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[math]

How would you play this board?  Shelters, but no Platinum or Colony.  The board may seem a bit familiar.

Council Room, Counting House, Courtyard, Gardens, Great Hall, King's Court, Laborotory, Library, Market Square, Outpost.

[ftl]

Hm. Interesting. Here are the viable options I see.


Option 1 is Courtyard-BM. Always an option.

Option 2 is a Laboratory engine with KC and outpost. Load up on laboratories, add in a market square for a +buy, end the turn with outpost so you can have a second turn. Use KC to supercharge it so you can draw everything well, and possibly add in a single courtyard to play as your last action of the non-outpost turn to guarantee that your outpost turn starts up with a lab in hand. If you have a spare lab

Things going for the engine: KC, Outpost, and alt-VP with Gardens. Things going against the engine - the +buy is out of the way, since there's no trashing for the Market Square to be activated reliably and no villages to use the CR for draw reliably (until you're already KCing labs). No villages besides KC. No attacks to slow the game down.


Options that are technically there but not really good IMO:
1) Market Square/Gardens and Market Square/Counting House both look like combos but I think would be fairly mediocre compared to BM-courtyard.
2) Engine with terminal draw doesn't really work because the only village is KC, I don't think you can get enough KCs and cantrips to reliably start a turn with KC-cantrip-terminal draw or KC-kc-terminal draw on an outpost turn. Especially with no trashing and no source of money on actions.

So, BM-courtyard or KC-lab-outpost- engine... tough choice. I'm having a hard time envisioning how long the engine would take to come together. The components it needs are probably about 6-8 labs, 1 outpost, 3-5 kcs, a market square, 3-4 extra treasures, and it would probably end with 3 provinces/6-7 duchies/gardens... Idunno, counting like that it seems like the engine would be just a tad too slow to pick everything up, and once it started greening it would sputter on its outpost turns. And you can't really make it a megaturn because there's no virtual coin to KC.

So I would lean courtyard-BM. Get labs on $5 hands, especially if your opponent is going engine too few labs might mess them up.

[SCSN]

Something with lots of Gardens, Market Squares, Great Halls and Coppers.

[Schneau]

The board may seem a bit familiar.

It doesn't seem Familiar at all.

[DG]

I'm guessing that market square + gardens is worse than woodcutter+gardens and a counting house would not rescue it. Courtyard+council room is probably the big money deck you'd play against gardens. I suppose there is another concept deck where you load up with drawing cards and king's courts and an outpost, build a massive deck, then cash in late for gardens. I'm not convinced it would work well though since you need to accumulate too many different cards, there's no trashing, and you need to add more treasures to get any coins.

[GendoIkari]

Hm. Interesting. Here are the viable options I see.


Option 1 is Courtyard-BM. Always an option.

Option 2 is a Laboratory engine with KC and outpost. Load up on laboratories, add in a market square for a +buy, end the turn with outpost so you can have a second turn. Use KC to supercharge it so you can draw everything well, and possibly add in a single courtyard to play as your last action of the non-outpost turn to guarantee that your outpost turn starts up with a lab in hand. If you have a spare lab

Things going for the engine: KC, Outpost, and alt-VP with Gardens. Things going against the engine - the +buy is out of the way, since there's no trashing for the Market Square to be activated reliably and no villages to use the CR for draw reliably (until you're already KCing labs). No villages besides KC. No attacks to slow the game down.


Options that are technically there but not really good IMO:
1) Market Square/Gardens and Market Square/Counting House both look like combos but I think would be fairly mediocre compared to BM-courtyard.
2) Engine with terminal draw doesn't really work because the only village is KC, I don't think you can get enough KCs and cantrips to reliably start a turn with KC-cantrip-terminal draw or KC-kc-terminal draw on an outpost turn. Especially with no trashing and no source of money on actions.

So, BM-courtyard or KC-lab-outpost- engine... tough choice. I'm having a hard time envisioning how long the engine would take to come together. The components it needs are probably about 6-8 labs, 1 outpost, 3-5 kcs, a market square, 3-4 extra treasures, and it would probably end with 3 provinces/6-7 duchies/gardens... Idunno, counting like that it seems like the engine would be just a tad too slow to pick everything up, and once it started greening it would sputter on its outpost turns. And you can't really make it a megaturn because there's no virtual coin to KC.

So I would lean courtyard-BM. Get labs on $5 hands, especially if your opponent is going engine too few labs might mess them up.

Is Courtyard BM better than Council Room BM?

[SCSN]

I'm guessing that market square + gardens is worse than woodcutter+gardens

I'm not sure. The terminal Silver is of course nice, but on the other hand you can chain Market Squares for many +buys, whereas you can play only one Woodcutter.

[ftl]

Is Courtyard BM better than Council Room BM?

Way better, I think. Courtyard BM is really one of the good BM+X options. It's not Jack or Wharf or Ghost Ship or anything, but it's above smithy and council room and those types of things.

[jaybeez]

In the absence of Attacks, Courtyard-BM is very fast.

[dondon151]

I am a huge proponent of engines, but this kingdom falls slightly short in so many ways. A huge number of things could make the engine very strong, but none of them are here.

[LastFootnote]

I'm not saying it's the best strategy, but I'd definitely go for Market Square/Counting House/Gardens.

EDIT: Yeah, don't actually do that. I just played 4 games with this board against Lord Bottington. 3 Losses and 1 Tie later, I cannot in good conscience recommend Counting House here. Goddamn Counting House… Why can't you be good?

EDIT: OK, I finally won one, and it was quite a shut-out, too. It took me a while to get used to buying all the pieces at more or less the right time. Quite a bit of luck is involved too because, you know, Counting House.

[Tables]

I am a huge proponent of engines, but this kingdom falls slightly short in so many ways. A huge number of things could make the engine very strong, but none of them are here.

Considering where the kingdom comes from, this is a delightfully apt description...

[ftl]

Where does it come from?

[math]

It's the first 13 Goko lobbies, including Hovel, Necropolis, and Overgrown Estate.

[Tables]

It's the first 13 Goko lobbies, including Hovel, Necropolis, and Overgrown Estate.

I was going to say 'Oh you worked it out as well', but then I realised you made the thread...