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[gman314]

I have no idea if this has been discussed before, but it seems like a good combo. The main problem with Treasury is that getting points disrupts your Treasury chain. And if you go Bishop crazy without a plan, you'll find yourself unable to buy anything. It seems to me that Bishop would be useful to give a Treasury deck points while keeping the Treasuries on top. And, the Treasuries would keep buying things for the Bishop to trash. In the best-case scenario, a deck could consist of N Treasuries, a Bishop and an (N+1)-cost card which could get trashed and replaced every turn.

Has anyone actually tried this or thought about it before? Is it a good idea or not?

[shark_bait]

I haven't tried this, but the my initial thought is that top decking Treasuries decreases your chance of trashing when your opponent plays a Bishop.  Especially if you start to stack upwards of 3 on top of your deck.  So I would probably just want 1 or 2 to ensure that I can trash useless Estates and Coppers whenever my opponent plays a Bishop.

[jomini]

The problem with this seems like it would be - what would you buy?

The golden deck of B/S/G/G/P is not that hard to come by. Yes, treasury would allow you to substitute silvers for golds when you miss at hitting 6 coin, but otherwise, you need +buy (so you can replace two things each turn), +actions (so you can play multiple bishops), and most likely +cards (so you can line up bishops with targets) and strong trashing (as each treasury decreases your ability to use opponent bishop trashing).

A better use, IMO, of treasury is with goons. If you miss your goons, no problem here is a card that increase buying power, immediately gives you better odds at hitting 6 next time and is a cantrip that can offer synergy with other goons enablers (e.g. golem, TR, etc.). I'd still normally prefer market (as that buy can be worth 5-10 points on the last turn) and would definitely want the market with something like watchtower.

[popsofctown]

I agree that Treasury/Bishop has always seemed cool to me and seems like it should work.

But for me, it somehow never does

[WanderingWinder]

The problem with this seems like it would be - what would you buy?

The golden deck of B/S/G/G/P is not that hard to come by. Yes, treasury would allow you to substitute silvers for golds when you miss at hitting 6 coin, but otherwise, you need +buy (so you can replace two things each turn), +actions (so you can play multiple bishops), and most likely +cards (so you can line up bishops with targets) and strong trashing (as each treasury decreases your ability to use opponent bishop trashing).

A better use, IMO, of treasury is with goons. If you miss your goons, no problem here is a card that increase buying power, immediately gives you better odds at hitting 6 next time and is a cantrip that can offer synergy with other goons enablers (e.g. golem, TR, etc.). I'd still normally prefer market (as that buy can be worth 5-10 points on the last turn) and would definitely want the market with something like watchtower.

Treasury - as most top-deckers - is a lot weaker against handsize attacks though, for the same reason it's bad with opposing bishops.

[jomini]

The problem with this seems like it would be - what would you buy?

The golden deck of B/S/G/G/P is not that hard to come by. Yes, treasury would allow you to substitute silvers for golds when you miss at hitting 6 coin, but otherwise, you need +buy (so you can replace two things each turn), +actions (so you can play multiple bishops), and most likely +cards (so you can line up bishops with targets) and strong trashing (as each treasury decreases your ability to use opponent bishop trashing).

A better use, IMO, of treasury is with goons. If you miss your goons, no problem here is a card that increase buying power, immediately gives you better odds at hitting 6 next time and is a cantrip that can offer synergy with other goons enablers (e.g. golem, TR, etc.). I'd still normally prefer market (as that buy can be worth 5-10 points on the last turn) and would definitely want the market with something like watchtower.

Treasury - as most top-deckers - is a lot weaker against handsize attacks though, for the same reason it's bad with opposing bishops.

I'm not sure if I'm following here. A top decker shouldn't behave any better or worse than a normal card of the same type against hand size reduction. For instance, if I have a peddler in hand, then yes I risk making a bad decision about what to keep (the cantrip that might get me to my village/draw or the payload goons for an immediate payout); a treasury just hits the same risk. I get that you will see the treasury more than the peddler, but is that really "a lot weaker"?

