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[werothegreat]

Now on the wiki! http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Masterpiece#Strategy_Article

There's a lot to be said for Silver.  For a while, Silver was used as a baseline for moderate-price cards, although the "Silver test" is regarded more with scorn than anything nowadays.  Silver is reliable - it adds literal buying power to your deck.  Over the expansions, we've seen cards that devalue and revalue Silver - from the highs of the base set where Big Money reigned supreme, to the lows of Prosperity where Silver just couldn't cut it anymore, and back up again with Hinterlands and Dark Ages, the latter of which gave us Feodum, finally giving Silver its place in the sun - no longer just the means to gaining Victory points, but potentially the actual Victory points itself.  Trader, Bureaucrat, Talisman - all great Feodum enablers, but all of them pale in comparison to Masterpiece.

Well, what is it?

Masterpiece is quite simple - perhaps the only simpler kingdom Treasure is Cache.  When you buy Masterpiece, the number of coins you overpay is turned into the same number of Silvers for you to gain.  Once it's in your deck, it's just an expensive Copper.  Unlike other overpay cards which are at least sometimes worth buying for their nominal cost, Masterpiece is an idiotic purchase to make at its stated price.  $3 for a Copper?  You must be out of your mind.  Well, how about $4?  Now you're getting a Silver with your Copper, but often you'd be happy buying Silver at $4 anyway, so what do you need this extra junk for?  $5 - now we're getting somewhere.  Two Silvers for less than the price of two, and all I need to do is take a Copper with it?  Not a bad deal.  At $6 and beyond you are now really starting to get your money's worth.  But how often do you want an enormous pile of Silvers?  In Big Money strategies, buying Masterpiece for $6 or more can sometimes be superior to Gold, but most engines will sputter and die with that many non-drawing cards in your deck.

So how do I use it?

For BM-Terminal draw, focus on getting one big Masterpiece buy.  After getting your Council Room or DoubleJack, purchase a Gold on your first $6, and then buy one big pile of Silvers.  You want the benefit of the Silvers to overpower the single "Copper" you're buying as much as possible, so aim high!  Then just reel in the Provinces.

Other than BM kingdoms (or just plain crappy ones), Masterpiece is best in kingdoms that want lots and lots of Silver - in other words, alt-VP kingdoms.  Gardens directly benefits, and Silk Road and Duke are much helped by the influx of coin.  But Feodum is the superstar here.  Paying $6 for a Masterpiece immediately raises the point value of each of your Feoda by 1.  If you take every Masterpiece (at a good price), and take, say, 36 of the 40 Silvers, you're looking at 12 point Feoda.  That's DOUBLE Province, and more than Colony.  With all 8 Feoda, you're looking at a maximum of 96 points.  Obviously, only an idiot (or a bot) would let you take the whole Feodum and Silver piles, but even with half of each, that's still 4 6-point Feoda for a total of 24 points.  Not to mention that 20 Silvers in your deck will help buying other Victory cards.  A note for this strategy - it's far more important to win the Silver split than the Feodum split - better to ratchet up the Feoda you have (while increasing your buying power) than to crack down hard on the pile.

Outside of alt-VP strategies and Big Money, you probably won't want to buy more than one Masterpiece.  Just picking up one for $6-$9 will dramatically improve your deck.  And the Masterpiece itself then makes an excellent target for Trash-for-Benefit cards, such as Salvager, Apprentice, Bishop, Mine, Counterfeit, Remodel...  The Silvers gained with it can also make good targets for these cards.  Or you can just pass the Masterpiece to your opponent with Ambassador or Masquerade - the only useful part of the card is its on-buy overpay, which your opponent will not be able to get here.  These two cards are also great for trashing away the Estates and Coppers in your starting deck, and along with Chapel, they are great companions to Masterpiece - trash away everything except your pile of Silvers, and you'll be getting Provinces quite quickly.

Because the Masterpiece itself is just a Copper, if you're going for a TfB or Big Money strategy, you'll want to either find some way to quickly get rid of the Masterpiece, or to never gain it all together.  Trader it into one more Silver, or Watchtower it into the trash.  Watchtower can then dump the whole pile of Silvers on top of your deck, possibly ensuring a Province buy.

But if you're going for an engine, you may want to ignore Masterpiece entirely, particularly on boards where you're ignoring Silver anyway, such as Colony/Platinum boards, where Silver can actually be just as bad as Copper.  Why would you overpay for a Masterpiece when you can get one Platinum that won't clog your Goons engine?

