I played some very interesting games with theParty and I'm glad I went through as my score against him was negative before the match. We played without veto, without point counter and without the "identical starting hands" option.
My comments on the games:
1)
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20111111-122105-0d17f60e.htmlA Minion/City game with Lookout and Salvager for trashing. I opened Woodcutter/Lookout as I didn't want Silver in the long run. But I can't play the Woodcutter before Minions early anyway because before City gaining there is obviously the Minion race going on. I would consider Lookout/Salvager or Salvager/Silver in hindsight too - I'm not sure.
theParty opened Salvager/Silver and won the Minion race 6-4. As a consolation I got a 6-4 City split after that.
The endgame was interesting with tough decisions regarding activating level 3 Cities in presence of accelerators like Salvager. I bought Haggler to gain some Salvager fodder on the way and in turn 15 had to go for the Duchies because I couldn't left only 2 Provinces.
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20111111-122105-0d17f60e.html#califax-show-turn-15For a moment I thought afterwards he could buy out five Salvagers and an Estate for a three pile ending as the score before this was 18-18. But as he trashed a Province on the way this wouldn't have been possible.
2)
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20111111-124626-31961a63.htmlA lot of things going on in this long game with Silk Road, Island, Vineyard and Black Market.
Mountebank and Young Witch in the Black Market pile with no trashing in the kingdom attracted me so that I risked a Cutpurse/Black Market terminal clash and got it with some more clashs later. I think I should have left out Cutpurse as Ghostship and the Cursers in Black Market are other important terminals with only Mining village and no plus buy present.
theParty opened Oasis/Island. How would you start here at 3/4?
In turn 4 I played the Black Market/Cutpurse/Copper/Copper/Estate hand wrongly (Black Market) to cycle the BM and maybe in hope for Young Witch (what if my 4$ would have met Mountebank there?). In consequence he got a Ghosthip which he couldn't have done if I had played Cutpurse instead.
Later there were interesting decisions, f. e. whether to go for Provinces at all. But as the plus buy cards from Black Market (Nomade Camp, Festival) appeared quite late Vineyards were never an option imho.
Probably he could have bought the last Curse earlier for a three pile ending but it wasn't easy to calculate the score.
Despite a 9-0 Curse split a derserved win for theParty. (The score graph on councilroom seems to be buggy)
3)
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20111111-130255-6be97532.htmlI used to play Apothecary/Market back in the old BSW days. Here is Scheme/Outpost for some support.
Maybe these chains can be improved somehow (I always put back Apothecary via Scheme. I played Apothecary always before Market/Scheme unless I knew there wasn't Copper/Potion in the next four cards due to a previous Apothecary. Not sure if this is right), but Apothecary/Outpost is already painfully slow to watch for the opponent - so no more time for AP. I guess I got lucky with the Market buy on turn 3. Later I thought about including a Gold but couldn't bring myself to do so. Not sure whether this is right or not.
TheParty in contrast bought some real money (Gold in turn 6,7), but missed his Market for more buys sometimes (turn 10 for instance).
4)
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20111111-131151-a826c41d.htmlWith Chapel and Scrying Pool present it seems dangerous to ignore Bridge/Village completely. A Megaturn would overcome a 0-5 Province handicup but I managed to pull it off after 0-4 Provinces already.
If theParty could have taken away some Bridges without other plus buy sources the Megaturn strategy might backfire - I'm not sure on this either.
5)
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20111111-132530-660b30ec.htmlWas all about Goons with an interesting early decision at 4$ between Worker's Village or (second) Quarry (as Labs are also present).
I wasn't happy with 5-2 here and bought Governor over Lab as I thought to draw 3 cards later and than very often Goons to reduce his hand afterwards. But I helped him quite a bit at turn 3 and 6. I guess you have to delay the Governor.
So theParty had an advantage here, but maybe committed too early to Copper/Province for points at turn 10 and 14.
In conclusion I haven't bought a single Gold the whole match (Platinum wasn't available) and only 1 Silver (the others coming from Jack in game 2). So you see where I'm coming from (often doing that excessively and losing) and how I struggle lately with all these Hinterland cards (Jack, Crossroads, Trader, Stables, Tunnel and so on). Donald X. did a great job to bring back some love to Money and early greening and to force you to play universally. But in the setups present it was at least possible (even though maybe not always the strongest) to play the "old way".
Thx for the games.