Or are you meaning that you have to discard the top decker, so you lose the top deck ability until you draw it again? That doesn't seem to be in keeping with the bishop - I need something else in hand during the opponent's turn - aspect of things and is not that huge of a deal (particularly if there are not other useful 5's for your goons deck).

I could certainly see it being weaker with reactions like horse traders or moat out, but it would also seem to be stronger with something like lighthouse or watchtower.

[WanderingWinder]

A lot weaker is an overstatement. But having a larger percentage of your good cards in hand at the start of your turn is not a good thing when you're getting goonsed. Of course, as long as you have two crappy cards, you're golden. But more treasuries leads to less chance of that happening.

[gman314]

And then Minion messes up whatever you topdecked.

[Ozle]

Except usually your top decked cards get picked up at the end of your turn, before the opposing players minion gets played

[gman314]

Except usually your top decked cards get picked up at the end of your turn, before the opposing players minion gets played

Which is why Minion messes things up. You then have to discard your hand full of Treasuries, Alchemists or whatever goodness you put up there with Herbalist or Scheme.

[Lhurgoyf]

I think we can all agree, that Treasury (or Alchemist or Herbalist or Scheme) is a no-go with hand-targeted attacks like Militia, Minion and Goons. With the enemy's Bishop it would only be a problem once you have all 5 Treasuries. Until then, you might have trashed a good part of your deck already.

[gman314]

I think we can all agree, that Treasury (or Alchemist or Herbalist or Scheme) is a no-go with hand-targeted attacks like Militia, Minion and Goons. With the enemy's Bishop it would only be a problem once you have all 5 Treasuries. Until then, you might have trashed a good part of your deck already.

It's the worst with Minion. With Militia or Goons, you can maintain a hand of three Treasuries (or whatever else). But with Minion, your epic hand is gone.

[jomini]

I think we can all agree, that Treasury (or Alchemist or Herbalist or Scheme) is a no-go with hand-targeted attacks like Militia, Minion and Goons. With the enemy's Bishop it would only be a problem once you have all 5 Treasuries. Until then, you might have trashed a good part of your deck already.

I would dispute this. Goons likes cantrips. Once you have your deck down to nothing but cantrips, goons and maybe a trasher you can just keep the cantrips and play through until you hit the goons. Adding more goons makes it more likely that you will have hands without a village, adding a cantrip doesn't change your action balance and keeps it so you can always play 2 or 3 goons every turn. Likewise with alchemist, in a goons engine you can have it be just an expensive lab ... and it still can be the best buy. Couple this with using TR/cantrip to get village effect and goons engines are ONLY viable on some boards by buying top decking cantrips.

Certainly, it is retarded to list scheme here. Let's say I have a library/festival engine. With two schemes, I top deck a library and a festival. Now if you hit me with any discard attack except minion or torturer, I can always keep the festival and the library. This ensures that I start with a 7 card hand and +2 coin. Likewise, scheme/SP, scheme/menage, etc. can all ensure that even after I get attacked, I have my key draw cards in hand and can recover and hit my engine. Certainly something like KC/KC/scheme/scheme can work - just stack KC/KC/Scheme on top, insert two filler action cards, and then place another scheme or drawing card in the sixth position (you get to top deck 6 and now even after a reliable militia hit, you begin with 3 actions, 3 or more cards, and an open KC play).

The criticism against treasury is that treasury represents two effects - the +1 coin and the card you draw (ignoring for the moment the use of TR/KC/Golem to get village effect). When you get hit with militia you normally don't know what the card you will draw will be. So if you are holding treasury x3, goons, council room you can't make an informed decision. Will you draw your estates (say you've thinned out the deck with loan), more goons, or one of your villages?  If you didn't have the treasury three cards you really care about would be in your hand. Scheme doesn't work this way. You can use scheme to put your key cards into hand and be SURE you have them. Yeah you might have to discard some nice stuff because your key cards and the nice stuff are in hand, but you can be sure to play the key cards. Scheme is often an insanely effective counter to discard attacks because you can reliably hit a draw engine all game.