My opponent just bough a huge pile of Silvers with Masterpiece!  What do I do?

There are a couple options.  You could try to outrace them with a sleek engine that isn't clogged with Silvers.  You could wait them out with a VP token or Gardens strategy.  You could buy your own Masterpiece!  But there are direct ways to combat the pile of Silvers.  Discard Attacks are the obvious route, as 3-card hands aren't very good at buying Provinces in decks with mainly Silver.  General discarding Attacks like Militia or Margrave fill this role, but Treasure specific Attacks are also useful - Cutpurse moreso at the beginning, to prevent your opponent from getting the Masterpiece in the first place, whereas Taxman will be useful the whole game.  Even Thief is useful against Masterpiece deck, as you are now much more likely to hit a "good" Treasure than to whiff on Copper.  And, as usual, Cursers and Looters will make it much harder for your opponent to line up enough Silvers.

Conclusion

So Masterpiece will work in some decks, but not in others.  Regardless, there's an elegance to how the card works.  There's even a certain elegance to the theme of this card - you get out of it exactly what you put into it, which is the case for actual works of art.  The more you put into it, the more you reap.

Synergies:
-Feodum, Gardens
-Other Alt-VP (except perhaps Fairgrounds)
-Any BM strategy
-Trash-for-benefit cards
-Heavy trashing (Chapel, Ambassador, etc)
-Watchtower/Trader

Anti-synergies:
-Engines
-Colony/Platinum

[Awaclus]

In my experience, Gold is better than $6 Masterpiece for BM strategies. The reason is that with Masterpiece, you'll get lots of mediocre hands, and with Gold, you'll get one better hand and another hand that's not as good. Getting that better hand is especially important in games with Masterpiece, since every extra dollar is an extra Silver and the more Silver you can get with a single Masterpiece, the less Masterpieces you will need in your deck.

Also, I think you should mention that Masterpiece is mostly just a nice addition to decks like DoubleJack, but absolutely nuts with terminal draw BM, especially Council Room. Masterpiece benefits from the huge handsize and the +buy comes in handy a lot of time too, and additionally, unless your opponent goes for Masterpiece himself, any Council Rooms he plays will help you much more than the Council Rooms you play help him.

For the same reason, any discard attack on the board pretty much invalidates Province strategies featuring Masterpiece because a $6 hand doesn't buy a Province.

[AHoppy]

In my experience, Gold is better than $6 Masterpiece for BM strategies. The reason is that with Masterpiece, you'll get lots of mediocre hands, and with Gold, you'll get one better hand and another hand that's not as good. Getting that better hand is especially important in games with Masterpiece, since every extra dollar is an extra Silver and the more Silver you can get with a single Masterpiece, the less Masterpieces you will need in your deck.

Also, I think you should mention that Masterpiece is mostly just a nice addition to decks like DoubleJack, but absolutely nuts with terminal draw BM, especially Council Room. Masterpiece benefits from the huge handsize and the +buy comes in handy a lot of time too, and additionally, unless your opponent goes for Masterpiece himself, any Council Rooms he plays will help you much more than the Council Rooms you play help him.

For the same reason, any discard attack on the board pretty much invalidates Province strategies featuring Masterpiece because a $6 hand doesn't buy a Province.

So you're saying you would buy gold over masterpiece in a terminal draw BM because then you can get better masterpieces?    I feel like in terminal draw BM I would want silver over gold.  your gold coming up in a hand with all your VP kinda sucks, but having 3 silvers spread out will either give you the extra 1-2 you need for the province, or still make a good masterpiece buy.  But your discard attacks portion is valid.  I would still think masterpiece would be viable though because if you're doing terminal draw and have tons of silver, you can probably get to 6-8 by playing your smithy or margrave or whatever.

[Awaclus]

So you're saying you would buy gold over masterpiece in a terminal draw BM because then you can get better masterpieces?    I feel like in terminal draw BM I would want silver over gold.  your gold coming up in a hand with all your VP kinda sucks, but having 3 silvers spread out will either give you the extra 1-2 you need for the province, or still make a good masterpiece buy.  But your discard attacks portion is valid.  I would still think masterpiece would be viable though because if you're doing terminal draw and have tons of silver, you can probably get to 6-8 by playing your smithy or margrave or whatever.

