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[Thisisnotasmile]

14. Laboratory + King's Court/Workshop

My first thought was that there were no cards available for Workshop to gain.  But that would mean Coppers, Silvers, Estates, Curses, and Workshops were gone, at which point the game would be long over.  Then I figured this had to be an attack card, like Thief or Jester, as I saw no other way to gain three cards.  But then I remembered the "You may..." clause on King's Court.  The Workshop is only played once.  Ironworks, gaining an Estate, should do the trick.  Another excellent puzzle.

Anyway, you already mentioned the answer: Thief, gaining 3 Silvers and/or Coppers from 3 other players.

Maybe I'm wrong, but this would be just KC/Workshop (w/o the Lab), wouldn't it...?

KC/Workshop leaves you with 3 cards in hand. Thief leaves you with 4. The Lab compensates for this.

[WanderingWinder]

Except that KC/Workshop takes up 2 cards from your hand, leaving you with only 3 left. Playing the lab bumps it back up to 4, same as if you just played thief
Edit: forgot that there could be a next page and so naturally... ninja'd

[Superdad]

6. Laboratory + Laboratory + Laboratory = ?

This is essentially Minion if you have only minion in your hand. Three labs functions like +4 card, +1 action, which is what minion's cycle with only minion remaining in your hand does.

That works except that one of the rules I had said that you start with five cards in your hand.  I think perhaps that rule is worth scrapping, though.

Indeed. If you must start with 5 cards, you could always have haven'd 4 times prior.

[rinkworks]

No durations can have been played the previous turn, either.  In any case, I'm reconsidering reconsidering the five-card hand rule.  It seems to be an important constraint to guard against otherwise too-common ways to circumvent card count problems, like guided's very good unlimited-draw-pile rule.

[Thisisnotasmile]

Apart from Haven + Haven + Haven + Haven + Minion is not one card, and in fact is more cards than the puzzle is offering in the first place.

[guided]

Well, I'm pleased to see no trivial alternate solutions to #15 yet I'll let it go another day and then offer a bigger hint.

[rinkworks]

So, my solution to #7:

As has been pointed out, this one essentially adds up to a cantrip.  Great Hall, for example, is arguably a correct solution.  But the inclusion of Spy in the puzzle means we ought to be able to come up with a more aesthetically pleasing solution if we can take its behavior into account.  Either we find a single card that, besides being a cantrip, allows us to discard the top card of the deck, OR a cantrip that allows us to know what the top card of the deck is.

Unfortunately, "Spy" itself is a valid answer, which makes this a subpar puzzle.  But it at least has two more interesting answers.  My original answer was Pearl Diver, in a case where the deck consists of two cards.  Playing Pearl Diver lets you draw the first one and peek at the second.  Later, I thought of a second solution:  Wishing Well, with a deck of any size.  It first replaces itself in your hand.  Then you guess the next card incorrectly.  It stays on the deck, but now you know what it is.

[guided]

By the way, I'm thinking the "unlimited deck" rule is too restrictive. It would be better to just say that you're never allowed to attempt to draw from an empty deck. This should be enough to avoid trivial empty-deck solutions while allowing for some other interesting effects.

So for example, even if you have an empty draw and discard pile, you could still play Cellar. You would discard some cards and then draw exactly those cards immediately. The key point is that you never try to draw a card and find no cards to draw.

[rinkworks]

15. Village + Farming Village + Ironworks + Upgrade + Upgrade + Smithy

This is a toughie.

Village + Farming Village results in 5 cards, 3 actions.  Ironworks, gaining something.  Now you have 4 cards, 2 actions (plus whatever Ironworks gave you, but we'll come back to that).  Play two Upgrades on two Coppers, trashing them.  Since the Upgrades are cantrips, you still have 4 cards, 2 actions.  Playing Smithy gets you to 6 cards, 1 action.  That's a Laboratory, except that you've just trashed two Coppers and gained something else.  So that can't be it.  Trading Post comes to mind, but that accounts ONLY for the trashings and gainings, nothing else.

Let's back up to the Upgrades.  I made a decision to trash cards, rather than actually upgrade them, because otherwise, with the Ironworks, we'd be gaining THREE cards, and that clearly can't be the case unless the answer is a stealing attack.  But neither Thief nor Jester fit, so forget that.  But what if the trashings and gainings cancel each other out?  Then we'd have a net zero change to our cards, so maybe it would work out.  It does change the state of the tableau, but this fits with the hints guided gave us.