The biggest problem is actually that treasury, etc. tend to compete with more needed components for engines. In a goons deck, villages and goons score points, treasuries are just what you take to score points and maybe to add purchasing power when you can't slip in another goons due to action balance or not having enough coin left for your final buy. Likewise, alchemist is good for beating back against militia, but it is slow (so I'd rather gun for the labs) and a lot of decks that really want potion would much rather grab a different card or set of cards (e.g. goons/apothecary can be much faster and stronger than alchemist/goons).

[qmech]

Perhaps this has become the interesting question: in a game where you're hit by Goons every turn, do you want to top deck Treasuries?

[Kuildeous]

Perhaps this has become the interesting question: in a game where you're hit by Goons every turn, do you want to top deck Treasuries?

I'd say that topdecking Treasuries is still worth it if you're getting hit by Goons.

Good scenario: You have three Treasuries and two victory cards. You dump the victory cards and have a good shot at a pretty good three-card hand.
Bad scenario: You have to choose to dump a Treasury or two in order to save your good cards. If you're choosing those cards over a blind draw, you are playing with a pretty good three-card hand.

And if you feel the need to save your good cards at the sacrifice of a Treasury, then you aren't any worse off than if you didn't topdeck Treasuries. On the other hand, if your other two cards are crap, then dumping your Treasuries might even hurt you. This paragraph can be rendered moot by shuffle timing, of course.

[Asklepios]

I think conceptually, its an entirely valid and strong strategy to build around Bishop and Treasury, and it does qualify as a combo as both cards are stronger for the presence of each other.

This isn't a combo that'd be easily simulated though, as likely you'd be engaging in it as part of a broader and more complex strategy, likely one with an engine that gets you to the point where you can play the whole chain each turn. Multiple bishops, some +buy and some card drawing would all mesh in well.

I played a game a while back (that I posted in game reports) where I led my opponent on Colonies by 6:0, but where a carefully built Bishop and Attack engine locked me at that point, and then went to overtake me in VP across a drawn out slow grind to victory. Bishop VPs can definitely be used to win a game on their own, even if they're not quite as powerful as Goons-chains.

As to when not to topdeck treasuries when you have the opportunity to do so, the circumstances I can think of are as follows:

1) You know you're likely to be hit by Masquerade. In this case, just topdeck four of them.
2) You expect to get hit by Jester, then there's a fair argument for not topdecking more than five, though equally there's a fair argument for deliberately topdecking them, as once treasuries run out that'll become an attack nullifier.
3) You want to pull of Scrying Pool chains, and there's a better chance of it working if the Treasuries are shuffled in.
4) Very specific small deck circumstances where you want your opponent's Bishop is going to trash a card for you.
5) Where you expect a Governor chain to end the game this turn, and you'd rather have a $4 card in hand that will be upgraded into a duchy when your opponent starts gaining provinces.
6) Where you are expecting a discard attack, and think you'd have a Tunnel in your hand instead. Though admittedly... treasury and tunnel, what is going on with that deck?

Goons is a tough one. Kuildeous analysis makes sense to me, but you also have to think about where the Treasuries are going to be after you discard them: that is, to reach them again, you have to draw through your whole deck and hit the shuffle. Thus a lot of it would depend on the drawing power of the deck, where they'd be anyway (i.e. in your deck, or the discard) and the relative values and risks of them being in your hand or not.

[eHalcyon]

3) You want to pull of Scrying Pool chains, and there's a better chance of it working if the Treasuries are shuffled in.

Is that correct?  Playing 5 top-decked treasuries and then SP to pull up 6 other actions is just as good as playing SP to pull up 11 actions including the 5 treasuries, isn't it?  Does having the treasuries shuffled in actually increase the odds of making a bigger chain (discounting what you would have had just from top decking)?  My mathemability is failing me here.

[jomini]

When dealing with discards and a cantrip in hand you have to consider what the cantrip might be and how likely that is to synergize with what you have.

For instance go back to the hand of treasury x3, goons, council room and you've just been goonsed.

Your options are:
1. Keep the treasuries.
2. Keep the CR, G, and a T.
3. Keep 2T and CR
4. Keep G and 2T.