Yeah. I think you're underestimating how much Masterpiece itself hurts your deck. You want to minimize the number of Masterpiece buys and maximize the number of Silver gains, therefore, you want as big Masterpiece overpays as possible. For $6, Gold is $3 of buying power in a single card, Masterpiece is $7 of buying power spread over four cards and while they both help you in reaching $8 for the Province buy, Gold obviously helps you more in getting a big Masterpiece buy and the big Masterpiece buy is what you want because that enables early greening. For example, in this game, my turn 7 Masterpiece buy with overpay with 12 was lucky, but it was all thanks to the fact that I had two Golds in my deck instead of more Silvers and Masterpieces and after that, I could just buy some extra terminals to make up for the increased deck size and bought 6 Provinces and two Duchies on turns 10-14.

[AHoppy]

So you're saying you would buy gold over masterpiece in a terminal draw BM because then you can get better masterpieces?    I feel like in terminal draw BM I would want silver over gold.  your gold coming up in a hand with all your VP kinda sucks, but having 3 silvers spread out will either give you the extra 1-2 you need for the province, or still make a good masterpiece buy.  But your discard attacks portion is valid.  I would still think masterpiece would be viable though because if you're doing terminal draw and have tons of silver, you can probably get to 6-8 by playing your smithy or margrave or whatever.

Yeah. I think you're underestimating how much Masterpiece itself hurts your deck. You want to minimize the number of Masterpiece buys and maximize the number of Silver gains, therefore, you want as big Masterpiece overpays as possible. For $6, Gold is $3 of buying power in a single card, Masterpiece is $7 of buying power spread over four cards and while they both help you in reaching $8 for the Province buy, Gold obviously helps you more in getting a big Masterpiece buy and the big Masterpiece buy is what you want because that enables early greening. For example, in this game, my turn 7 Masterpiece buy with overpay with 12 was lucky, but it was all thanks to the fact that I had two Golds in my deck instead of more Silvers and Masterpieces and after that, I could just buy some extra terminals to make up for the increased deck size and bought 6 Provinces and two Duchies on turns 10-14.

Fair enough.  I forgot about the masterpiece itself.  Although, nowadays, sets without some form of trashing are less common.  But with BM you can't really afford trashing.  So I guess I agree with you.  Sorry for misunderstanding.

[Warfreak2]

Just wanted to offer a few sample games:
Chapel/Masterpiece getting 4 Provinces in 13 turns, 6 Provinces and 2 Duchies in 17 turns - after only two big Masterpieces, the deck is almost all Silver, ready for Provinces almost every turn.
Masterpiece/Gardens creating a big deck which is resilient to greening and opponent's junking, and 8-point Gardens. (In this game, I think the lack of +buy really helps the Gardens player to outrace the engine).
Masterpiece/Feodum showing that the Feodum split is much less important than the Silver split - my early Feodum buys are even probably mistakes.

[AHoppy]

Here's another feodum-masterpiece game that shows that the silver split and bigger masterpiece buys are more important than the feodum split

[Schneau]

Has anyone done BM-terminal draw simulations with and without Masterpiece? I feel like this would be informative as to whether Masterpiece is worthwhile, especially at $5 and $6 in this type of deck.

The article indicates that Masterpiece is good with T4B. But, it seems to me that flooding your deck with Silvers is going to make it hard to connect your T4B cards with your Masterpieces, unless you also have heavy trashing of your starting cards. I'm guessing this is a nombo more often than not.

[Warfreak2]

Depends how many Silvers you take, and what you use them for. For example, you could have a draw engine which buys a Masterpiece every turn, trashes all the Silvers with Counterfeit, and Remodels the Masterpiece into another Counterfeit or engine component. This way you could double-Province while still building.

Another example would be using Forge to turn Masterpiece and two Silvers into Platinum, or add an Estate to get a Colony.

An $n Masterpiece adds $(3n-6) of card value to your deck, which can be efficient for TfB if you don't keep those cards in your deck. If the Masterpieces are too big then it's hard to churn through all of the cards, but $5 or $6 could be a sweet spot for TfB, if there's an engine to support it.

[DG]

You can use masterpieces with a partial defense (like a moat, masquerade, trader) against junking attacks. By flooding your deck with silver the junk has little or no impact. It's not possible all the time but it is a situation where you would buy a number of masterpieces.

Royal seals and watchtowers provide an instant reward for buying a masterpiece.

[Warfreak2]

Watchtower/Masterpiece sounds like a combo, you can trash the Masterpieces while getting all the Silver in your next hand, and the Watchtowers defend against discard attacks.

