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[Biderman]

What do you guys think about the card Golem? It screams interesting to me, but I am unsure how to play it well. I have had a variety of ideas, but I would like to get others' input. Right now, the strategies that seem good to me are:

Good Golem Strategies

• Golem + Counting House + 8 Coppers
• Golem + Apprentice
• Golem + 2 Wharf

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Original post:


Golem is a very interesting card, but it seems not at all clear to me how to play it well. Do you buy one Golem or many? Fill your deck with actions or just have a few? Recently, I played a game where I used Golem in Big Money. My deck consisted of cash, 2 Wharfs, and 4 Golems. I found that the increased odds of hitting Wharf every other turn was very helpful, as was the milling of my deck. Obviously Golem is insane with Apprentice, but when else does it shine? What if I replaced my two Warfs with a Tactician and a Monument?

Here is another game I played with Golem.

The one game where I was sure I played Golem well was easy.... my deck was 8 coppers, 1 potion, 4 Golem, and 1 Counting House plus victory cards, and I just bought a Provence every turn from turn 8 onwards.

Is Golem good? How do you play it?

[WanderingWinder]

"Obviously Golem is insane with apprentice"
Really? I don't think this is at all a good combination. Also, you definitely don't want to have golems in a double wharf deck - I mean, it takes so much effort to get a golem, it's actually just much easier to get more wharves.

[def]

What is so insane about golem+apprentice? That you can probably trash the potion faster you only bought to gain a golem? No +buy means no easy fodder for apprentice, and even if it was so great, you still need to draw the golem again after reshuffling.
Hitting the Golem after reshuffling is the problem of the first strategy, too, which is otherwise very cool.

[Biderman]

I don't see why it wouldn't be... I mean, It can draw you 8 cards, or find you an Apprentice right?

I'll admit I'm really a novice at this game. Why is buying more Warfs better? Golem let me consistantly hit 2 Warfs a turn.

I'll amend my original post

Def: What do you mean about hitting a Golem after reshuffling? Drawing it off of the Warfs? It could happen, but it only did occur a few times. I may have drawn a golem once or twice off a warf, but never in multiples

[WanderingWinder]

I don't see why it wouldn't be... I mean, It can draw you 8 cards, or find you an Apprentice right?

I'll admit I'm really a novice at this game. Why is buying more Warfs better? Golem let me consistantly hit 2 Warfs a turn.

I'll amend my original post

Okay, this is totally irrational of me, but can you please spell it "wharf"? 'Warf', apart from being wrong, which doesn't actually bug me that much, viscerally makes me think 'barf'. Okay, again, me being irrational here.

As for the strategy. Sure, if you get apprentice with golem, it gets you 7 (4+3, not cards. And golem can play you your apprentices more often. but they also force you to play them, which you don't always want to do. And the bigger thing is that it takes a lot of time, a lot of opportunity cost, to get the golem in the first place. You have to buy a potion and a golem, all so you can trash it later? You could otherwise have had silvers at least. In the wharf case, then yeah, your golems can make sure you have your two wharves in play every turn. But golemsa deck with the right number of wharves will be able to do that anyway. And again, you won't have wasted a lot of time buying wharves. If you've got other reasons to get both, great. But otherwise, wharves by themselves are fast. This is slower.

[Biderman]

I'm sorry, I have horrendous spelling

Thanks for the analysis of Golems with Wharfs and Golems with Apprentice. The basic picture I'm getting is that Golem would be so much better if it cost 5 instead of 4p? What would convince you to buy Golem?

[timchen]

Also, if you really had a game with your golem+counting house strategy finishing the deck you describe at turn 8, you were being excessively lucky. It would be hard to get the golems with the deck you describe.

[DG]

Golem decks are an engineers delight. They can be used to craft all sorts of new strategies but they all take some working out. You can use a few actions or lots of actions depending upon what you're trying to do. There are other threads here with more detail if you want to look back.