Now let's say you have 3 possible draw items: village, estate and silver. When paired with treasury these become equivalent to: bazaar, copper, and gold.

If you had a hand of bazaar, copper, gold, goons, CR; most of use would keep the bazaar, CR, and goons (maybe the gold near game end). However we don't know which order we will draw so we can look at the above cases as follows:
1. You draw one card live and have 5 coin.
2. You have a 1/3rd chance of hitting a live CR and following it up (eventually) with goons, you have 1/3 chance of being able to play goons with 5 coins (assuming that goons is better than CR) and a 1/3 chance of hitting goons with 3 coin.
3. You have a 2/3 chance of hitting CR live with at least 2 coin. You have a 1/3 chance of hitting CR dead with 4 coin.
4. You have a 2/3 chance of playing goons with 4 coins and a 1/3 chance of hitting goons with 6 coins.

So because you lack information, you can't hit the extremely high payout every time of having an assured CR/Goons hit. This makes treasury weaker than it otherwise would be ... I just thing these sorts of concerns are mitigated by the fact that cantrips are very useful in engines.


On SP engines: Pulling the cards with SP can be better in some of cases:
1. SP can only draw actions, treasury can draw non-actions. If you can set up to more of your non-actions with cantrips and all your actions with SP, you maximize effect. If you draw actions with treasury, you just wasted draw (though this is often unavoidable).
2. TR/KC. If you need the village effect, draw, or whatever from the treasury then it is much easier to hit that if you pull them with SP rather than play them out first.
3. Reuse of cards. SP -> draw a bunch of treasuries and two cellars -> cellar treasuries -> draw coin/VP -> cellar a VP -> draw a treasury -> play and draw through treasuries. Also secret chamber, village, SP, can rediscard many times for cash.

[Asklepios]

3) You want to pull of Scrying Pool chains, and there's a better chance of it working if the Treasuries are shuffled in.

Is that correct?  Playing 5 top-decked treasuries and then SP to pull up 6 other actions is just as good as playing SP to pull up 11 actions including the 5 treasuries, isn't it?  Does having the treasuries shuffled in actually increase the odds of making a bigger chain (discounting what you would have had just from top decking)?  My mathemability is failing me here.

I may be wrong, but I think yes it does.

Extreme example just to show the thought experiment: say you have 10 treasuries, 1 scrying pool, 15 golds in your deck.

If you stack 10 treasuries, then you'll get the 10 treasuries played, and have 5 golds in your hand. That makes $10+$15

If you don't stack the treasuries, have no treasuries in hand, then scry and draw 10 treasuries, you then end up with a 15 card hand that contains ten treasuries and 5 golds. You play the ten treasuries to draw 10 more golds, and that leaves you with $10+$45.

Obviously thats an extreme sample for the sake of demonstration, but I think its broadly true that scrying pool + drawing multiple cantrips = more cards in hand.

I guess for specific circumstances, you need to work out what chance the scrying pool is going to give you of a bigger hand, and balance that against the guaranteed but smaller payout of having treasuries on top of your deck. In the example above, it might not be such a good idea not to stack in practice, as the odds of both drawing that scrying pool and then drawing treasuries with it is going to be pretty low.

I think the more scrying pools you have, the less likely you'll want to stack the treasuries. Also, theres the question of how many buys you are likely to generate, how many $ you need to win, what other actions you have, etc etc.

Even so, I think there are definitely moments when its better to return treasuries to the deck rather than stack them where scrying pool is concerned.

[popsofctown]

I used Bishop treasury to set up a double gold trashing engine

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201207/10/game-20120710-074525-786b9a7d.html

[Jedit]

I used Bishop treasury to set up a double gold trashing engine

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201207/10/game-20120710-074525-786b9a7d.html

It's worth noting that in that game you were behind until the last turn, and only won because warbaker stuttered on both his last two reshuffles - most notably on his final turn, where he failed to draw one of five Embassies and a Remodel despite drawing 9 cards from 30.   Obviously you're more likely to stutter as you increase your green quotient, but on the basis of that game I'd say the trashing engine is not as quick as a straight Province rush.

