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[yog-sothothry]

I have played a few games with the new set, and a few possible combos jumped out at me. I'm not at all sure how they will hold up on further play, but they seem interesting enough to see if people have any thoughts on them, or any thoughts on other combos suggested by the set. Okay, here goes:

Hunting ground/Bandit camp:

The big draw back of hunting ground as the basis for a draw engine is that, at a cost of 6$, it competes with the gold you need for to be drawing to buy provinces. Bandit camp solves this problem by providing a one shot gold everytime you play it, allowing you to build your draw engine without spending as many buys on money. I played this combo once and it worked quite well, but since the two cards are both expensive, it might turn out to be too slow on most boards. Still, might be worth looking out for.

Cultist/Urchin:

Urchin is already being slammed as a weak card (along with its grown up version mercenary) but it seems to fit in well with a cultist chain deck. The cultists make it easy to turn the Urchin into a Mercenary, and the Mercenary can thin your deck out to help make sure your cultists find each other and keep the chain going. Late game, the Mercenary can trash cultists for mega turns.

Death cart/ Squire:

This is more of an opening, I guess, then a combo per se. Opening Death cart and then Squire allows you to quickly get up to gold, grab some silvers, and if the death cart and squire collide then you get yourself an attack card. Of course, if you draw the death cart with none of your actions you are probably in trouble. I am interesting in seeing if Death Cart openings will end up being strong, but at first glance squire seems like nice support for it.

Okay, so that's what I've got. As I said, I've only played a few games with the set so far, and all of them have been Dark Ages cards only, so not sure how these interact with other sets. What do people think? Any of these have potential? And does anyone have any other potential combos to share?

[Razzishi]

I've certainly thought about Squire/Death Cart; there's a lot more potential synergy going on there than just trashing Squire to Death Cart, but it's possible most of it just won't come up often enough given the lack of card draw, potential flooding of Silvers, and more Ruins in the deck.  How good the combo will be depends on how good the attack is.  You'll probably want some trashing that takes care of starting cards (aside from Necropolis).

I've also thought Procession + Catacombs with any decent $4.  Lots of potential there.

[clb]

Seems like death cart likes trashing actions. But what actions do you want to trash? How about a self-regenerating action that has an on-trash benefit? Death cart seems like it likes rats. There is some thematic continuity there, too, as an added bonus. Too bad they are both $4.

[bozzball]

What about Wandering Minstrel / Mystic / Your choice of terminal action ?

Roughly, Wandering Minstrel gives you +Actions, and puts your choice of Action card on top of your deck, for your Mystics to draw (effectively turning your Mystics into cantrip silvers that replace themself with your choice of action). The mystics don't use up the +Actions that the Wandering Minstrels gives, so you can spend them on some terminal action. Preferably something with some draw. Like Cultist / Witch, maybe?

[Auto-Destruct Sequence]

Deathcart/fortress

[jotheonah]

Any village(including Fortress) + Bishop x2 + Fortress x2 = 6 VP a turn

could be a new kind of Golden Deck, one that doesn't require you to use your buy phase AT ALL.  And because it doesn't use the buy phase, you could set up a double-Tactician Golden Deck, like:

Tactician x2, Bishop x5, Any village x3, Fortress = 15 VP a turn? You can keep trashing the same Fortress in the same turn, right?

Even more should possible with KC. Am I missing something? Has this been discussed already?

[Insomniac]

Any village(including Fortress) + Bishop x2 + Fortress x2 = 6 VP a turn

could be a new kind of Golden Deck, one that doesn't require you to use your buy phase AT ALL.  And because it doesn't use the buy phase, you could set up a double-Tactician Golden Deck, like:

Tactician x2, Bishop x5, Any village x3, Fortress = 15 VP a turn? You can keep trashing the same Fortress in the same turn, right?

Even more should possible with KC. Am I missing something? Has this been discussed already?

This works.

[werothegreat]

Seems like death cart likes trashing actions. But what actions do you want to trash? How about a self-regenerating action that has an on-trash benefit? Death cart seems like it likes rats. There is some thematic continuity there, too, as an added bonus. Too bad they are both $4.

You only need to buy one Rat!  The Rats will eat up the Treasures and Victory cards, then the Death Carts will eat the Rats, buying Duchies every time.  Deplete the Rats and Duchies this way.

[GendoIkari]

Any village(including Fortress) + Bishop x2 + Fortress x2 = 6 VP a turn

could be a new kind of Golden Deck, one that doesn't require you to use your buy phase AT ALL.  And because it doesn't use the buy phase, you could set up a double-Tactician Golden Deck, like:

Tactician x2, Bishop x5, Any village x3, Fortress = 15 VP a turn? You can keep trashing the same Fortress in the same turn, right?

