Quick winning principles
- Buy Chapel or Steward on turn 2 and trash both Estates and Coppers.
- Add one Gold before your third Action card unless engine pieces are available.
- Do not buy Victory cards until you can buy Province twice in one shuffle.
- Track your deck cycle—engines need 8+ cards drawn per turn.
Ideal strategy
- 1
Deck thinning: trash to 13 cards before adding duplicates; each extra Copper costs one VP per cycle.
- 2
Trashing: Chapel turn 2 trashes four cards by turn 4—equivalent to skipping two dead draws per shuffle.
- 3
Engine vs big money: Village plus Smithy plus Festival needs three Villages before Province rush.
- 4
Terminal collision: one terminal per Village; extra Terminals without +Actions stall the engine.
- 5
Kingdom analysis: trashing plus draw plus +Buy is an engine; only money attacks is big money.
- 6
Endgame: Province plus Duchy in final two turns when deck cycles every turn beats early green.