NV's then, as well.

Also, extra Native Villages on the mat is usually a pretty nice occurrence.. as it likely means a hand with a few of Bridges with the NV to start the mega-turn, and a lot of chances to grab more. With 6 NVs on the mat, for example, you have 5 chances (once you grab the mat) to draw more Bridges onto the mat, and your odds of doing that are much higher with all of the NVs in your hand already.

When going for a NV-Bridge mega turn, how do you decide when to pull the trigger?  That is, are you trying to get all the Bridges onto the mat at once, or is it OK to have a bunch of extra NVs on the mat so you can try to pull in more Bridges from those?

[Galzria]

With the right buy priorities, this occurrence is really really rare.. you only need 6 Native Villages (and that's if you're going for the full 8-buy mega-turn, so even in those rare cases where you end up placing a lot of NV's on the mat, you should just be able to buy 1-4 extra as needed to compensate. I've found it's usually safe to break the no-more-than-2-Native-Villages-ahead-rule once I've hit 6 Bridges (i.e. I only need 1 more), so you can grab extra NV's then, as well.

Also, extra Native Villages on the mat is usually a pretty nice occurrence.. as it likely means a hand with a few of Bridges with the NV to start the mega-turn, and a lot of chances to grab more. With 6 NVs on the mat, for example, you have 5 chances (once you grab the mat) to draw more Bridges onto the mat, and your odds of doing that are much higher with all of the NVs in your hand already.

When going for a NV-Bridge mega turn, how do you decide when to pull the trigger?  That is, are you trying to get all the Bridges onto the mat at once, or is it OK to have a bunch of extra NVs on the mat so you can try to pull in more Bridges from those?

If all you've purchased are NV/Bridge, or even if there is a silver in there, you should have a solid idea of how many cards you have in your deck total. Look to see how many cards are on your mat. If you've bought 14 cards (7 each NV/Bridge), and your mat contains 15 cards (4 copper, 2 estates, 3 Bridge, 6 Native Village), then you have 9 cards left in your deck - 4 after you draw your hand. Even if you hold 0 Bridges in hand (meaning all 4 on draw pile), you know you can pick them up.

Generally though, just watch closely what goes onto the mat, and how many of your remaining cards you can draw. Watch your opponent. If he gives you time, wait. If he is putting on pressure, know how many points you can get in a *worst case*, then decide if you can wait, or need to fire at 85-90%.