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[kayaks6]

has anyone tried the combo library, cellar, bank with militia for your opponents?  the idea is to cellar away everything but high value treasures then library into a few banks.  if your opponent plays militia i dump my greens, excess libraries, and low value money.  in my play group i have fount it to be the most stable combo.  penny for you thoughts thoughts?

[DStu]

Library of course counters Milita very much. You shouldn't play Militia if Library is on the board (or you should have pretty good reasons for this). Without Villages, I don't see the Cellar helping too much. You can't play it after the Library, and before you expect to have two other cards in hand, so it's not worth much. But could of course picked up with $2 in hand, because it also doesn't hurt much.
Banks also are not that crucial I would guess. They certainly are better than Golds in this setup, but probably it will also work with Gold. If you have some +Action/+Buy card on the other hand, Banks will be of much more help. Or with Colonies maybe.

[Qvist]

Welcome here in the forums.
I just don't quite understand this combo. Where do you get the additional buys from to use the money from the banks? Without additional buys you can basically just use Gold. Library against Militia on the other side is a very good and well-known combo from the base set: http://dominionstrategy.com/2010/11/12/counter-of-the-day-1-library-v-militia/

[ftl]

I think you're talking a number of combos, each of which is reasonable and could appear on its own.

1) Cellar + Library. Cellar lets you sift away bad stuff, then redraw to a hand of 7 (and use Library's action-set-aside to not draw your cellars).

2) Library as a COUNTER to Militia. If your opponent(s) are playing Militias, then you want a Library in hand and then it's a benefit for you.

3) Library+bank: large hand size makes Bank super-powered.

I think these are all reasonable, but none are really all that super-good.

1) Cellar+Library takes a little bit of trashing to set up right, or takes a whole lot of cellars and libraries.
2) Library as a counter to Militia is good, but why would your opponents get Militias if Library is around?
3) Library+Bank is good, but unless you have +buy, you'll be spending huge gobs of money on single provinces when you get a bank, and not have enough for even a single province if you don't.

But, given the right situation, I can certainly see myself playing any of those (and I've had quite a few cellar-Library-chapel games IRL when I play just base set!)

I think you've definitely found something reasonable, but I'd be cautious of overgeneralizing how good it is -  I suspect that based on what you've said here, it's not much better (if at all?) than just getting Libraries+standard money, unless there are other support cards around. In one of those games where people are getting banks+cellars+militias+libraries, have you tried just getting libraries, and not taking banks over provinces with 8? Assuming it's a province game.

[kayaks6]

its a colony game.  and i usually try for about a 2.5:1 cellar:library, and buy banks on turns i cant buy colonies.  i don't trash anything either because the coppers either get cellar-ed or feed the banks.  i use bank to accelerate my money.  it is cheaper than platinum and can consistently get it worth 6-7.  i would say give it a go in a game some time. 

[HiveMindEmulator]

First off, welcome to the forum. This is actually the wrong sub-forum for this post. It goes in General Dominion Discussion. I think the name of this sub-forum could use a change as you're not the first new member to post something like this here. It should be called dominionstrategy.com feedback. It's a place for feedback for the site, not a place to get feedback on your dominion strategies.

That aside, the problem with this strategy is that it's a bit slow. If you're talking about a 2.5:1 ratio of cellars to Libraries, you're thinking like 5 Cellars? It's hard to find the time to buy that many against someone just going Library + money. However, if you make it Warehouse instead of Cellar, then you're looking much better, because in addition to helping you draw your libraries every turn, they make it less likely that you end up wasting some of your 7 cards in hand on victory cards that your Cellar might end up drawing.

[Thisisnotasmile]

Why does Warehouse insist on stealing every spotlight Cellar even approaches?

[ftl]

I can see it working in a colony game... while in a province game, I'd be highly suspicious of unassisted cellar/library over library-bm, in a colony game I'd buy that. As long as you draw one library, with all the cellars you can play, then draw one bank from the library, you're pretty much guaranteed either a colony, plat, or at LEAST another bank. If you're clever, you can control your reshuffles pretty well too.

[ksf_]

Hamlet would give the buy and discard, probably more successfully than cellar all said and done.

[jotheonah]

If you are getting militia'd, those Cellars become a liability.

With a 5 card hand, if your goal is to Cellar to a Library and you have a lot of Cellars that's not too bad. Discard 4 cards, draw 4 cards, discard 3 cards, draw 3 cards, discard and draw 2, discard and draw 1. You've seen 5+4+3+2+1 = 15 of your cards and in the process you probably hit either your library or enough of your good money for a Province.

But if you start out with 3 cards and one of them is a Cellar than you can only draw 3 more cards, so you'll only see 8 of your cards and your chance of finding your library is greatly diminished.

I seldom buy Cellar or Warehouse when handsize reducers are out with no reactions.

[Ozle]

If you are getting militia'd, those Cellars become a liability.

With a 5 card hand, if your goal is to Cellar to a Library and you have a lot of Cellars that's not too bad. Discard 4 cards, draw 4 cards, discard 3 cards, draw 3 cards, discard and draw 2, discard and draw 1. You've seen 5+4+3+2+1 = 15 of your cards and in the process you probably hit either your library or enough of your good money for a Province.

But if you start out with 3 cards and one of them is a Cellar than you can only draw 3 more cards, so you'll only see 8 of your cards and your chance of finding your library is greatly diminished.

I seldom buy Cellar or Warehouse when handsize reducers are out with no reactions.

If you start with 3 cards you'll only draw two more, so only 5 in total so its even worse.

However with Warehouse its not so bad as you'll see 3 extra cards, so 6 in total. Whereas if you had a 5 card hand then Cellar I like more (because unless you have a warehouse or a draw card they are probably getting fdumped so you get 4 new cards)

[jotheonah]

I said you saw 8 because you have a 5-card hand, you discard 2 cards, and then you Cellar for 2 and then 1 more. So there's a total of 8 cards you get to see that turn, which is relevant because there are 8 chances to see your Library. But yeah, not at all the same as actually having access to 8 cards.