[popsofctown]

I think it's a respectable opinion to hold.  My first treasury was at the bottom of my reshuffle iirc, so there's luck happening every which way.

[bkdominion]

I just had a chance to test this today on isotropic - I vaguely remembered just the title of this post (I hadn't read it yet)...and I confess I didn't really understand how it was supposed to work until turn 2...then I was like "ooooh - you always get to return the treasuries because you just feed your bishop(s) an $4/$6 non-victory card".  I picked up the last province in the game to seal a 1-point win over an oppoent who (I think) was rated at least 10 over me.  Not overwhelming, but I think I didn't really play it quite the right way...so it may speak to the efficacy of the combo that even with substandard play, it can squeak out a win.

Here are a few random thoughts on the subject:
I think you need some flavor of +buy and +actions to go along with this.  1 Bishop and one $6-card at the end of a treasury chain will yield 4VP/turn.  That feels a bit slow for how long the combo takes to set up - I elected to throw a couple villages and an extra bishop in the mix: thus the need for the +buy (1 more Bishop to feed means I need to pick up one more card).  In my game, I was forced to use Salvager as my +buy, which is something I would probably never do again since it "eats" one of the cards I should be feeding to the bishop...DOH!...my opponent let me pick up all 10 treasuries - so my chain with both bishops produced $12 and 2 buys (but I could only use the +buy on alternating turns b/c of the salvager problem).  I would definitely play this combo again, but I think I would just stick with 6 treasuries and one bishop this time.  Another thing to worry about with this is that the repeated bishop play is going to speed up your opponent's BM-Province rush considerably.  When you get this whole engine smoothed out, I guess you get to pick 5 cards that aren't Treasuries - In a perfect world I think I would pick (Worker's Village - Bishop - Bishop - Gold - Gold)...which would produce 8VP/turn.  If your opponent denies you a few treasuries, you might have to fall back on - Gold - Silver instead.  As mentioned above, I think this combo is extremely fragile and vulnerable to most attacks - I probably wouldn't play it if there were any good ones on the board and I would load up on attacks if I saw my opponent angling for this.  That being said, it was fun to play and I'd definitely try this again (albeit somewhat differently).

[popsofctown]

I just had a chance to test this today on isotropic - I vaguely remembered just the title of this post (I hadn't read it yet)...and I confess I didn't really understand how it was supposed to work until turn 2...then I was like "ooooh - you always get to return the treasuries because you just feed your bishop(s) an $4/$6 non-victory card".  I picked up the last province in the game to seal a 1-point win over an oppoent who (I think) was rated at least 10 over me.  Not overwhelming, but I think I didn't really play it quite the right way...so it may speak to the efficacy of the combo that even with substandard play, it can squeak out a win.

Here are a few random thoughts on the subject:
I think you need some flavor of +buy and +actions to go along with this.  1 Bishop and one $6-card at the end of a treasury chain will yield 4VP/turn.  That feels a bit slow for how long the combo takes to set up - I elected to throw a couple villages and an extra bishop in the mix: thus the need for the +buy (1 more Bishop to feed means I need to pick up one more card).  In my game, I was forced to use Salvager as my +buy, which is something I would probably never do again since it "eats" one of the cards I should be feeding to the bishop...DOH!...my opponent let me pick up all 10 treasuries - so my chain with both bishops produced $12 and 2 buys (but I could only use the +buy on alternating turns b/c of the salvager problem).  I would definitely play this combo again, but I think I would just stick with 6 treasuries and one bishop this time.  Another thing to worry about with this is that the repeated bishop play is going to speed up your opponent's BM-Province rush considerably.  When you get this whole engine smoothed out, I guess you get to pick 5 cards that aren't Treasuries - In a perfect world I think I would pick (Worker's Village - Bishop - Bishop - Gold - Gold)...which would produce 8VP/turn.  If your opponent denies you a few treasuries, you might have to fall back on - Gold - Silver instead.  As mentioned above, I think this combo is extremely fragile and vulnerable to most attacks - I probably wouldn't play it if there were any good ones on the board and I would load up on attacks if I saw my opponent angling for this.  That being said, it was fun to play and I'd definitely try this again (albeit somewhat differently).