Even more should possible with KC. Am I missing something? Has this been discussed already?

Actually you don't need 2 separate Fortresses.... just any Village, Fortress, Bishop x2. Like you mention later in your post, you can trash the same Fortress multiple times.

Think is though, the traditional Golden deck gets 5 VP per turn while quickly ending the game, and depriving your opponent of points from Provinces. What's the end-game plan with this new version? You get 6 VP per turn; the game never ends. You can't ever buy a Province (or anything); your opponent has a little time to build an awesome engine that can get all the Provinces and some points from Bishop.

[jotheonah]

You can get into a never-ending game state if you build up more points than are on the board!

I agree the basic version suffers from that flaw. But if you were to set up some kind of Double Tactician multi-Bishop KC shenanigan you might get to the point of forcing a resign.

Fortress+Apprentice is another interesting application - 2 cards to get +4 cards, +1 action - +5 cards, +2 actions when you throw in playing the Fortress.

[Insomniac]

You can get into a never-ending game state if you build up more points than are on the board!

I agree the basic version suffers from that flaw. But if you were to set up some kind of Double Tactician multi-Bishop KC shenanigan you might get to the point of forcing a resign.

Fortress+Apprentice is another interesting application - 2 cards to get +4 cards, +1 action - +5 cards, +2 actions when you throw in playing the Fortress.

You can end the game just buy out estates/coppers and silvers your playing 3 bishops you can trash the additional cards instead of fortress.

[Tmwinand]

I've played a few of the recommended sets of 10 and found some interesting combos!

Bandit Camp/Scavenger is useful to get the Spoils right on top of your deck.

Armory/Feodum/Rats for an instant 3 silvers

Wandering Minstrel/Scrying Pool helped draw my whole deck a turn.

Altar/Highway for instant Provinces.

[Insomniac]

Altar/Highway for instant Provinces.

Ahh good someone else tried it how fast did you find you got double/triple province up?

[werothegreat]

Altar/Highway for instant Provinces.

Ahh good someone else tried it how fast did you find you got double/triple province up?

You can do that already with Workshop/etc (which I've done ).

[Insomniac]

Altar/Highway for instant Provinces.

Ahh good someone else tried it how fast did you find you got double/triple province up?

You can do that already with Workshop/etc (which I've done ).

Altar hits at 5, workshop hits at 3 thats a 2 highway/bridge slow down.

[werothegreat]

Altar/Highway for instant Provinces.

Ahh good someone else tried it how fast did you find you got double/triple province up?

You can do that already with Workshop/etc (which I've done ).

Altar hits at 5, workshop hits at 3 thats a 2 highway/bridge slow down.

No...  at 4...  it's only 1 lower.

[Insomniac]

Altar/Highway for instant Provinces.

Ahh good someone else tried it how fast did you find you got double/triple province up?

You can do that already with Workshop/etc (which I've done ).

Altar hits at 5, workshop hits at 3 thats a 2 highway/bridge slow down.

No...  at 4...  it's only 1 lower.

Fair enough thats not too bad, my experience with altar was that I was so far ahead that I could afford to kill some of my provinces for more provinces to keep em coming (once I had 5)

[Loschmidt]

Pure Speculation

Procession/Hunting Grounds

The problem with Procession is you don't want to play it on your valuable $5 actions and get nothing in return, so having a $6 action help that. Then you don't mind processing your Hunting Grounds late game to draw 8 (8!) cards and also gain a duchy.

[yog-sothothry]

I have played a few games where I went with feodum/rogue strategies, and they are a lot of fun (and seemed reasonably strong). The idea is to trash your feodum's repeatedly for the three silvers and then retrieve them from the trash with the rogues. Cycle and repeat, then start buying provinces when the concentration of silver in your deck gets high enough. This also works with Graverobber, and putting the feodum on your deck isn't even much of a disadvantage, since it gives you a chance to trash it again right away.

This strategy really takes off if you combine it with rats. The problem with rats is that if you play it too often the concentration of rats in your deck becomes unmanagable. When you trash a feodum, though, you add 4 cards to your deck, only one of which is rats, so you keep the purportion of rats more balanced. This lets you keep buying feodums and rogues, and not have to keep picking up trashers with your buys to keep the cycle going.