Proceeding on that basis, we can determine that we must trash exactly two cards (to the Upgrades), which means that the Upgrades and Ironworks combined must gain two cards.  So far so good.  The only way this configuration works is if the Ironworks gives us Card A, then Upgrade #1 turns it into Card B, then Upgrade #2 trashes it.  But wait -- in order for the card gained by Ironworks to be available to the Upgrades, it has to be drawn back into the hand somehow.  That implies that, at the time the first Upgrade is played, there is only one card to draw from.  Alas, that is impossible, because otherwise the Smithy at the end would fail, breaking the "no failed draws" rule.

But!  What if there's a Watchtower in hand, which remains unplayed through the whole sequence?  Sneaky.

So Watchtower puts the card gained by Ironworks on top, and the first Upgrade draws it.  It changes it into something else, and Watchtower butts in a second time to top-deck it.  The second Upgrade draws it and trashes it.

So which plusses do we need from Ironworks?  To recap:  Village + Farming Village = 5 cards, 3 actions.  + Ironworks + Upgrade + Upgrade = 4 cards, 2 actions (plus whatever Ironworks gave us).  Smithy brings us to 6 cards, 1 action.  Again, that's a simple Laboratory, but that still can't be the answer, because Ironworks has to have given us something.

Or is that true?  If we gained a Curse via Ironworks, we'd get no bonus.  But that doesn't work, because Ironworks needs to give us something that the first Upgrade can give us something back for.  A Curse would simply be trashed, leaving nothing for the second Upgrade to feed on.

Well, what other combination of Ironworks bonuses will work?  If we gained an Action card, we'd end on +2 Cards, +2 Actions.  That's a Level 2 City or a Trusty Steed.  Suppose Ironworks gained a Laboratory, the first Upgrade turned it into a Goons, and the second Upgrade trashed the Goons.  That works!

Offhand, I can't think of any other combination of Ironworks bonuses that work here, but I suppose I might be missing something.

Whew.  I hope I didn't miscalculate anywhere.

Edit:  I did.  Laboratory is too expensive for Ironworks to gain.  Ok, suppose the Ironworks gains a Hamlet, Upgrade turns it into a Woodcutter, and the second Upgrade trashes the Woodcutter.  We know, however, that at least one 4-cost card, Ironworks, is on the tableau, so it will have to be the case that its supply pile has run out.

Edit #2:  Actually, we know there are THREE 4-cost cards out:  Farming Village, Ironworks, and Smithy.  They can't all be out.  Unless this is a 5-person game, which I think it must be.  An alternative is to upgrade from 3->4->5, which I think only requires that the Duchy and Upgrade supply piles have been depleted.

[Deadlock39]

Upgrade is a cantrip, but when you play it, you trash a card out of your hand.  This reduces your hand size by 1.  You should be ending up with 4 cards and 1 action, not 6.  Maybe that helps your analysis.

[rinkworks]

Oh, right.

All right, if we wind up with 4 cards, 1 action, plus whatever Ironworks gives us, I suppose we have a wider selection of choices.  In that case, if Ironworks gets us an action card, we're up +2 Actions only, which is a Native Village (taking zero cards off the mat).

Ironworks can't take an Estate except in a 5+ player game (because we need all the 4's to be out), but in that case we'd have 5 cards, 1 action, in which case the answer could be a Great Hall, an inactive Menagerie, a Caravan, and probably other things as well.

I think the only other Victory card that works is Great Hall, which puts us at 5 cards, 2 actions.  That's a Village -- Walled, Worker's, Mining, or vanilla.

For Treasure cards, Ironworks could snag us a Silver or a Loan; I don't think any others work.  In that case, we're at 4 cards, 1 action, and 1 coin.  Maybe I'm blanking, but I don't think any single card gives us that.  Herbalist is close, but it leaves a +Buy unaccounted for.

Anyway, those are my new answers:  any of several plain cantrips and Villages.

[guided]

I think you've got something that works there... but for the purposes of this puzzle, you can assume no supply piles are empty at any point during the solution.

You actually have the tricksiest bit worked out already: an unplayed Watchtower

[Deadlock39]

Well, with only 1 upgrade instead of 2, I think it would be an excellent fit for University.  Ironworks for an action up to 4 cost and top deck with the Watchtower, then play upgrade to turn it into a 5 cost.  I suppose the other upgrade could be used on a copper just to reduce the hand size by one, but that is kind of another primary effect.  That also doesn't account for the Farming Village effect at all.

[guided]

Well, with only 1 upgrade instead of 2, I think it would be an excellent fit for University.  Ironworks for an action up to 4 cost and top deck with the Watchtower, then play upgrade to turn it into a 5 cost.  I suppose the other upgrade could be used on a copper just to reduce the hand size by one, but that is kind of another primary effect.  That also doesn't account for the Farming Village effect at all.