Only six Treasuries??  I don't buy nearly that many, I think 6 is too much.  To make it work you have lots of other stuff on your to-do list, gotta get some plus buy, gotta get some +actions and a second Bishop, gotta get enough money to afford 12$ a turn (Treasury does help with this, but buying Golds or Lab-types can help faster)

Going lighter on Treasuries could also give you more viability against attacks.  If you stick to 1-2 Treasuries you can see other cards for discarding, and you can rely on a thin deck's ability to do some attacking yourself, every turn.

[bkdominion]

I just had a chance to test this today on isotropic - I vaguely remembered just the title of this post (I hadn't read it yet)...and I confess I didn't really understand how it was supposed to work until turn 2...then I was like "ooooh - you always get to return the treasuries because you just feed your bishop(s) an $4/$6 non-victory card".  I picked up the last province in the game to seal a 1-point win over an oppoent who (I think) was rated at least 10 over me.  Not overwhelming, but I think I didn't really play it quite the right way...so it may speak to the efficacy of the combo that even with substandard play, it can squeak out a win.

Here are a few random thoughts on the subject:
I think you need some flavor of +buy and +actions to go along with this.  1 Bishop and one $6-card at the end of a treasury chain will yield 4VP/turn.  That feels a bit slow for how long the combo takes to set up - I elected to throw a couple villages and an extra bishop in the mix: thus the need for the +buy (1 more Bishop to feed means I need to pick up one more card).  In my game, I was forced to use Salvager as my +buy, which is something I would probably never do again since it "eats" one of the cards I should be feeding to the bishop...DOH!...my opponent let me pick up all 10 treasuries - so my chain with both bishops produced $12 and 2 buys (but I could only use the +buy on alternating turns b/c of the salvager problem).  I would definitely play this combo again, but I think I would just stick with 6 treasuries and one bishop this time.  Another thing to worry about with this is that the repeated bishop play is going to speed up your opponent's BM-Province rush considerably.  When you get this whole engine smoothed out, I guess you get to pick 5 cards that aren't Treasuries - In a perfect world I think I would pick (Worker's Village - Bishop - Bishop - Gold - Gold)...which would produce 8VP/turn.  If your opponent denies you a few treasuries, you might have to fall back on - Gold - Silver instead.  As mentioned above, I think this combo is extremely fragile and vulnerable to most attacks - I probably wouldn't play it if there were any good ones on the board and I would load up on attacks if I saw my opponent angling for this.  That being said, it was fun to play and I'd definitely try this again (albeit somewhat differently).

Only six Treasuries??  I don't buy nearly that many, I think 6 is too much.  To make it work you have lots of other stuff on your to-do list, gotta get some plus buy, gotta get some +actions and a second Bishop, gotta get enough money to afford 12$ a turn (Treasury does help with this, but buying Golds or Lab-types can help faster)

Going lighter on Treasuries could also give you more viability against attacks.  If you stick to 1-2 Treasuries you can see other cards for discarding, and you can rely on a thin deck's ability to do some attacking yourself, every turn.

I agree that if you have +action/+draw (e.g. Labs) you get them and that's a very keen point, but wouldn't you be better off just not trying to execute this strategy at all than half-ing it?  For example - you decide to just pick up 3 treasuries and a smattering of other cards and your opponent just goes BM.  What are you doing while your opponent is buying provinces?  You take 3 from your treasuries and then what?  If you get lucky and find both of your bishops and a +action you get a few VPs for the effort, but you only have $5 to reload with?  I still think if you are going with this, you get ($ from treasuries + $2 from bishops) + (a 5-card hand, two of which you have to feed to the bishops, so really 3 - labs nothwithstanding) so you have to pick that 5-card hand very carefully.  It seems that if you have just a couple treasuries and then a bunch of other random treasures and actions you are going to be forced to dip into the green cards to keep up - which would send your treasuries to the bottom of your deck, shorten the road for your opponent to pile out the greens and defeat the whole purpose of the combo in the first place, wouldn't it?