Most efficient combo?

[MRD90]

What's the most efficient combo of trading cards you can come up with? Roughly speaking, "efficiency" meaning getting the most value out of the lest amount of cards.

I think it's hard to beat this trio:

B -> GG
GG -> BB
B -> GRY

First two cards are an easy engine to fill your board up with Brown spice, then you can use the last one to trade down to any number of lesser spices you need. Is there anything better?

[Malo77]

The "problem" is you start with Y spices, so setting up a cycle based on B and getting enough B to start could be tedious.

The same question and starting with Y would be nice to know.

Efficiency in this game would be : quickly getting the colors you need starting with Y spices (or other combo depending on you starting cards)

[MRD90]

2 plays of upgrade gets you from YY to GG, which is within the cycle. I don't see that being the problem.

This isn't meant to be considering a full strategy from the start of the game. I'm just trying to get a handle on what flsort of mid-game regeneration engines are good to shoot for to rebuild your boatd value after buying a card. This seems the most compact and powerful I could find. I have one game going on with a slightly less good B->RRYY + RY->B, so it's obviously not the only kind of good cycle.

[Malo77]

I would say it is a difficult question, and it depends on starting ressources, cards in hand, and cards you want to buy.
Short cycles are not always the most efficient as they force you to rest more often.
Combos starting with high value spice are more difficult to set up also.
So efficiency is not always the smallest number of cards, but the smallest number of turns.

To set the things i would suggest rewording the challenge: how to find the most efficient sequence of moves to be able to by 3 times BBBBB:

How many turns does it takes to by tree times BBBBB (suppose there are 3 available) ?
- Start with YYYY
- you can get any card (all available)
- Rest/Get back the cards
- 10 cubes max

I did it for your combo: just got starting cards +B and use it first (2 moves) to have B, and I need 27 turns total to buy 3 BBBBB.
I tried with another combo of more cards i like starting with, getting more Y and transforming them .. I needed 26 turns.
If i mix my way (start) and your way (end) i can lower the nb of turns to 22, using both combos at the right time.

I can show you details if you like. The "combo" are larger sequence of cards, not a small combo which could need too much rest.

[h_illes]

What's the most efficient combo of trading cards you can come up with? Roughly speaking, "efficiency" meaning getting the most value out of the lest amount of cards.

I think it's hard to beat this trio:

B -> GG
GG -> BB
B -> GRY

First two cards are an easy engine to fill your board up with Brown spice, then you can use the last one to trade down to any number of lesser spices you need. Is there anything better?

B>GG + GG>BB is indeed the fastest combo. As long as there are enough G-B heavy expensive point cards, you don't even need anything more. That said, B>GRY is the best support card. But you do need expensive point cards to target, otherwise you can't run the G-B doubling part, which makes this combo powerful.

Another powerful combo is B>RRR, RRR>GGG, GGG>BBB. Under the right circumstances, you can buy 2 point cards in one loop with just 1 extra move (e.g. adding yellows). On some boards, that can be faster overall than B>GG + GG>BB.

In my experience, if you want to chase a lot of points in relatively few turns (think of 100 points in 30 turns or so), having 2 strong combos that you can chain together is best. But this will only happen if your opponent messes up badly.

If the board has lots of cheap cards (mostly yellow-red-green, very little brown), then YY>RR + RR>YYYG can also be very fast.

2 plays of upgrade gets you from YY to GG, which is within the cycle. I don't see that being the problem.

This isn't meant to be considering a full strategy from the start of the game. I'm just trying to get a handle on what flsort of mid-game regeneration engines are good to shoot for to rebuild your boatd value after buying a card. This seems the most compact and powerful I could find. I have one game going on with a slightly less good B->RRYY + RY->B, so it's obviously not the only kind of good cycle.

B>RRYY + RY>B is much weaker. You can double from 2 browns to 4 in one loop, but no more than that. With the G-B doubling loop, you can go from 5 to 10. That's a world of difference.