If anyone else has played/plays this strategy, I'd love to hear some thoughts on how it might be optimized. When should you stop trashing feodums, or start buying provinces or duchys, for example? Not sure how its best to do it, but its a lot of fun to play around with.

[kn1tt3r]

Rats/Watchtower

This is quite a decent opening, at least if you have some other trasher available to get rid of the surplus Rats cards. If you manage to draw them together, Rats is like a Lab that trashes a card (play Rats, trash the gained Rats with Watchtower, draw another card). Together with any TFB on the board that can handle the Rats you couldn't trash with Watchtower, this might work out well (you might want more than one Watchtower), but I still don't know if any of those Rats shenanigans in general are worth the effort...

[WheresMyElephant]

really

Rats is like a Lab that trashes a card (play Rats, trash the gained Rats with Watchtower, draw another card).

Have you played this? I've been very curious to know how it works out.

The part you didn't mention is that unless the card you draw from Rats is an Action card, it might not matter, because Watchtower could have drawn that card anyway. (I've started to suspect this is why WT's Action is what it is: it antisynergizes with cards-for-trashing to stop these interactions from potentially being overpowered.) Though of course if you would rather avoid playing WT as an Action, the bonus card is real; it might even be what allows you to have a good turn without playing the WT.

To put it another way, how does this compare with WT/Upgrade? Many times this will give the exact same results, but sometimes it also gives you shiny new topdecked Silver which Watchtower can immediately draw! And still it's not really a power combo in my mind. (Granted, of course, it's a $5 card and you can't play this as an opener.)

[werothegreat]

Rebuild/Tunnel

Get a Rebuild as fast as possible.  Turn your starting Estates into Tunnels, and every time you play Rebuild, name Tunnel.  If the only Victory cards in your deck are Tunnels, Rebuild will cycle through your entire deck, hitting every last one of them, netting you a metric ton of Gold.  Once you're getting at least 3 Gold in hand per turn, start buying Provinces, maybe Rebuilding some of those Tunnels into Duchies.

P.S. Haven't tried this yet.

[kn1tt3r]

really

Rats is like a Lab that trashes a card (play Rats, trash the gained Rats with Watchtower, draw another card).

Have you played this? I've been very curious to know how it works out.

The part you didn't mention is that unless the card you draw from Rats is an Action card, it might not matter, because Watchtower could have drawn that card anyway. (I've started to suspect this is why WT's Action is what it is: it antisynergizes with cards-for-trashing to stop these interactions from potentially being overpowered.) Though of course if you would rather avoid playing WT as an Action, the bonus card is real; it might even be what allows you to have a good turn without playing the WT.

To put it another way, how does this compare with WT/Upgrade? Many times this will give the exact same results, but sometimes it also gives you shiny new topdecked Silver which Watchtower can immediately draw! And still it's not really a power combo in my mind. (Granted, of course, it's a $5 card and you can't play this as an opener.)

I have played it, but it's quite hard to say if it's worth it or not. Many times it's probably better to just ignore Rats.

As for the next part, you're right that it's the same in terms of the number of cards you end up in hand, but it still a bit different. Without the extra Rats card you would draw 3 cards terminally with Watchtower, with the extra card you only have a terminal draw of two (for an intial 5 cards hand) after the non-terminal carddraw of 1. That's probably also one difference to the Upgrade-Combo (plus Upgrade costs $5). The other major difference of course are the Rats you get when you don't have a Watchtower in hand. If there is a way to get rid of those for some benefit, it's possibly better, otherwise it's worse.

[yog-sothothry]

Masquerade/market square:

This combo can get you a flood of gold very very quickly. You open masquerade and market square, then add a second masquerade and a second market square on the next reshuffle. Pick up a few more market squares as you go, then switch to buying provinces and using the +buys of the market squares to pick up duchy's or estates. What makes this combo so powerful is that the masquerade both allows you to trash cards and draw your market squares. Plus, the trashing means that even as your deck fills with gold you can still connect your market squares with you masquerades pretty reliably. I played this combo and it seems like it is very fast, as fast as most tunnel strategies with the added benefits of trashing and +buys.

[Jorbles]

Pure Speculation

Procession/Hunting Grounds

The problem with Procession is you don't want to play it on your valuable $5 actions and get nothing in return, so having a $6 action help that. Then you don't mind processing your Hunting Grounds late game to draw 8 (8!) cards and also gain a duchy.

I've done this one and it seems fairly effective. Also it works well with a decent $5 on the board. You get to play Procession on the $5 knowing you'll get to replace with with a Hunting Grounds, which you later trash to draw 8 and gain 3 points.