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[minced]

King's Court is a very swingy card. In a typical game, you will play KC - KC - copper-copper-estate, only to have your opponent play KC - mountebank next turn, or vice-versa. Scheme, however, eliminates most of the swing by allowing you to topdeck two king's courts and a scheme every turn. In the worst case, if you have no other targets for a king's court after playing KC- - KC - scheme, you'll still have a five card hand and three actions, and you'll still be able to return all three combo cards to the top of your deck.

If King's Court and Scheme are out on the same board as any cursing attack, this combo is a no-brainer. In the absence of discarding attacks, it may well be worth it to go KC -  KC - scheme - scheme - (horrible attack) - (other horrible attack), playing scheme x3, schemex3, (horrible attack)x3, then (other horrible attack) x1.

This combo, as far as I can tell, has three effective counters. The most effective is minion, which seems to be the best scheme counter at any rate. Next up is possession - however, KC + KC + scheme is probably the best possible enabler for possession, so a possession board may well be a race to set up KC, KC, scheme, scheme, possession, possession. Last but not least comes the sheer opportunity cost of buying two king's courts, which is probably not worth it in the absence of +buy and good card-drawing actions. Militia is not a very effective counter: while it will cause a discard down to KC - KC - scheme, if your deck is at least 33% actions, which is not difficult to attain by repeatedly buying schemes, your second and third plays of KC will likely find targets, making KC-KC-scheme worth keeping.



 

[ecq]

KC - KC - Scheme - Scheme - Saboteur

I just stumbled on this one.  It felt so broken that I felt bad playing it.  Once I had the cards in my deck, it took about 3 turns to set up the combo.  KC - Scheme or KC - KC - Scheme not only return to your deck, but they also let you play a 5-6 card hand.  You end up cycling through 8 cards a turn while setting up the combo, which means you're setting it up that much faster.  KC - KC - Scheme - Scheme - Saboteur gives you a 6-card hand after you play it, with more actions than you know what to do with. You can imagine what 3x Saboteur every turn does to the other guy's deck.

All of the counters you mentioned are Saboteur targets, making it much harder to use them.  Lighthouse and Moat will deal with this combo, but even then, you end up with a 6 card hand, tons of actions, and 3x Saboteur when the other player gets an unlucky draw.  With luck, Saboteur will also interrupt the other guy if he's building this combo.  It seems like the best counter is to play this combo and build it faster.

I'm not sure I like Possession for this combo.  The combo can accelerate your deck very quickly.  Possession is expensive and hard to buy.  When you play it, you end up getting a few extra turns, but you're stuck using the other guy's deck, which should be falling further and further behind your own.  In a Province game, it's possible that even something as simple as Market would be better, since you could start playing it several turns sooner, and it'd help you buy the Schemes and KCs along the way.  Every turn you play it, you end up playing with 9 cards, 4 buys, 9 actions, +$3.

[jonts26]

I think you're thinking about the KC-KC-Scheme-Scheme-Possession wrong. It's not about getting the optimal hand every turn. It's a war of attrition. If the other guy ignores possession entirely, I am getting 3 of his turns for every one of his turns he takes. No matter how good or bad his deck is, it will take a serious head start for me not to overtake his score. Additionally, I will also have my own, albeit terrible, deck to play with for every one of his turns, as well.

[mischiefmaker]

KC-KC-Scheme-card draw is pretty nasty as well, especially if the card draw is +3 or more.

RE: KC-KC-Scheme-Scheme-Possession, remember that you also want to defend against your opponent Possessing you, taking advantage of your setup, and then choosing not to restore it for your next turn.

[ecq]

I have no doubt that KC-KC-Scheme-Scheme-Possession would work and almost certainly win once you got it set up.  I have two issues with it, though.  First, I think it'd take too long to set up compared to other options if you went after it single-mindedly, especially in Province games.  A few solitaire games showed me that KC/Scheme/Bridge can eat 8 provinces or 3 piles (solo) a couple of turns before the first triple Possession.  Even in the unlucky cases, Bridge has an insurmountable lead before Possession can hit.  Wharf performs similarly, though less consistently.  Anything with +buy and either +$ or +cards does well.  Possession is awesome, but it just doesn't get going fast enough.

