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[Beyond Awesome]

In BM, buy Harem. In Engine, buy Nobles. The biggest mistake I see many players make is purchasing Nobles over Harem on BM boards. Almost every beginner does this.

[AJD]

In BM, buy Harem. In Engine, buy Nobles. The biggest mistake I see many players make is purchasing Nobles over Harem on BM boards. Almost every beginner does this.

...In the same way buying Smithy over Silver is a mistake on BM boards? 

[Schneau]

In BM, buy Harem. In Engine, buy Nobles. The biggest mistake I see many players make is purchasing Nobles over Harem on BM boards. Almost every beginner does this.

...In the same way buying Smithy over Silver is a mistake on BM boards? 

It probably isn't a BM board if you don't already have your +draw handled by the time you hit $6. At that point it's probably a mistake to buy a Smithy over a Silver, so, yes.

[Mic Qsenoch]

The thing I've noticed about Nobles is that you can't let your opponent get 6 or more of them.
So if he starts dipping into them, just sigh and pick up 3 or 4 yourself.

With 6 or more they tend to turn into labs and that's bad.

I'll let my opponents pay $12 over two buys for a single inconsistent lab any time they want.

[Polk5440]

Gold and Silver

Buy enough of them. All the Smithies and Villages in the world won't help if you can't ever buy a Province at the end of your turn.

Gold and Silver

Don't buy too many of them. Do your actions give you enough money? Are you trying to draw your whole deck? Maybe an action (or two) would be better for your deck than Silver or Gold.

Is the game about to end? Buy VP. Any VP. Not Gold. It's how you win.

[Kahryl]

My rule of thumb with Hoard is if I would buy the "next tier" up of VP without Hoard, I'll buy this tier with Hoard. So, almost always Duchies, and only Estates if I'd buy naked Duchies.

[Davio]

Hunting Party

This card works best if you have relatively few unique cards in your deck, because this means you will hit the unique ones you do have much more often. So don't spend that extra $2 or $3 on a Pawn or Great Hall, just because you can. That single Great Hall may be the reason you didn't skip everything until you hit your Mountebank.

1 Gold + 1 Silver +1 Copper +1 terminal providing at least $2 (Mountebank, Monument, Horse Traders, Mandarin, etc..) = Province

Beware of cantrips and make sure you play them before your last Hunting Party, otherwise you'll trigger a reshuffle with all of the skipped cards (most likely Coppers and Estates).

[Drab Emordnilap]

1 Gold + 1 Silver +1 Copper +1 terminal providing at least $2 (Mountebank, Monument, Horse Traders, Mandarin, etc..) = Province

Or even non-terminal. I've done Hunting Party stacks with Bank, Royal Seal, Harem, Festival, and even Quarry. (Quarry's not so great, buy hey, what are the odds I won't get a second copper naturally somewhere along the way?)

Also, Counting House. With Counting House as your terminal, you don't even need to buy the Gold.

[gman314]

In BM, buy Harem. In Engine, buy Nobles. The biggest mistake I see many players make is purchasing Nobles over Harem on BM boards. Almost every beginner does this.

I recently won a Silk Roads game by going for Harem instead of Nobles. (With multiple buys available.)

[HiveMindEmulator]

I agree with the OP with regards to Hoard. People should not autobuy green with Hoard in play. Particularly in the middle parts of the game, it's often much better to take Gold or Hoard (or $5 action) instead of Duchy + Gold. People tend to start greening too early with Hoard.

And just because your deck isn't ready for Duchies and Estates yet doesn't mean you shouldn't have gotten Hoard. Sometimes draws just fall against you and you have less than $8 with your Hoard. That doesn't mean it's time to dip for Duchies, and it doesn't mean buying the Hoard was a mistake.

I think the amount of times your deck can tolerate Prov+Gold but can't tolerate Duchy+Gold are quite few. If you're still interested in buying actions or Gold, then it really doesn't make much sense to have bought a Hoard last shuffle. You should have bought that action or Gold instead of the Hoard, and then you could have used them on this turn to buy the Hoard. I think that Hoards should generally be acquired on the last shuffle before you want to start greening.

Nobles can be useful, but they are not the linchpin of a deck. They are nice for smoothing out variance in Action+Terminal Draw decks that are built around other cards, but if they are the core of your engine, it will put-put along at a snail's pace. The draw is better when you have cards worth drawing, so pick up a Gold (or three) before your first Nobles. The extra purchasing power will probably result in you tying or winning the Nobles split anyways.