I did manage to write a simple golem strategy for the simulator that could beat an improved jack-of-all trades deck, without using attacks. That might surprise a few people given how slow golem is supposed to be.

[greatexpectations]

i dont see a whole lot of appeal in the card myself.  i feel like hunting party performs a very similar role and is far easier to purchase and build around.

[biopower]

i dont see a whole lot of appeal in the card myself.  i feel like hunting party performs a very similar role and is far easier to purchase and build around.

Golem is like a Hunting Party + Village in a sense, because it increases the number of actions you can play. It's also superior because Hunting Party will hit non-actions and then do nothing, while Golems ensure that an action is played.

[tlloyd]

I agree that the presence of wharf makes the opportunity cost of golem quite high, but I'm not sure that more wharfs is always better than wharf + golem. I'm not that great at the Wharf + BM strategy, so I would tend to think a golem might be worth it in a kingdom with wharf and no easy source of +actions. I can say with some confidence, however, that the golem + wharf strategy should aim for 4 wharves, not 2. You want two on the table at the start of every turn as well.

[WanderingWinder]

I agree that the presence of wharf makes the opportunity cost of golem quite high, but I'm not sure that more wharfs is always better than wharf + golem. I'm not that great at the Wharf + BM strategy, so I would tend to think a golem might be worth it in a kingdom with wharf and no easy source of +actions. I can say with some confidence, however, that the golem + wharf strategy should aim for 4 wharves, not 2. You want two on the table at the start of every turn as well.

The game will be over too quickly. BM/Wharf will grab 4 provinces in ~14 turns, maybe 15 if it's slowing down for a duchy or two. You simply can't waste so much time buying a potion and a golem (and the extra two wharves).

[Diving Pikachu]

Counting House? That was the first thing to come to your mind for a combo? I mean, I guess as Golem looks for actions, it will knock a few coppers into your discard, but that's hardly a thing to rely on, especially since Counting House doesn't stack with itself, so that having any more than one in your deck would be a liability (think Golem-> CH, CH). Golem is for playing powerful actions consistently. The only scenario in which I could see Counting House being paired well with Golem is if you had Goons and/or Worker's Village, plus Gardens, and maybe Chancellor as well.

[Nihnoz]

Counting House? That was the first thing to come to your mind for a combo? I mean, I guess as Golem looks for actions, it will knock a few coppers into your discard, but that's hardly a thing to rely on, especially since Counting House doesn't stack with itself, so that having any more than one in your deck would be a liability (think Golem-> CH, CH). Golem is for playing powerful actions consistently. The only scenario in which I could see Counting House being paired well with Golem is if you had Goons and/or Worker's Village, plus Gardens, and maybe Chancellor as well.

it's a specific combo with a single counting house and a bunch of golems and no other actions, where the golem hits the counting house and then unsuccessfully searches for another action, thereby discarding your whole deck and allowing you to play every single copper you have every time you play a golem.

[Zaphod]

I think the best time to buy Golems is when you were going to get a Potion anyhow, or when it's likely to be a longer game.  Any strategy based on Golem takes awhile to set up, since you need four coin and a potion just to buy one.  But let's say Familiars are in play and most of the Curses haven't been dealt, or Scrying Pool is in play along with some good chaining cards; if you have the chance to get Golems then, by all means, go for it.

[Davio]

Counting House? That was the first thing to come to your mind for a combo? I mean, I guess as Golem looks for actions, it will knock a few coppers into your discard, but that's hardly a thing to rely on, especially since Counting House doesn't stack with itself, so that having any more than one in your deck would be a liability (think Golem-> CH, CH). Golem is for playing powerful actions consistently. The only scenario in which I could see Counting House being paired well with Golem is if you had Goons and/or Worker's Village, plus Gardens, and maybe Chancellor as well.

it's a specific combo with a single counting house and a bunch of golems and no other actions, where the golem hits the counting house and then unsuccessfully searches for another action, thereby discarding your whole deck and allowing you to play every single copper you have every time you play a golem.

