hlaalu and crow can both generate some pretty high amounts of coins depending on the cards chosen

upgraded crow cards, with even like 3 or so making a combo could easily be 6 coins themselves + any others from remainder of their hands

some hlaalu cards can also generate 6-8 coins directly, though some of those can be more expensive

some hlaalu cards allow just grabbing cards from the tavern for free if its under a certain cost (i dont remember the name of the card but the one with the picture of boxes on it is cheap (4 coins) and can, for free, grab another card of 4 or less cost, which would be a lot of the crow ones)

without seeing how the game played out, its hard to tell exactly what happened though

if it was only the 3rd round, they could have picked up some crow cards

the default starting hand is 10 cards (4 faction cards + 6 coin cards)

some possible hlaalu cards that could give them massive coins cheaply would be the luxery exports card (costs 2 to buy, and generates 3 coin when played)

even on turn 1 they could have the potential to buy up to 2 of those cards pretty easily if the tavern RNG started with those

if they picked up 2 of those cards, their 3rd turn they could have easily drawn both as they might only have 13 cards in the deck (around 50% chance to draw both exports cards), with all other coin cards that would have generated 3+3+3 coins in 1 turn, even more if they picked up the kwama egg mine contracts which would generate their combos (costs 3 but gain 5 with the combo 3, netting 2 more coins)

since i dont know what happened, thats one guess i could make using hlaalu cards that would have been able to generate 11+ coins by turn 3

its usually not possible to generate that many coins on 1 or 2 since you havent shuffled the deck yet at that point

It's absolutely possible with the right combination of crow and hlaalu and contract cards. It does need good luck in the card draw, but if you get that luck on turn two and three and the tavern is good to you its almost hard not to pull that high from r4.

Just yesterday I had a game where my opponent chose Hlaalu, and Kwama Egg Mine plus Ebony Mine landed on a starting table. I was going first and had 5 coins with a Hlaalu starter in my hand. After buying both contracts, I had 10 gold on my first turn.
With enough luck from tavern, it is possible for Hlaalu cards in the deck to sync for multiple turns in a row, so you can have Luxury Shipment + starter + contract (7-8 gold from 2 cards) on one turn, then Luxury Shipment#2 + Hostile Takeover + contract (8-9 gold from 2 cards) on the next, or just double Luxury Shipment with double Writ of Coin (10 gold from 4 cards without any contract help).

Calastir wrote: »

Had something similar happen to me where human opponent kept playing the same 3 agents over and over again after the second hand while I never even saw him buy those cards or gain any patron favor. Since there was no logic to it, I conceded.

That is similar to what happened in my game. I never saw them buy any high coin generating cards yet they kept playing them each hand.

There is no way any player would have enough coins in the first 2 hands to buy a high coin card even if one was available.

This really sounds like something is glitching. I can't imagine it's a cheat or anything because (I assume) it's run server side. But the statistical likelihood of what @SilverBride described in particular happening I would imagine is very, very low.

Human opponent just gained 34 power points obliterating me in one round, after pulling 4 power tops every hand up until then. Make it make sense.

As @NoSoup suggested, you should start recording your matches if you don't understand how something keeps happening, so you can review the video (in slow-motion if need be) to follow everything from the beginning. This is also the only way to document (and report) any kind of suspicious activity, such as your opponent playing cards that you never saw them buy. My guess is that your review of the video will probably reveal that everything was legitimate, but if so then it may help you learn what to watch out for in future matches-- what to try to prevent as soon as you see certain patrons chosen or certain cards pop up in the Tavern.

I play almost exclusively against NPCs, but I do play against other players on rare occasions, such as if there's an endeavor for it. The other week I had a similar sort of experience where my opponent was able to repeatedly and consistently generate a lot of gold, buy up choice cards nearly every turn to pack their deck with, and leave me in the dust from early on. In my case, I didn't follow every single move they made, but I knew exactly when they gained their edge during the first few moves, and it boiled down to me making a poor choice during my first move as far as which card I bought and which card I left for them-- in that case the Tavern contained several juicy cards during the first turn, so it was one of those situations where they'd end up with a good card no matter what-- and then in the second or third turn they got lucky with a few contract cards where one was in the Tavern and they bought it (because I'd left it there), and it was replaced by a similar contract card which they were able to buy, resulting in a large amount of gold that let them buy several juicy cards early in the game. Then it kept snow-balling from there, and all I could do was helplessly watch the avalanche heading my way.