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[shark_bait]

Here's the kingdom

There are a few questions to consider with this kingdom in regards to engine potential.

1.)  What should be your first priority?

Trashing is of utmost importance.  You are building an engine so you need a thin deck.

2.)  Knowing your first priority, how do you open?  With Baker on the Board you have the potential for $6/$2, $5/$3, $4/$4, $4/$3 or $5/$2.

Because trashing is important Steward should be obtained.  This leaves you with $5 which can be either Apprentice or Baker.  Apprentice is weak for Copper trashing and Shelters lessons its early game importance, Baker is more important for smoothing out money.  Of note, this opening can be obtained with either a $5/$2 or $4/$3 start.  One could make a point for $4/$3 with Rats saving the coin token.

3.)  What unique interaction are present and how do they impact building the engine.

There are two important interaction.  First is Squire's on trash ability.  This can lead to Goon gaining without purchasing.  The second is Apprentice/Rats which provides net card draw which is otherwise absent in this set

Here's the log:  http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20130818/log.50ea2963e4b0429cfe091cec.1376835112180.txt

My Thoughts on how I played the set

I actually don't think I play this as well as possible.  In fact, I would go as far to say that I played poorly.  I failed to think of both the Squire and the Rats interactions at the start of the game and consequently implemented each of them poorly.  This is a very finicky set where the timing of each buy is of utmost importance.  My opponent made the mistake of over investing in Squire.  Yes they can be trashed for Goons and yes they are the only village to allow multiple Goons turns.  However, they impede on early trashing allowing my deck with both less Goons and less Squires to easily outrace his.  Early trashing was about the 1 thing I did alright, but even then I feel like Steward/Rats could be very competitive and I'm more and more thinking that that is actually the right opening.  That would lead to the fastest trashing as well as Rats gaining for fodder.  At $2, squire can easily be obtained and Goons are available via trashing.  The only thing to make sure is that Apprentice can be gained, but by saving the coin token, that is very plausible.

[WanderingWinder]

Okay, I was dying to know whether shelters were in the game or not. For anyone else who is wondering, they are available, as revealed in comment number two.


I am not sure that your conclusions are all correct. First, you say you are building an engine, and the strong trashing and good payload are definitely there to do this, but... the most important thing for an engine is the draw, and it's quite lacking here - particularly when you see the only village is squire, which prevents you from actually using the normally quite-decent-for-this-purpose steward in order to do more than spin your wheels unreliably while producing $ very very slowly. Given any smithy or village, I would probably agree with you. But the only way of actually getting increased handsize is... apprentice. You say Apprentice/rats, but it is actually apprentice/anything-costing-3-or-more. If you are going for the Apprentice/Rats plan, then you have to have lots of rats actually - you need to collide apprentice with rats, probably first, and then have another rats around WITH a junk card in order to replenish your supply of rats (and if you are not doing that, then you might as well just buy whatever other card is available). All of this is really finnicky, particularly just getting the cards you need to be together to both be in your starting hand of cards. Beyond this, you probably have to do this a few times per turn in order to get any reasonably large multi-goons turns going on. But realize that you are going to have LOTS of dead cards in your deck - excess rats you don't want to play, and goons and squires don't draw either. This puts rather a lot of strain on those apprentices to do lots of work (especially as you realize you are going to get goonsed reasonably often - if not all the time - by almost any opponent), and again lowers the chances you get apprentice-target in your starting hand. So that is a lot of set-up time, and of course multi-goons is big payoff, but how big are we talking here?

Okay, so you want an alternative. Basically, the one that seems possible to me is a fairgrounds-based attempt, as the game will be slow, and it seems that there will very likely be enough time to get them up to being worth 8 (this is why I want to know there are shelters), and grabbing lots of them. We want to open steward for copper trashing in this plan, probably squire really as well, and get goons, baker, and treasures early, then fill out the rest of our cards, one province, and go after the fairgrounds.