Trashing a Copper definitely counts as an effect since it changes the contents of your deck. But University still works just fine: For example you could gain a Village with Ironworks, then Upgrade it to an Ironworks, then Upgrade that to an Upgrade. So that's one solution, though not the one I had in mind (which has Farming Village do something different from Village).

[guided]

I've thought of another unexpected #15 solution: Ironworks gains an Estate, which is Upgraded twice to an Island. Equivalent to playing a single Ironworks, gaining an Island. But this also does not account for Farming Village


To be sure, even if you two haven't found my original solution yet, finding the Watchtower angle and by extension the entirely non-trivial University solution is impressive.

[Deadlock39]

Well, I suppose you could gain a $3 action card with Ironworks to make University work, but I don't like that answer as much because the sequence could get you up to a $6 card if you started with a $4.  I think University would fit much better removing an Upgrade and changing the Farming Village to a Native Village, drawing no cards from the mat.

I don't know where to go on the original problem from here.  I can't think of any other cards that would cycle VP/Curse cards.   I also assume at this point that we are Upgrading the Ironworks'ed card twice getting us any card that costs up to $6.  Something like gaining a Gold comes to mind, but that still isn't making any sense to me.

I'll try my hand at creating one of these puzzles.  It is probably pretty easy.

16. Upgrade + Upgrade + Saboteur

[guided]

Remake

[guided]

Well, I suppose you could gain a $3 action card with Ironworks to make University work, but I don't like that answer as much because the sequence could get you up to a $6 card if you started with a $4.

Man, who cares? The object of these puzzles is not to find the best possible thing you could do with the sequence of cards played and then match that to some single card. Certainly that's not the model followed by a lot of the solutions to date.

[Deadlock39]

It was as easy as I expected I see.   I got the idea from your puzzle, so I figured I might as well post it.

Man, who cares? The object of these puzzles is not to find the best possible thing you could do with the sequence of cards played and then match that to some single card. Certainly that's not the model followed by a lot of the solutions to date.

You are right.  I guess I was just trying to think of what you would make the puzzle if you were actually trying to get people to guess University.  It doesn't need to be optimal, but it should at least be as close as you can get I think.

[Deadlock39]

I just realized this could be kind of close to Lookout, but there is too much to account for.  The Farming Village discards a card.  The deduced Watchtower can top deck a card, and we can trash a card.  It doesn't really work out at all, but it is kind of close.  We end up with one too many actions, cards or coins from Ironworks no matter what.

[guided]

Hint for Deadlock39 following on his disappointment with the University solution: My solution works with slight modifications if you remove one of the Upgrades, replace Smithy with Moat, and presume the inclusion of another as-of-yet unmentioned Supply pile that is not necessary for my original solution. I included a second Upgrade mainly because it hugely reduces the possibility of trivial solutions, but also because it doesn't require that other Supply pile.

[Deadlock39]

I think I just figured this out, so I am going to post my answer here without reading your hint.  I am editing this right now to add my answer.

Answer:
Tournament.

The Farming Village reveals and discards a Province.
Ironworks for a Silver, gaining $1, and top decking it with Watchtower.
Upgrade, drawing Silver, gaining a $4 card (we could say Ironworks), top decking it with Watchtower.
Upgrade, drawing Ironworks, gaining a Duchy, top decking it with Watchtower.
Draw three cards with Smithy to finish with 4 cards (including the Duchy you gained), 1 action and $1, and a discarded Province.

This matches the state of playing Tournament, getting +1 action, discarding a Province (opponent does not reveal one), gaining a Duchy on the deck, and then gaining +1 card +$1.


Edit after reading the most recent hint:
The other supply pile in your most recent hint would have to be Quarry or Talisman to replace the Silver.

[guided]

Exactly the solution I had in mind! 

Of note, you've discarded a Province and finished with the gained Duchy in hand. Bravo.

Edit after reading the most recent hint:
The other supply pile in your most recent hint would have to be Quarry or Talisman to replace the Silver.

Yyyyyyyyyyyyyep.

[rinkworks]

Wow.  That is fantastic.  I'm going to take credit for my solution anyhow, but you're right -- there's no question that that solution is elegant beyond compare.  Well done.

[Auroch]

9. Chapel. Start with a hand of 3 NV 2 Mine, Put 2 Mine onto the NV mat, pick them up, then play them. You just Chapeled 0 cards.

You're on the right track, having solved the hardest part of the puzzle, but there's one problem:  If you'd started with 5 cards and played a Chapel to trash 0, you'd be left with four cards in hand.  With your solution, you're left with 0 cards in hand, so there's still a discrepancy there.  You have everything right about how the Native Villages and Mines are played, however.

So have 4 cards on the NV mat to start?