http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201211/08/game-20121108-173745-9b0ccae8.htmlSo Tactician and Vault are out, time to party hard, right?
Well - that's what I thought to start out, too. Don't even really know what I planned to do with the Forge initially, I think it was supposed to be some light trashing just to guarantee drawing every turn (because missing the Tac is a pain).
But then I started thinking. There are no Villages or draw cards here. Even if I hadn't over-trashed slightly, the best I can get from Vault is $9 (10 card start, draw 2 with Vault, for net 11 in hand, and I need to reserve the Tac and 1 other card), and it's a Colony game. (Later, it occurred to me that adding some Lighthouses might be able to fix this, but it still sounds not quite reliable.) Plus, incoming Victory cards add an increasing chance of the engine breaking. Which is not really catastrophic, but meh.
Fortunately, the Tactician setup also meant a big hand for Forge. So I switched gears completely, and forged aggressively for Gold and Platinum. The Upgrade I got on turn 9 when I drew my Tac dead with the Vault (I really couldn't think of anything better - I guess Lighthouse is better if you're really going to commit to the strategy! Or, you know, Duchy...) turned out to give me a couple of Golds, and suddenly I had a ridiculous money density, plus the ability to Forge Colony->Colony to end the game quickly while ahead.
So there you go. Normally, I suppose completely changing your strategy in mid-stream is a recipe for disaster, but here I somehow managed to change from a double-Tac engine to basically BM+X and still pull it off.
The opponent's idea, of using single-Tac to build big hands and collide TM, then take Banks, seems pretty solid to me. Although once he gets the 4 Golds I honestly think he's better off just playing straight BM, and Upgrading Tac->Gold like I did; in which case it also makes sense to trash Copper and ignore Bank. The thing is, 2 Colonies every 2 turns isn't really any better then 1 Colony every turn, and there isn't any extra +Buy to take advantage of big hand-Bank megabucks. Maybe each player could add a Margrave, too, just for the attack (although there's some risk of terminal collision).