I agree with most of the rest of your post, but I don't think this is true. Nobles can be the primary focus of your deck a lot of the time. You don't want to use them as a village (trying to use Nobles as a village IS a beginner trap), but they function as ably as most other sources of +cards. And the extra VPs can make up for the slowness of building the engine. You do of course need some way of being able to afford the Nobles, but THREE Golds is way overdoing it. Usually a couple Silvers and money from actions is good enough.

[jaybeez]

Oh, here's a good one that I had to explain to a friend recently: if your opponent buys a Curser, buying Moats will not help you win.  Not that you should never buy Moat, but only buying Moat as your response to a Cursing attack is just not going to cut it.  I find that new players often struggle with the concept that sometimes Moat isn't actually very good at protecting you.  Especially in two-player.  And their misunderstanding of Moat can prevent them (or delay them) from realizing that often the best way to keep Curses out of your deck is to get them into your opponent's deck.

[Schneau]

Also, Counting House. With Counting House as your terminal, you don't even need to buy the Gold.

Why have I never heard this mentioned before?? Is this legit? Does it beat HP + other simple terminal Silver, like Woodcutter? If so, I'm really disappointed that this combo hasn't been mentioned in either the HP or Counting House articles!

[RichardNixon]

Also, Counting House. With Counting House as your terminal, you don't even need to buy the Gold.

Why have I never heard this mentioned before?? Is this legit? Does it beat HP + other simple terminal Silver, like Woodcutter? If so, I'm really disappointed that this combo hasn't been mentioned in either the HP or Counting House articles!

This is pretty awesome, as long as you get your deck into the discard it replaces the terminal silver AND the gold. I got 5 provinces by turn 12 on a particularly lucky playthrough of it.

[Schneau]

Also, Counting House. With Counting House as your terminal, you don't even need to buy the Gold.

Why have I never heard this mentioned before?? Is this legit? Does it beat HP + other simple terminal Silver, like Woodcutter? If so, I'm really disappointed that this combo hasn't been mentioned in either the HP or Counting House articles!

A quick simulation suggests that HP + CH isn't that great. But, Geronimoo's simulator kept crashing for me, so I don't know if there are better parameters.

[Kuildeous]

Oh, here's a good one that I had to explain to a friend recently: if your opponent buys a Curser, buying Moats will not help you win.  Not that you should never buy Moat, but only buying Moat as your response to a Cursing attack is just not going to cut it.

An excellent point.

I remember the old days of Dominion where the response to getting hit by an attack (any attack; not just cursers) was, "I clearly don't have enough Moats to deflect attacks, so I'll use my 2 Buys to get two more Moats!"

I see this with newbies too. I'd like to mention that they don't need so many Moats, but that could be construed by the newbie as a trick to screw them over. It depends on whether the newbie knows me or not. I don't want to give good advice and then be accused of sabotaging his play if I do trounce him. After the game, I would point it out, though that then leads the newbie to possibly accuse me of withholding information so I can win. As long as I get the advice in there somewhere, I'm good.

[HiveMindEmulator]

Also, Counting House. With Counting House as your terminal, you don't even need to buy the Gold.

Why have I never heard this mentioned before?? Is this legit? Does it beat HP + other simple terminal Silver, like Woodcutter? If so, I'm really disappointed that this combo hasn't been mentioned in either the HP or Counting House articles!

This is pretty awesome, as long as you get your deck into the discard it replaces the terminal silver AND the gold. I got 5 provinces by turn 12 on a particularly lucky playthrough of it.

The thing is, since it costs $5, you can't usually buy it at the outset like the $4 terminal Silvers, so it's really just replacing the Gold, while you're replacing the terminal Silver with another Silver. So it's not really any faster. Plus you actually have to have enough HPs to get most of your deck into the discard, so can't start buying Provinces as quickly as with other terminals. And the Counting House doesn't add any other benefits that you'd get from that other terminal Silver. Of course, if you make it a Colony game, it's a different story since you will actually be able to use the excess money provided by Counting House.

[chwhite]

I think the really interesting comparison is between Festival and other terminal Silvers at the $3/$4/$5 price point.

Agreed. If I hit $5 and was going to be buying Silver anyways, I'll take Festival over Silver unless my game plan is something like Smithy-BM or Envoy-BM. However, in such a deck, I'll generally have something like Militia, Monument, Haggler, Jester, Mountebank or even Fortune Teller or Chancellor which will take a terminal Silver spot.

The other comparison point for Festival is some of the alt-treasures at $5. I will typically take Festival over Contraband, but Venture wins pretty much any day and Royal Seal comes close. Cache is also a good choice at this price range.

