Way of the turtle and tactician

Question

I always thought it was not possible to get double the effect of a tactician, because "if you have at least one card in hand, discard you hand, ..."

But I recently played a game with "way of the turtle". Is my interpretation correct:

If I turtle(1) two tacticians and a village, at the next turn I can decide to:

• play the first tactician, discarding my hand
• play the village, and get +1 card
• play the second tactician, discarding one card

Then, at the following turn, am I correct in getting +10 cards, +2 buys, +2 actions ? (I'm still not sure it's a viable strategy as it requires quite a setup, but I'm wondering if I'm missing a rule)

(1) By turtling I mean: play those card in the way of the turtle.

Answer 1

It is in fact possible to receive a double-Tactician benefit either from one or two copies of the card with a few different tricks, such as:

1. Playing Golem from Alchemy. If it reveals a Tactician and another card that draws you more cards (and you also have spare actions), then you can draw into a second copy of Tactician to play and hopefully still have something to discard.

2. Putting your +1 Card token from Adventures on Tactician, so that when you play it via a Throne Room you draw a card between the first and second play, letting you get its benefit.

Your idea of using Way of the Turtle almost works, but it's got a few issues:

• The extra card doesn't need to be a Village, just anything that draws you a card to discard to the second Tactician (you don't spend actions to play the cards after they're set aside, so you don't need a Village to generate them but it is a valid option);

• You'll need 3 spare actions to play the cards on the previous turn in order to set them all aside;

• You'll lose a fair bit of momentum because those cards get set aside on one turn, then on the second turn you play them for their effects - which includes discarding your hand at the very start of the turn - and you don't get the double-Tactician benefit until the third turn, which also keeps those cards out of your deck an additional turn so it's harder to pull off repeatedly (unless you have 4 Tacticians, in which case you can potentially do it every second turn with some regularity).

You can get a similar effect with Tactician, Way of the Turtle, and Guide from Adventures. The main benefit is that Guide can set itself aside (on your tavern mat) without costing an Action, making it easier to set up the combo. Guide also gives you a chance to refresh your hand fully on the turn you activate the Tactician(s), compared to other cards of similar cost which would only draw you 1 or 2.