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[mischiefmaker]

TL; DR: I'm an idiot. This isn't a real thing. Look, a picture!

It's usually pretty hard to repeatedly Pillage your opponent -- Pillage trashes itself, and it also clogs up your deck with Spoils, making it harder to get to the Pillages that are in your deck.

We can solve that problem with Graverobber, which not only fetches Pillage from the trash, but also puts it back on top of your deck, for easy access the following turn. But we've only replaced our problem, since now we have to get repeated access to the Graverobber.

Finishing off the pin is King's Court-Scheme, which gives us four things we need: 1, a source of extra actions so that we can play both Pillage and Graverobber; 2, a way to put the Graverobbers on top of the deck so that we can repeatedly get the Pillages, 3, a way to ensure that all the Spoils we're getting from repeatedly Pillaging don't stop us from playing the pin, 4, a way to draw those Spoils so that we can actually do something once our opponent is pinned.

The actual pin:
 - Draw KC-KC-Scheme-Scheme-Scheme.
 - Play KC on KC
  - on Scheme, drawing KC-Graverobber-Scheme
  - on Scheme, drawing Scheme-Pillage-Pillage
  - on KC
    - on Pillage, discarding your opponent's best 3 cards
    - on Pillage, discarding your opponent's remaining cards
    - on Graverobber, returning 2 Pillages and some other action to the top of your deck
 - play Scheme 3x, drawing three cards

Do whatever you want since your opponent has no cards. Often those three cards will be enough to get you another KC or Scheme, in which case eventually you'll be able to extend your turn to KC a Scheme and draw more non-pin cards; or those three cards will all be Spoils, so you can buy Province, or your opponent will just do this:



Otherwise, you've KC'd scheme twice and played it three times. Your deck already has 2 Pillages on top from the Graverobbers; now clean up and put Scheme, Scheme, Graverobber, KC, 3 Schemes, and 2 KC on top, in that order. Rinse and repeat; hooray! Now your friend hates Dominion!
 
You might say that this combo is too slow, and on some boards you might be right. Playing it solo, I was able to Pillage my imaginary opponent twice during turns 7-10, and then was able to Pillage every turn starting on 11-12, with the pin coming on turn 16-17. Turn 16-17 is obviously pretty late in the game, but here's the thing: it's pretty damn hard to buy a Province if you're getting Pillaged every turn. I tried it with Smithy-BM and even when I timed it so that I got Pillaged on the best possible turns 7-10, I never got more than 4 Provinces by turn 16 (and keep in mind that the pinner can buy Duchies once the pin is in place). I encourage you to try your favorite combo solo and see how effective it is when you lose your best card every turn from turn 12 on, knowing you will have no cards starting turn 17.

Now obviously a 4-card combo is going to come up roughly never. But it's worth knowing about. And playing through it really helped illustrate the point that getting Pillaged every turn is freaking rough -- there's probably quite a few boards that will have Pillage and Graverobber or Rogue and will allow you to do some weaker variant of the pin, not to mention multiplayer games where you might get Pillaged by multiple opponents.

[Dsell]

I'm just popping in here to say that that is an AWESOME gif.

[ftl]

Pillage only affects opponents with 5 or more cards in hand.

[michaeljb]

I do not think Pillage works the way you think it works.

[Dsell]

Yep, they're right. Also, while that .gif is seriously awesomely awesome, I don't think it's a real thing at all. No space in front of the one guy and there's dice on the table?

[KingsSkort]

You can just do this with Militia! It discards twice as fast and gives you +$2 per play to boot.

[shMerker]

Yeah but with Militia it's not a pin.

[jomini]

A workable-ish pin with pillage would have to be something like Kc/Sch/Pillage/B-crat/Grvr. Play out Kc -> Sch to draw all needed cards and setup the next turn. Then pillage away their draw (e.g. Sch), follow this up with 3 plays of B-crat (any green your opponent has goes onto top deck), and then Grvr to put back the Pillages. As long as you can keep them from playing draw and they have 3 green in deck, you can eventually pin them.

The down shot is that you need a whole slew of power cards that will make it hard to setup before the game is effectively over (as this pin doesn't destroy opponent points like masq you have to win before they buy half +1 of the VP).


Which, when you get down to it, is going to ruin just about any graverobber based pin. Kc/Grvr can give you a quick 3 province turn or a 1-2 province turn with your fodder (other grvr's say) on top for another go.

[brokoli]

Translation : Sch = Scheme, Grvr = Graverobber ?

[jomini]

Translation : Sch = Scheme, Grvr = Graverobber ?

Yep

[mischiefmaker]

Well shoot. Totally did not see the "5 or more" clause. That's embarrassing. I blame not having Isotropic to play solitaire games.

Uh...so yeah, ignore everything except the pretty (possibly faked) picture. Well, and the note about getting Pillaged once every turn, that's still pretty rough.

[werothegreat]

All you need is a hand of KC, Scheme, Graverobber, Pillage and something else.  KC the Scheme to make sure you have KC, Scheme and Graverobber on your deck, then play Pillage, then Graverob the Pillage to the top of your deck.

The way to make this more workable would be to get Council Room in there.  KC-KC-KC-Scheme-Scheme-Council Room-Pillage-X, then play Graverobber.  Then, Pillage will knock out the best three cards out of an 8 card hand, leaving your opponent with shit.

[Cuzz]

Yep, they're right. Also, while that .gif is seriously awesomely awesome, I don't think it's a real thing at all. No space in front of the one guy and there's dice on the table?

I knew I recognized that gif.

[dondon151]

You could throw in a Militia or a Ghost Ship after the Pillage just to be a little meaner. I'd think that would very definitely be a virtual pin against most decks.

[Loschmidt]

You could throw in a Militia or a Ghost Ship after the Pillage just to be a little meaner. I'd think that would very definitely be a virtual pin against most decks.

Exactly, but honestly  is the extra attack support even necessary? A reliable Pillage every turn will surely rip apart most engines and slow down BM drastically.

[Lekkit]

Yep, they're right. Also, while that .gif is seriously awesomely awesome, I don't think it's a real thing at all. No space in front of the one guy and there's dice on the table?

I knew I recognized that gif.

That's because Francis is funny to people who frequent game stores where gamers hang out. Because Francis is everything that can be annoying about "that kind of people".

[Octo]

A reliable Pillage every turn will surely rip apart most engines and slow down BM drastically.

The trouble with a Pillage every turn is that if you use all 5 cards to work the magic you're not actually getting yourself anywhere, you're just putting your own game on hold while the other player can still progress, just slower. You need something else in there to let you actually buy better things than your opponent who, if they have any sense, will just buy a pillage themselves and screw your plan up that you spent all game building. Edit - then again, you can always pillage their pillage first....

[werothegreat]

A reliable Pillage every turn will surely rip apart most engines and slow down BM drastically.

The trouble with a Pillage every turn is that if you use all 5 cards to work the magic you're not actually getting yourself anywhere, you're just putting your own game on hold while the other player can still progress, just slower. You need something else in there to let you actually buy better things than your opponent who, if they have any sense, will just buy a pillage themselves and screw your plan up that you spent all game building. Edit - then again, you can always pillage their pillage first....

Pillage gives you Spoils.  Draw a few of those, and you can snag a Province while preparing Pillage again.  If you play Pillage every turn, you might just get the entire Spoils pile in your deck.

[Octo]

Bloody hell, of course. Oops.