your opponent's outpost + first turn advantage combine to give him 4 extra turns compared to you. wharf ensures that the outpost hands aren't in any significant way worse than normal ones. so it's going to be very hard to overcome that. i think that's the punchline here-- the outpost really helps.
i think i like the early forge, although it's less useful in a wharf game (sometimes i even skip chapel in a wharf game!) your turn five draw is unfortunate, but not game breaking -- i think i agree with your decision, although cursing your forge-luck and buying a wharf is another reasonable alternative. i don't understand why you only kill two coppers when you draw it with five coppers -- i guess because you are worried that if you kill the rest your deck only has one silver and two coppers. i think i would take that risk, because with wharf around you should be drawing your money and at least buying back silver (you also still have baron as a money producer).