The second issue is more psychological, probably.  Why build up an amazing deck only to spend 3/4 turns playing the other guy's poor, stagnating deck?

[jomini]

A very simple counter to this would be masquerade. If you are always going to have a hand consisting of 5 cards strong cards then masq will rob you of either a strong attack or a scheme.

I'd say the biggest enabler of this combo would be baron (early +coins, and a +buy) and maybe quarry.

[ecq]

I'm not sure Masquerade wouldn't counter it, at least not consistently, though it would make things more interesting.  The combo allows you to return up to 6 actions to the top of your deck.  So you could return KC-KC-Scheme-Scheme-(cheap terminal)-(combo card).  You'd masquerade the cheap terminal.  Scheme-Scheme would draw your combo card with plenty of actions to play another cheap terminal.  Herbalist seems like a good terminal option, since it'd very nearly replace itself and actions are not a problem with this combo.

KC-Masquerade is the same as Masquerade, except the person who plays it can trash more.

[Zakharov]

There's the hilarious King's Court - Scheme - Posession - Chapel mirror match, where both players trash all their money because each player plays more with their opponent's deck their own, and the game ends in a stalemate with both players refusing to buy cards.

[Kirian]

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20111220-213523-e1d6475f.html

I got to put this to reasonably good use here.  Goons made the setting up quite difficult, but once it was set up the combo would have been crazy.  I ended the game before I could unleash the craziness though, out of prudence.

[^_^_^_^]

There's the hilarious King's Court - Scheme - Posession - Chapel mirror match, where both players trash all their money because each player plays more with their opponent's deck their own, and the game ends in a stalemate with both players refusing to buy cards.

This must be why theory never plays Alchemy games. lol.

[WanderingWinder]

There's the hilarious King's Court - Scheme - Posession - Chapel mirror match, where both players trash all their money because each player plays more with their opponent's deck their own, and the game ends in a stalemate with both players refusing to buy cards.

This must be why theory never plays prosperity games. lol.

I don't get it. theory DOES play prosperity games....

Edit: This was my 1000th post, and I didn't say anything at the time... sigh. But yay for 1000 posts

[Elyv]

There's the hilarious King's Court - Scheme - Posession - Chapel mirror match, where both players trash all their money because each player plays more with their opponent's deck their own, and the game ends in a stalemate with both players refusing to buy cards.

This must be why theory never plays prosperity games. lol.

I don't get it. theory DOES play prosperity games....

Presumably, by prosperity he meant Alchemy.

[^_^_^_^]

Edited. Sorry .

[WanderingWinder]

There's the hilarious King's Court - Scheme - Posession - Chapel mirror match, where both players trash all their money because each player plays more with their opponent's deck their own, and the game ends in a stalemate with both players refusing to buy cards.

This must be why theory never plays prosperity games. lol.

I don't get it. theory DOES play prosperity games....

Presumably, by prosperity he meant Alchemy.

A) he used to play without potions, not without alchemy (okay, not a huge difference, but still)
B) He's played with potions for quite a while.

[Mean Mr Mustard]

<a href=http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201201/06/game-20120106-111407-0114b461.html>KC/Scheme/Bridge in 11 moves</a>

This combo is the real deal.

[mischiefmaker]

Well, Apothecary had a lot to do with it too, since it a) drew cards, b) cleaned out your deck's junk, and c) increased buying power.

But that's a minor nitpick. That game is like a clinic on how to build an engine. Very well played, and thanks for sharing.

[Razzishi]

<a href=http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201201/06/game-20120106-111407-0114b461.html>KC/Scheme/Bridge in 11 moves</a>

This combo is the real deal.

Echoing the previous comment, Apothecary was the deal sealer there.  It allowed you to very quickly get all 7 Copper in your hand in order to buy KC without buying any other treasure.  One thing I found sorta odd is that the Schemes kept recycling themselves instead of Apothecaries, but I guess the point is that you don't want to lose the Schemes in your deck when you finally draw your KC.

