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[Davio]

I can't remember exactly whether this has been done before, but with DA every puzzle deserves to be looked at again.

Anyway, what is the maximum hand size a player can have before he or she starts his or her own turn.
Please note that duration cards and a card like Horse Traders act at the beginning (after the start) of a player's turn and thus do not count.

My current best: 167

I don't know the Possession-Outpost combo in full detail and if something like that gives you infinite cards, please disregard Possession.
In fact, just don't use Possession, it's messy.

[O]

How many players? Assuming two. if it's one player its 5 I believe 

Torturer = 10 curses
Scrying pool = draw everything TR/Procession/Graverobber shenanigans on Council Room, Governor. Then KC all 10 governors and council rooms, play outpost. Repeat.

(10 curses + 2(turns)*(40(Procession on Gov/CR)+60(KC on Gov/CR)) + 5 original cards) = 215

[Davio]

It's 2p.

My solution has Cultist, Rats, Overgrown Estate and Fortress as well, but as always, I'm bad at the details.

[Schlippy]

I get to 204 without Grave robbers. :<

05: Starting Hand Size
35: 10 King's Courted Council Rooms (+30)
39: 4 Swindlers trashing 4 Overgrown estates (that were passed to you via Masquerade in a 4 Player game) from the top of your deck. (+4)
89: 15 Throne Roomed/Processioned Saboteurs/Knights trashing 10 Cultists and from your deck (+30) and 20 Rats from your deck (+20)
119: 10 King's Courted Governors (+30)
124: 5 Throne Roomed Torturers and 5 single Torturers and you take 12 Curses in hand (+15)
Outpost played
154: 10 King's Courted Governors (+30)
184: 10 King's Courted Council Rooms (+30)
204: 10 Throne Roomed Torturers (+20)

:]

[Davio]

Your solution is illegal, Schlippy, as the game would've already ended on piles.

[loppo]

Wow, a Kingdom with 50 Kings Courts. The idea is cool, but i think you have to trim some actions to make it legal.

[Davio]

Wow, a Kingdom with 50 Kings Courts. The idea is cool, but i think you have to trim some actions to make it legal.

As I had worked it out, 10 KC's in a row can triple 19 action cards.

If you TR the first one in the chain, you can triple 20 action cards.

[O]

and 10 curses for 2p.

but hitting overgrown estates increases my solution by 2!

[Schlippy]

Your solution is illegal, Schlippy, as the game would've already ended on piles.

Well, I haven't thought about that. That decreases my numbers by quite a bit. :/

[ghostofmars]

A conservative estimate is >300 using the following idea

Player 1: play Ambassador, return Cultist
Player 2: reveal Watchtower, trash Cultist
Player 1: play Graverobber or Rogue (gain Cultist)
net result: +3 Cards

So how often can this idea be executed? According to this thread a single action can be played >100 times, so a conservative estimate is that two actions can be played 50x each
50 x 3(per execution of the script) x 2(outpost) = 300

[Davio]

I had thought about Graverobber, but no concrete idea how to implement it.

DA just boils my brain into a fritz when I try to put 2 or more new cards together.

[wuthefwasthat]

A conservative estimate is >300 using the following idea

Nice idea!  Seems likely to be in the optimal solution. 

But unless I'm missing something (which wouldn't surprise me, as you came up with many of the ideas of that thread in the first place), the conservative estimate doesn't obviously hold.  A big problem is that Graverobber/Rogue is used in the solution in that thread.  Although Graverobber/Rogue can in fact be played many times, it's not clear to me how it would fit with the Ambassadoring.  Furthermore, we have to either break the chain or use some KC/Procession plays to draw the Cultists to Ambassador (which we would do with Torturer/Council Room/Governor).  Thirdly, a minor nitpick - most action cards can only be played 98 times, not quite over 100, as far as we know. 

Also, here's a trick which will improve the solution some (whatever it has gone down to), but isn't sustainable:
P1 plays Saboteur, hitting P2's Cultist.  P2 gains Squire, trashing it with Watchtower, gaining Cultist, and trashing it with Watchtower.  This draws 6 cards. 

You can do a similar trick with (5 Bridges played and) Swindler hitting Squire, but this is better since Saboteur will search for Cultists, and this doesn't take up an extra Kingdom space.

[Dsell]

I believe these can also be improved by having knights/saboteurs/swindlers/rogues(probably not because it's needed to pull things out of the trash) hit fortress, which puts it in the hand.

[zahlman]

Your solution is illegal, Schlippy, as the game would've already ended on piles.

FWIW, all these solutions should also be limited by the number of cards you could have in your deck, given the cards opponent needs to have to make you draw them before your turn...

[ghostofmars]

But unless I'm missing something (which wouldn't surprise me, as you came up with many of the ideas of that thread in the first place), the conservative estimate doesn't obviously hold.  A big problem is that Graverobber/Rogue is used in the solution in that thread.

You are right, I missed that. I would estimate that 50 should be possible nevertheless, I think it is more difficult to insert the necessary drawing.

Here's a way to go to 43x (not even using Procession but ignoring the drawing problem)
TR chain + KC chain for 20x triple and 8x double action = 38x each of (G/R and Amb)
that's 14 cards of each action played (using BoM as Amb), 5x left
=> total 43x

PS:

Ok, I figured out how to go above 50x using Procession:
chain of Pro+KC send 10xKC to trash using 4xProcession giving 17x triple plays
then recovering all KC I can get another 20x triple plays

The disadvantage is, that I need 10x G/R to recover the KC from trash, so I need to send some G/R to trash using Procession to play them more often
idea: KC-Pro-G/Rx3 trashes 3xG/R and recovers 6 Cards -> net gain + 3 Cards

In the end, I think this will be limited by the availability of the Amb, so that I can play the chain "only" 57x times.

Perhaps this could be further improved by sending Amb to trash and recovering them, but I'm to lazy to work out the details.

[GendoIkari]

It's been done; part 2 of this puzzle: http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=1136.0. Of course, that was before Dark Ages. Indeed it can become infinite with Possession.