Well, how are you comparing Festival to the $5 alt-treasures?  If you're comparing them in a vacuum over the entire range of possible boards, I'll frequently take Festival over Venture and almost always over all the others, because most boards (especially boards with Festival) will have some engine potential that wants the +2 Actions and/or the +Buy.

If you're limiting your analysis to Big Money-favoring setups, then I'd agree Venture is certainly superior.  But the others are all pretty mediocre even then, and I'd often prefer Festival, even if for just the +Buy, over the Seal or Cache.

[Brando Commando]

Trade Route

I see newbies buy this, then buy an estate to power it up. I always assumed this was wrong, but I'm not positive.

[() | (_) ^/]

Trade Route

I see newbies buy this, then buy an estate to power it up. I always assumed this was wrong, but I'm not positive.

I've assumed the same.

[Kuildeous]

Trade Route

I see newbies buy this, then buy an estate to power it up. I always assumed this was wrong, but I'm not positive.

Well, I'd argue it's not very efficient. After all, your opponents could then by Trade Route and benefit from it too, but it's you that has the extra garbage in your deck. At least if you buy a Great Hall or Island, then it's not a wasted buy (aside from whether or not a Silver is better).

Trade Route is a pretty weak trasher, so buying it for that seems like a generally poor move. Getting that Estate makes it a weak trasher that's at least worth a copper, but I don't know if it's worth it.

[jonts26]

The thing I've noticed about Nobles is that you can't let your opponent get 6 or more of them.
So if he starts dipping into them, just sigh and pick up 3 or 4 yourself.

With 6 or more they tend to turn into labs and that's bad.

Meh, it takes two nobles colliding to equal one lab. 6 Nobles is 3 labs, so really not that big a deal. The bigger deal is the points really. 6 nobles is 2 provinces. And they aren't dead cards. But nobles are really their best when you have a village already. Using them for +3 cards and then only +2 when you have to is much more powerful.

[flies]

But nobles are really their best when you have a village already. Using them for +3 cards and then only +2 when you have to is much more powerful.

+1

[Beyond Awesome]

The thing I've noticed about Nobles is that you can't let your opponent get 6 or more of them.
So if he starts dipping into them, just sigh and pick up 3 or 4 yourself.

With 6 or more they tend to turn into labs and that's bad.

Meh, it takes two nobles colliding to equal one lab. 6 Nobles is 3 labs, so really not that big a deal. The bigger deal is the points really. 6 nobles is 2 provinces. And they aren't dead cards. But nobles are really their best when you have a village already. Using them for +3 cards and then only +2 when you have to is much more powerful.

2 Nobles is actually 2 labs. First is two actions. Second is three cards. You are left with one action remaining and three cards which is the same as playing 2 labs. So, 6 Nobles is six labs assuming you get them to match up.

[jonts26]

The thing I've noticed about Nobles is that you can't let your opponent get 6 or more of them.
So if he starts dipping into them, just sigh and pick up 3 or 4 yourself.

With 6 or more they tend to turn into labs and that's bad.

Meh, it takes two nobles colliding to equal one lab. 6 Nobles is 3 labs, so really not that big a deal. The bigger deal is the points really. 6 nobles is 2 provinces. And they aren't dead cards. But nobles are really their best when you have a village already. Using them for +3 cards and then only +2 when you have to is much more powerful.

2 Nobles is actually 2 labs. First is two actions. Second is three cards. You are left with one action remaining and three cards which is the same as playing 2 labs. So, 6 Nobles is six labs assuming you get them to match up.

Playing 2 nobles for +2 action/+3 cards gives you a hand size of 6. Used two cards to get three. That's one lab.

[Powerman]

The thing I've noticed about Nobles is that you can't let your opponent get 6 or more of them.
So if he starts dipping into them, just sigh and pick up 3 or 4 yourself.

With 6 or more they tend to turn into labs and that's bad.

Meh, it takes two nobles colliding to equal one lab. 6 Nobles is 3 labs, so really not that big a deal. The bigger deal is the points really. 6 nobles is 2 provinces. And they aren't dead cards. But nobles are really their best when you have a village already. Using them for +3 cards and then only +2 when you have to is much more powerful.

2 Nobles is actually 2 labs. First is two actions. Second is three cards. You are left with one action remaining and three cards which is the same as playing 2 labs. So, 6 Nobles is six labs assuming you get them to match up.

No, 2 Nobles is actually 1 lab.  First is two actions.  Second is three cards.  You are left with one action remaining and a 6 card hand which is the same as playing 1 lab.  So, 6 Nobles is three labs assuming you get them to match up.