[Davio]

I just played a game in which I managed to get KC-KC-Scheme-Scheme-Monument together.
The game didn't have any attack, so I could get and keep the combo together quite easily.

It's not as good or nasty as other combos but it works.

I think the real power of the KC-KC-Scheme-Scheme combo is the fact that you can buy as many green cards as you want, because they're never a hassle. You start your next hand with the same cards anyway. So you can just buy the highest available VP card possible.

If you manage to get KKSS-Vault together, you end up with 12 cards which you can discard for $12, making a Colony buy every turn an unstoppable guarantee.

While KKSS-Goons may seem like a gift from heaven, remember that your opponent can play Goons as well, which messes with your combo.

[standardcombo]

Here's a big money version with Smithy support:

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201302/03/game-20130203-214018-0673cb04.html

[Morgrim7]

You can tack on another card at the end and topdeck all six: KC-KC-Scheme-Scheme-Goons and then play a Goons. Rinse and repeat.

[Asklepios]

A very simple counter to this would be masquerade. If you are always going to have a hand consisting of 5 cards strong cards then masq will rob you of either a strong attack or a scheme.

Though not if the combo involves Possession, of course!

[Empathy]

Kc-scheme-curser is *not* a no-brainer. Anything that produces virtual coin and buy will actually be -more- valuable than a curser. The power of this combo is that you can ignore most of your deck!

I recently won a game with KC, scheme, bridge and familiar (strongest curser in vacuum). The other player lost even though I ended up with all 10 curses, just because I could set up the combo two cycles faster. This might be a borderline case (familiar has the strongest tempo loss, and bridge is the best KC target) but I strongly suspect that you would much rather have at least one woodcutter than a witch as your KC-scheme target, all other things being equal. You probably want the curser anyway, but racing the combo should be the top priority, which usually means trying to not lose tempo.

Edit:  Let me try to be a bit more precise.

The combo is KC-scheme-action+payload. The payload can coincide with the action. If your payload is through virtual coins, the cursing becomes a lot less relevant, as you can essentially disregard the rest of your deck. If your payload are treasures, then cursing is very relevant. In the first scenario therefore, the curser may be skippable if it leads to too much tempo-loss. Or you might just want to curse people to slow down the combo, but the virtual-coin card is going to be a lot more important in the long run.

[Morgrim7]

uhhh...I think Familiar is one of the weaker cursers. You cant get it nearly in time! And the Potion can be kind of annoying, too.

[Empathy]

uhhh...I think Familiar is one of the weaker cursers. You cant get it nearly in time! And the Potion can be kind of annoying, too.

1) I already stated that, in the context of this combo, familiar is probably the weakest curser.

2) If you mean *in general*, I urge you to read this blog post: http://dominionstrategy.com/2011/11/14/the-five-best-potion-cards/


Here is going to be my question: are you going to go out of your way to buy a witch if you could buy an early gold, wharf or tactician: cards that help you hit 7 and help you match KC to scheme.

The case doesn't present itself for mountebank (which is virtual coin anyway) and to some degree with sea hag (because it attacks immediately, and is especially good with scheme). Familiar we've already ruled as as skippable, and ambassador cursing most likely isn't going to cut it either.

Again, cursers might help you by hindering your opponent's ability to reach the combo... but they don't actually matter as much once the combo is setup if your payload is virtual coin. Once you have your combo set up, would you rather be KC-ing a sea hag, or a woodcutter? One is strictly stronger than the other: at worst, a duchy compensates 3 curses.

Of course, the argument is moot if somebody starts his combo snowballing anyway, but that is exactly my point: focus on getting the combo. If cursers help you in racing to the combo, so be it. But once a virtual $ KC-scheme combo has been set up, cursing can still be useful but secondary to greening, which this deck does indefinitely with a decent source of virtual coin.

So yeah, when you rule out the in vacuum best cursing attack, I don't call it a no-brainer. There is clearly some more strategy involved. The combo is neat however, and the original statement perfectly holds when the payload of the deck are treasures.

[Morgrim7]

Yes, I've read that article. Familiar is one of the worst cursers relative to cost. Other than that, its definitely strongest.