Of course, probably the big goons plan is a bit better, but you have to know which piles to go after - probably 3 of apprentice, rats, squire, goons. And go after them fairly aggressively. Because I think the deck is too finicky to get as much as triple goons on a regular basis (even double is stretching it). And I don't think it's immensely obvious.

[SCSN]

Okay, so you want an alternative. Basically, the one that seems possible to me is a fairgrounds-based attempt, as the game will be slow, and it seems that there will very likely be enough time to get them up to being worth 8 (this is why I want to know there are shelters), and grabbing lots of them. We want to open steward for copper trashing in this plan, probably squire really as well, and get goons, baker, and treasures early, then fill out the rest of our cards, one province, and go after the fairgrounds.

Are you sure? If you trash Coppers and actively avoid trashing your Shelters, it will take quite a long time for your deck to have higher money density than the deck that skips trashing altogether. And to what end? Are you banking on alot of double Fairgrounds turns? Because if you're only looking for single ones, I doubt the Coppers are hurting much, if at all, especially with the little bit of smoothing from Baker.

[WanderingWinder]

Okay, so you want an alternative. Basically, the one that seems possible to me is a fairgrounds-based attempt, as the game will be slow, and it seems that there will very likely be enough time to get them up to being worth 8 (this is why I want to know there are shelters), and grabbing lots of them. We want to open steward for copper trashing in this plan, probably squire really as well, and get goons, baker, and treasures early, then fill out the rest of our cards, one province, and go after the fairgrounds.

Are you sure? If you trash Coppers and actively avoid trashing your Shelters, it will take quite a long time for your deck to have higher money density than the deck that skips trashing altogether. And to what end? Are you banking on alot of double Fairgrounds turns? Because if you're only looking for single ones, I doubt the Coppers are hurting much, if at all, especially with the little bit of smoothing from Baker.

I'm not totally sure, no, but I do think it's what we want to do for a couple reasons:
You need steward eventually,
You don't have to aggressively trash everything,
You can turn squire into goons,
Trashing 2 or 4 coppers (or 3 with a squire for goons or something) helps you get to your important cards more often, which is important as the game is going very long,
Venture,
You will have very long build-up phase, during which the thinner deck will be especially nice.

You also just aren't giving much up - I mean, what are you going to open if not steward? Silver? Steward can just do that. Certainly, it is not a huge priority to get all those little coppers trashed, but a little bit of it is nice.

[lespeutere]

Okay, I was dying to know whether shelters were in the game or not. For anyone else who is wondering, they are available, as revealed in comment number two.


I am not sure that your conclusions are all correct. First, you say you are building an engine, and the strong trashing and good payload are definitely there to do this, but... the most important thing for an engine is the draw, and it's quite lacking here - particularly when you see the only village is squire, which prevents you from actually using the normally quite-decent-for-this-purpose steward in order to do more than spin your wheels unreliably while producing $ very very slowly. Given any smithy or village, I would probably agree with you. But the only way of actually getting increased handsize is... apprentice. You say Apprentice/rats, but it is actually apprentice/anything-costing-3-or-more. If you are going for the Apprentice/Rats plan, then you have to have lots of rats actually - you need to collide apprentice with rats, probably first, and then have another rats around WITH a junk card in order to replenish your supply of rats (and if you are not doing that, then you might as well just buy whatever other card is available). All of this is really finnicky, particularly just getting the cards you need to be together to both be in your starting hand of cards. Beyond this, you probably have to do this a few times per turn in order to get any reasonably large multi-goons turns going on. But realize that you are going to have LOTS of dead cards in your deck - excess rats you don't want to play, and goons and squires don't draw either.

Given enough apprentices (4+), this should definitely work. Apprenticing rats is +5 cards, doing that twice is half a deck. Play two rats on coppers, one village, 2 goons, buy something (preferably bakers) + 2 coppers and repeat. Yes, you'll have 1 goons turns, but you'll probably have 3 goons turns as well. Coin tokens will get you in control during endgame. You can buy fairgrounds for apprentice fodder and for stealing them away from a fairgrounds-aiming opponent.

