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[methods of rationality]

in this game: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201205/29/game-20120529-193739-92180cd9.html my opponent's first 4 buys were silver, silver, gold, silver so I thought - now is as good a time as any to buy a thief. Apparently I was wrong. My thief never hit one of his silvers or golds.
So my question is: In what types of situations is thief a good buy?

[O]

1) Multiplayer
2) Against Mint-FG or other types of Fools Gold Games
3) ??

[Robz888]

Well, Thief is a pretty bad card. And anyway, your opponent didn't trash his Coppers--so you're going to run into trouble trying to Thief him. Thief can shine if your opponent super-Chapels down and has a high ratio of good Treasure. But even then it's questionable in 2 player.

You have a bigger problem here though: you didn't buy any Hunting Parties! Hunting Party decks are quite strong, and when they are up and running they get to $8 very consecutively. And yeah, Thief isn't going to stop that at all, because a Hunting Party person actually doesn't even want excess Treasures.

[chwhite]

1) Multiplayer
2) Against Mint-FG or other types of Fools Gold Games
3) ??

If by "multiplayer" you mean "multiplayer Gardens games" in particular, then I mostly agree- in non-Gardens setups not even 4p can salvage the Thief. 

In addition, the existence of Thief is occasionally relevant as a cautionary tale against pursuing Chapel-Big Money or a strategy that relies on mass Harem or Venture, though against a careful opponent actually buying that Thief is unlikely to be fruitful.  And in something like .000001 percent of games it may be possible to build some huge King's Court draw-your-deck with a zillion Actions engine, but there isn't any virtual treasure at all: and maaaaaaaaaybe then you could theoretically use the Thief to lock down your opponent's buying power.  Here's an example where NinjaBus tries to build a Thief engine against my Courtyard-BM- it doesn't actually succeed, the Thief still loses, but it does have me worried for a split second, and doing things like buying Cache in response.

But, really, you'll do far better just assuming that Thief is a card that is never actually worth buying, even if that's technically not true.  While I've softened my old position that it's the one card in Dominion which is always useless in every situation, I still do believe it's the game's weakest card, and in 2p at least there's no plausible competition for that slot.

[dondon151]

Thief is every so slightly better than NB when it comes to destroying an opponent's Treasure-based economy because it doesn't leave them with Coppers, but because it attacks much more slowly, you need to figure out a way to play a lot of them fast.

[gamesou]

Thief is a very viable strategy against plain Big Money. If you add schemes, thief becomes competitive against enabled BM strategies.

Example: buy a single thief, and with $3 buy scheme over silver (until you have, say, 5 schemes). This strategy beats Smithy BM 60/40 if I remember correctly.

However, when Thief fails, it fails usually very badly !

[DG]

In two player, your opponent essentially has to play the thief into strength for you. Since thief is seen as such a weak card this can and does happen.

[SwitchedFromStarcraft]

DG, what does "play the thief into strength for you" mean?  Can you say this a different way so that I understand?

[O]

DG, what does "play the thief into strength for you" mean?  Can you say this a different way so that I understand?

I believe he means your opponent has to chapel down his deck into nothing but golds and silvers for thief to be useful, or some equivalently obviously bad strategy against thief.

[DG]

Sometimes you can build a deck that makes attacks against it stronger. For example, a deck full of silver can be vulnerable to militia since you need more than 3 silver cards to buy a province. The simplest way to play a thief into strength is to trash your starting cards then try to accumulate good treasures in your deck to buy vp. Every attack by the thief will then do serious damage and gain a good card.

[Voltgloss]

Any synergies worth noting with cards that muck with the top of your opponent's decks?  Spy/Thief is the obvious Base set combo, but I've never gotten it to work effectively (unless the opponent, as has been discussed, plays into Thief's strengths by trashing Copper and accumulating Silver/Gold).  It hurts that the two pieces of the engine are at the same price point. 

Anyone else have better luck stacking the opponents' decks for more effective Thieving?  If so, what'd you use?

[clb]

1) Multiplayer
2) Against Mint-FG or other types of Fools Gold Games
3) ??

If by "multiplayer" you mean "multiplayer Gardens games" in particular, then I mostly agree- in non-Gardens setups not even 4p can salvage the Thief. 

Thief may not be strong for any one individual in 3p/4p games, but if multiple people are buying multiple copies of thief (and you don't), you may find that your buying power is leached faster than you can resupply it. Ironically, this is something that I learned from the horrible playing style of the AI in the ipod/ipad app.

[jonts26]

Scrying pool/thief with no money giving actions can be fairly formidable.

Here's and example where I use this strategy to lock out Obi Wan and mount a decent comeback.
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120517-233449-607f1d4e.html