[SirPeebles]

Watchtower/Masterpiece sounds like a combo, you can trash the Masterpieces while getting all the Silver in your next hand, and the Watchtowers defend against discard attacks.

Well yeah, Watchtower pretty much combos with or counters every card in the game.  Or at least, it feels like that sometimes.

[werothegreat]

Watchtower/Masterpiece sounds like a combo, you can trash the Masterpieces while getting all the Silver in your next hand, and the Watchtowers defend against discard attacks.

Well yeah, Watchtower pretty much combos with or counters every card in the game.  Or at least, it feels like that sometimes.

I was about to say it doesn't combo with JoaT, but then I remembered you could use it top-deck the Silver.  But...  then you have a spot in your hand taken up by Watchtower that could have been a Silver in the first place.  So.  Nombo with JoaT.

On a related note, I'm going to be updating the article.

[SirPeebles]

Watchtower/Masterpiece sounds like a combo, you can trash the Masterpieces while getting all the Silver in your next hand, and the Watchtowers defend against discard attacks.

Well yeah, Watchtower pretty much combos with or counters every card in the game.  Or at least, it feels like that sometimes.

I was about to say it doesn't combo with JoaT, but then I remembered you could use it top-deck the Silver.  But...  then you have a spot in your hand taken up by Watchtower that could have been a Silver in the first place.  So.  Nombo with JoaT.

On a related note, I'm going to be updating the article.

It can trash the incoming Silver.  Sometimes you just don't want anymore Silver.

[werothegreat]

Watchtower/Masterpiece sounds like a combo, you can trash the Masterpieces while getting all the Silver in your next hand, and the Watchtowers defend against discard attacks.

Well yeah, Watchtower pretty much combos with or counters every card in the game.  Or at least, it feels like that sometimes.

I was about to say it doesn't combo with JoaT, but then I remembered you could use it top-deck the Silver.  But...  then you have a spot in your hand taken up by Watchtower that could have been a Silver in the first place.  So.  Nombo with JoaT.

On a related note, I'm going to be updating the article.

It can trash the incoming Silver.  Sometimes you just don't want anymore Silver.

I think you may be missing the point of this article, then.

[werothegreat]

[heron]

Masterpiece-Duke is really strong.

[Kirian]

Masterpiece-Dukeany slog is really strong.

[Markov Chain]

Other combos: Mine or Taxman.  If you mine or tax a Masterpiece, it turns into gold, negating its disadvantage.  Also, the silvers which come with Masterpiece are good mining targets if you don't have the Masterpiece itself, and even better taxing targets if your opponents don't have Masterpiece themselves.

[werothegreat]

Other combos: Mine or Taxman.  If you mine or tax a Masterpiece, it turns into gold, negating its disadvantage.  Also, the silvers which come with Masterpiece are good mining targets if you don't have the Masterpiece itself, and even better taxing targets if your opponents don't have Masterpiece themselves.

Those are both TfB cards, last time I checked.

[LastFootnote]

Other combos: Mine or Taxman.  If you mine or tax a Masterpiece, it turns into gold, negating its disadvantage.  Also, the silvers which come with Masterpiece are good mining targets if you don't have the Masterpiece itself, and even better taxing targets if your opponents don't have Masterpiece themselves.

I once used Taxman to turn a Masterpiece into a Gold, and as luck would have it, my opponent had his only Masterpiece in hand and had to discard it. Bonus!

[sudgy]

Other combos: Mine or Taxman.  If you mine or tax a Masterpiece, it turns into gold, negating its disadvantage.  Also, the silvers which come with Masterpiece are good mining targets if you don't have the Masterpiece itself, and even better taxing targets if your opponents don't have Masterpiece themselves.

I once used Taxman to turn a Masterpiece into a Gold, and as luck would have it, my opponent had his only Masterpiece in hand and had to discard it. Bonus!

His hand was Taxman-Masterpiece-ThreeNoTreasureCards too...

[ashersky]

I've had opponents open Masterpiece with 4...no Feodum on the board.  Which, even if it was, is no excuse.

[Awaclus]

I've had opponents open Masterpiece with 4...no Feodum on the board.  Which, even if it was, is no excuse.

Opponents? Wow.

[eliegel34]

I've had opponents open Masterpiece with 4...no Feodum on the board.  Which, even if it was, is no excuse.

I sure hope Gardens were in the kingdom.