This puts rather a lot of strain on those apprentices to do lots of work (especially as you realize you are going to get goonsed reasonably often - if not all the time - by almost any opponent), and again lowers the chances you get apprentice-target in your starting hand.

Technically it doesn't lower the chances. Either you have them in hand or you don't but I'm sure you're aware of that and it was just semantics here.

So that is a lot of set-up time, and of course multi-goons is big payoff, but how big are we talking here?

Well, assume your opponent gets 6 8VP fairgrounds and then is able to get, aiming rather high, 4 provinces, for (12*6+duchy+estate) = 76 VP. Plus goons VP, say 12, = 88 VP. You're able to buy 4 provinces and also few (3ish) duchies in your last two turns with coin token assistance for 33 VP. That leaves 55 VP via goons. That is achieved by 10 double goons turns.

I'm not saying it's not difficult, but I think you underestimate apprentice/rats here.
I'd go for a steward/rats start, btw.

[sudgy]

Apprentice/Rats is pretty good, I think I did it by itself one time and it worked really well.

Although, I can't remember, Market Square might have been in the game...

[ragingduckd]

So that is a lot of set-up time, and of course multi-goons is big payoff, but how big are we talking here?

Well, assume your opponent gets 6 8VP fairgrounds and then is able to get, aiming rather high, 4 provinces, for (12*6+duchy+estate) = 76 VP. Plus goons VP, say 12, = 88 VP. You're able to buy 4 provinces and also few (3ish) duchies in your last two turns with coin token assistance for 33 VP. That leaves 55 VP via goons. That is achieved by 10 double goons turns.

10 double-Goons turns? Your Goons are gonna quit and go work for the other guy.

The VP from multi-Goons grows like O(n^2). That is, 3 quad-Goons turns is as good as 10 double-Goons turns, so it's better to spend those other 7 turns setting up with Apprentices and Goons instead of cashing in with Pearl Divers and Copper. For the same reason, high variance is good for Goons, so "unreliable" draw from Apprentice-Rats is actually rather appealing.

If you don't go Goons then you need to thwart the engine or end the game quickly. That is, either:

• Contest a key card
• 3-pile
• Run out Provinces

Contesting Squires doesn't work: Apprentice doesn't consume actions, so 3-5 Squires is all the engine needs. Three-piling is very dangerous: how large a lead do you need to run down piles against a deck full of Apprentices, Goons, and Squires?

So the best anti-Goons plan is to just run out the Provinces, and I think it's a reasonable contest. The Province player can smooth with Baker and Apprentice a few Provinces, while the Goons player has an okay-but-not-great engine. Sounds pretty fair.

Fairgrounds, however, is a bad mistake for either player. As the Province player, time is not on your side, so gaining alt-VP while extending the game is a disaster. As the Goons player, you're better off with an extra Goons if you can use it in a multi-turn even once.

[dondon151]

If you Apprentice Rats even once, you should have a good enough starting hand size for a triple Goons turn.

[Kirian]

Apprentice/Rats is just so, so powerful; it was the very first thing I saw.  It can draw most of your deck even in the mid-game.

I think Rats/Steward would be my opening here, saving the coin token for the next $4 to make sure I get Apprentice as early as possible.  I think I want two more Rats than Apprentices at any given time, and then stack up Goons and Squires, sacrificing Squires if need be to get the Goons.  You should be able to get a couple of multi-Goons turns early, then (perhaps) save up for a big 3- or 4-Goons turn.

For the hell of it, I tried a solo game.  Obviously this has its problems--solo play is its own animal--but here I'm getting double-Goons by turn 9, and in fact I have to buy Copper on later turns to keep the deck running--later in the log I run out of stuff to trash to Rats, and without Rats the deck starts to sputter (T13 suffers from that).

Obviously this is sub-optimal play by a middling player without competition, but I think in a mirror this is a race to three-pile Apprentice, Squire, and Rats or Goons, while racking up as many points as possible from Goons.