It still works with Chancellor which is a nice card to have with it, since you can play it at other times for the $2, you also don't have to buy an extra Copper to reach that $8.

Only problem is that you increase the chance of drawing Golem with one of the needed action cards.

It's too bad that the Simulator screws this up big time, playing Chancellor AFTER Counting House.

A warning: It may take a while to put this combo together, especially if you don't draw your Potion at the right time. This may cause you to lose a lot of tempo and, depending on the game, may lose you the game.

[DStu]

Dominiate should play Chancellor before CH.

[Geronimoo]

The simulator 'screws' this up because it doesn't know the combo. Counting House's play priority is a lot higher than Chancellor's because it's a much stronger card to play than Chancellor if you only have 1 action left. I'll add this combo to the Golem card implementation for the next release.

[Deadlock39]

I played around with the Golem+Counting House strategy for a while one day, and came to the conclusion that, on average, it is too slow.  If your opening hands work out well, it can be extremely fast, but if you get too many hands where you draw your potion without $4, it fails pretty quickly.  You can also get unlucky in the end game if you draw the CH with your Golem.  The combo seemed to be slightly improved by adding Chancellor, but I didn't really play enough games to say for sure

It is a fun combo, and when it hits right, it is very quick, but it really isn't reliable enough to be competitive.

[rinkworks]

Golem is one of my favorite cards, but I generally don't run across specific power combos for it.  More often, I find it works best for me when I *don't* have a specific power combo but rather a few powerful but unrelated actions.  Golem lets me play those more often, which is great.  It's also nice in a kingdom with good terminals, some non-terminals, and no villages.  In that situation, the Golem can provide you with extra actions that can be very helpful.

Where Golem is bad:  (1) on fast boards; (2) in decks with good drawing power [as then it's usually easier to draw actions into your hand than leaving them in your deck for Golem to find; (3) sometimes in decks with lots of weak actions amidst the stronger ones; (4) in decks with actions that can be dangerous to play, like Remake, Ambassador, Treasure Map, etc.

[chwhite]

It's also nice in a kingdom with good terminals, some non-terminals, and no villages.  In that situation, the Golem can provide you with extra actions that can be very helpful.

I'm not a huge Golem fan, but the above situation is definitely a great reason to go Golem.  You have a board with useful non-terminals but no village, and also a terminal you'd like to play multiples of (Goons is a canonical example)?  Golem may be for you!  Otherwise, Golem is a powerful midgame buy if there are other Potion cards you want already, but may be too high of an opportunity cost to invest in otherwise.

[Fangz]

Golem is also a good assist card for minion decks, but probably one you shouldn't pick up unless your opponent is ignoring minions, or you have a source of +buy, or minions have already been depleted. Really, the difficulty of picking it up is the main problem.

[popsofctown]

We should talk about which potion cards go well with golem because there's almost no board without them where golem works.

It is very powerful with possession.  If your opponent possesses you, they risk playing your possession if they use your golem. 

I think I usually end up picking one up in Familiar games.

[mischiefmaker]

We should talk about which potion cards go well with golem because there's almost no board without them where golem works.

As others on this thread have said, it's generally true that it's easier to work golem into a strategy where you're already going to want a potion, but you can certainly find boards where golem works well even without other potion cards. For example, here's one where we both went for hunting party decks, but my opponent stopped along the way for an outpost and a golem, and ends up crushing:

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110830-134717-6b62083f.html

[PigFiend]

My first time playing with Golem was a four or five player game. My only other actions were two Witches. Funny enough, I didn't win that game. Anyway, I've tried to build similar decks since then, but I find that elegant two action deck (plus Golems) not to work very well because often I'd draw one of them in the same hand with a Golem and so not get to play it.

If you plan on having more than one Golem in your deck, I recommend getting some actions that +card and +action in addition to the Witches and whatnot. That way you can chain your Golems as well as play actions you happen to have in your hand to begin with.