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[verikt]

Develop is a great card, both misused and underrated. It's a mediocre to poor trasher in the early game, not all that useful when there are better trashers, like remake or chapel. I won't talk much about it's trashing abilities except to say that if there's any better trasher don't buy it. But, it has two great abilities. One: it topdecks. Two: It gives you two cards for one. While getting a silver or fishing village topdecked may be no big deal, in games with a nice mix of 4-2 6-4 or 7-5 cards (which are most of them) it very often pays to invest in one early, with an eye on the midgame. In other games, it pays to buy one later on. Although it's not very good in straight big money boards, the things you should be looking at when you see develop are: actions vs. terminals i.e. can I afford another action in my deck? The lower end cards: like, if I develop a silver will I be stuck with an estate I'll need to get rid of? Deck size. Do I need/want more cards in my deck? Can I afford to topdeck whatever combo it is? And what combos are there? I'll list just a few of the possibilities. Develop a gold to kc-any 5 card. (ghost ship, governor, torturer etc.) develop a 5 card to grand market conspirator. develop a silver to baron estate, potion-secret chamber/embargo/ lighthouse in scrying pool or university games or crossroads silk road.  develop a province to platinum bank/forge/kc.
If there are good possibilities, and your deck can afford the topdecking, which is not always the case (sure it's nice to develop something to duchy but if you get it on top next turn you probably won't have enough for the last prov) then the early trashing is an added bonus.
It's a shame councilroom is down, I had a lot of nice develop games there, but if you search my name and develop you can find some here too.

[RD]

I think there's a lot more to be said, but one thing is that it's nice to have a continuous range of flexible cards at various price levels, not just a pair like $4/$6. Developing a $5 into GM/Conspirator sounds great but where are all of those $5s going to come from, when you're filling your deck up with GM/Conspirator? (OK it's not so bad in this specific case, because GM/Conspirator is quite strong and it doesn't clog up your deck; but with other combos this could be an issue.)

On a strong enough Develop combo board, Develop itself can often be worth gaining, so $3 is taken care of. But if you can Develop Conspirator->Inn/Develop, and next turn Develop Inn into Conspirator/GM, and continue in this manner, your engine will can develop extremely very quickly. And it's not even that Inn is such a fantastic addition to this combo (it's not too shabby but it does interfere slightly with Develop's topdecking) but mostly just that it's a remotely tolerable card at the $5 point.

Border Village is good for similar reasons: you can Develop a $5 into a topdecked BV and a Smithy and gain back your $5 (or a different one, like Duchy). Later you happily can turn that BV into a Duchy.

Naturally, there are also combos with a lot of DA cards. Anything with an on-trash bonus will have some fun here, but a few seem to be admirably suited. Developing Feodums gives you an extra Silver and some $5s, either of which can be turned back into Feodum. Rats can be turned very efficiently into $5s by filling your deck with them and topdecking $5/Develop every turn. Catacombs gives you an extra copy of whatever $4 you were Developing into.

[popsofctown]

Tactician Tunnel is fun

[verikt]

So is developing an estate to tunnel when you have a loan in hand

[Morgrim7]

So is KCing-Possession. So is eating fried chicken. So is reading Lord of the Rings. So is visiting Brazil.

[PinkPajamas]

I'll take a stab at writing an article since I do like develop. Keep in mind that I'm not the greatest player ever.

Develop is a very strange card that that ranges from unplayable to decently strong. Develop's major weakness is that it's really hard to make a concrete plan with it since you never really know what you're going to collide it with. It's also really slow since you're trashing a lot of valuable cards now to have valuable cards later. A develop deck doesn't really feel like any other deck either since it morphs your deck into a lot of weird directions where you eventually stumble on provinces with a lot of cards that may or may not work together.

When playing develop, you don't want to be normally trashing coppers with develop (scrying pool being one notable exception) since you'll be basically discarding to 3 cards just to get rid of a single copper. Trashing estates doesn't add a whole lot of value either although it's not terrible.

I've found that develop is almost always playable in a non-colony game with a $7 card and a $4 card. When I see develop on board I always look to see if there's a $7 card before even considering playing develop. Every card above $3 you develop can get you something nice even at a worst case scenario. Developing a $4 card can let you topdeck a develop with a $5 which you develop next turn to get that $4 card back and a $6 card/gold. A $7 card is almost always going to be a worthwhile card to have in your deck anyway and in the greening phase developing it into a province/gold can give you a really nice edge.

Develop works best when there are cards you want to collide that are separated by $2. Tactician/embassy + tunnel, remodel + gold, king's court + $5 action, expand + $5 card, baron + estate, etc. It also works well with village cards since you'll probably be filling your deck with actions anyway. Other trash-for-benefit cards work nicely with develop since not only will you be gaining cards you don't always want with develop, you can always trash away the develop later for something better. You can also topdeck your trash-for-benefit card with the card you want to be trashing enabling some excellent combos.

I've also found that develop doesn't work that well with most alternate VP strategies although they're not terrible. The biggest issue is colliding your develops and alternate VP is going to happen more often which will limit your developing options. Even fairgrounds can be tricky since you can find yourself colliding develops with one-of cards in your deck. Gardens works okay since you do often get an extra card with your develop, but develop doesn't work well with other gardens enablers (massive coppers and develops are bad) and develop alone doesn't bloat your deck that well. Vineyards probably works the best of the VP strategies since you can topdeck potions during your last shuffle, but it requries a very specific board to enable develop over anything else. Develop does work with alternate VP in that it gives you more end-game greening options at different costs such as tunnel, nobles/harem, and sometimes even silk roads or gardens when the board isn't dominant for them.

Develop has a lot of weaknesses. It is pretty weak to a lot of attacks. Discard is going to hurt pretty badly by either making you not play develop or making you only play develop. Curses aren't very good develop targets in the same way that coppers aren't good develop targets. It's also pretty weak with big money since there are a lot of gaps in the costs for money targets and you tend to not want a lot of $7 cards, $4 cards and even $5 cards in a big money deck anyway. Some specific engine strategies don't work very well with develop since most cards you want to have in your deck you want to keep until the game ends and you'll be wanting to buy most of your green on the last reshuffle as to not clog the engine. Develop clogs an engine by topdecking the green and removing crucial engine components.

Strengths:
$7 cards and $4 cards (especially the $7 card) to fill the $3-$8 range
Card combos
Other trash for benefit cards (from moneylender to apprentice to expand)
Villages for action-heavy decks (especially border village)
Scrying Pool

Weaknesses:
No $7 card available
Discard and curse attacks
Colonies (no $10 card exists (yet))
Weak $4 or $5 cards
Big money + terminal boards
Some alternate VP strategies
Specific engine strategies