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[StrongRhino]

You had a 2/5 opening. The only things you could have afforded t1 would have been curse and copper.

Oh yeah, duh.
I saw "draws five copper" and somehow thought that it meant I have $5 

[jomini]

I'm not sure why you think Pillage doesn't work against ultra-thin decks. The classic ultra-thin deck - Bishop/Gold/Silver/Silver/Province is utterly hosed if you keep discarding the Bishop. Now if the Bishop deck sets up faster than your Pillage deck, by all means it won't work, but you can really tank a Bish/Chap deck by discarding the Chap early, the Silvers mid (so they can't buy Gold), and the Bish late.

In general ultra-lean decks lose a lot of steam with consistent Pillaging of the trasher. Say you are running to Kc/Monument and you both open 5/2. Pillaging his Chapel on T3 or T4 gives you a turn and a half (the reshuffle is bigger) to do whatever you want (e.g. get there first). Which is another nice thing about Pillage, if you are going for an expensive ultra-lean deck, Pillage buys you a turn AND increases you total money by six. So say you have two silvers and a Steward going for Kc/Forge/Fortress, you buy the Pillage at 6. Play the Pillage, buy a Fortress (make your opponent's turn suck). Now you have Silver/Silver/Fortress/Spoils/Spoils/Steward - Get a Forge (return a Spoils). Forge a Fortress and a Silver (gain a Kc, gain back Fort), buy a Fortress (return a spoils). When you just buy gold, unless you need gold, it is another card cluttering your ultra-lean deck. Pillage is a quick infusion of more cash, and it removes itself after you don't need it.

In recap, ultra lean decks normally can be attacked at the trasher, at the 5 or higher price point (discard his silvers so he has to wait a turn for a Kc), and against powers cards late game (particularly if it is a no-draw ultra-lean combo but also if he its non-terminal draw with relatively sparse villages or the converse).

[terminalCopper]

I am missing the aspect of "perfect timing", which seems important to me with a three-shot card. If you compare it to another strong $5 card named X, and there are 10 shuffles to come, X is probably stronger, as you will play it 10 times. But if there are exactly two shuffles till the end of the game,  Pillage is at its best: you discard your opponents best card after one shuffle, and after the second shuffle you basically have two Golds. This is mostly more effective than playing X twice.
 Thus, as a rule of thumb: The more you expect the number of remaining reshuffles to be close to 2, the better Pillage is (compared to another $5 card).

Furthermore, Counterfeit+Pillage is a strong combo if you can thin your deck somehow. Counterfeit itself helps, two of them should be enough. Then, with two pillages, you will get four Spoils, and these will mostly lead to four provinces if played with one of our Counterfeits (this is why you need a thinned deck: to make sure that your Spoils can be counterfeited).

[Warfreak2]

Counterfeit's +buy is probably best used to replace the Pillage.

[HiveMindEmulator]

I guess there are 2 ways to think about Pillage:
1. A card that does one thing (attack) the first time you use it, and then another (provide money as Spoils) the second time, and then goes away.
2. A card that can only be used every other shuffle, where in the other shuffle the Spoils are used to "recharge" the Pillage by buying it back.

If you're using it as type (1), you want to buy the card with 2 shuffles left. If you're using it as type (2), you're most concerned about increasing your shuffling frequency, so you can get the attack as much as possible.

[ehunt]

Above all others, pillage is the attack that makes you feel powerful and dirty. From a game designing meta-perspective, you'd think Pillage should therefore be a bad card (compare saboteur, which makes you feel this way until you lose). In fact it seems to be a strong opener, with some baron-like luck factors on how badly you ruin the enemy turn.

[AdamH]

I think Pillage synergizes with cards that draw your opponent a card (Council Room, Governor). I saw a video by WW a while back where he drew his deck with Uni/Council Room and played multiple Pillages per turn. His opponent just could not do *anything* once that was up and running, it was amazing.

Even if you don't play multiple Pillages per turn, if you've drawn your opponent cards first, you have more selection of good cards to discard, which ensures that Pillage hurts. I think this is still better than just playing one Pillage.