4 Bishops, 4 Fortresses. 12 points a turn.
The Golden Deck has perfect control. No matter what, you play the same cards in the same order, and produce points at a rate too high for your opponents to catch up. And Golden Decks have always needed the extra Trashing Support. 6 points a turn simply isn't enough when your opponent starts getting Provinces earlier and can keep doing so thanks to your offered trashing.
Throw Fortress in, and the game shifts.
There's the thread about how you can Throne or King's Court Bishops on Fortress for amazingly strong Golden Decks. 12 or 18 points per turn becomes common. We all know how good KC and TR are, though. But you don't actually need either.
In the 4 Bishop 4 Fortress deck, no matter what you draw, you can play 3 Fortresses, then 4 Bishops, and end up with a dead Fortress in hand.
Now you've reduced a 3-card combo to a slightly slower 2-card combo. Nearly every 2-card combo comes up in a real game.
The real questions are the same questions any Mega-turn or Engine deck faces: how much support do you need to run it? Is Ironworks or Workshop necessary? How long can you take to set up if you now suddenly have double the power? What's your cue to begin pushing rather than building perfectly? What happens in the mirror?
I won't pretend to be able to answer, but I will say that this phenomenon will happen more than it first seems, though in miniature. If your deck contains at least 1 Fortress, Bishops, and enough +actions, no matter what else you're doing, you can pull off this combo on the side of a deck which continues to build. The balancing act this causes in a Mirror is extremely delicate, much more so than most engines nowadays. Not Mirroring at all, on most boards, however, will probably mean a loss.
When DA comes out, I'm looking forwards to seeing this pair in a real game or two. Or twelve. And I hope you all are too.
