grinding wine

Has anyone already done the math on the best way to grind wine for a stat-capped POSI? I want to replace my Master’s Blood, and there are so many sources of wine and types that I was hoping someone had already figured this out before I went making spreadsheets. Thanks!

[li]
Probably not the most efficient, but I like grinding absinthe at the three sisters’.

Unfortunately, the disappearance of the Portly Sommelier (well, his rarefaction) will make it very difficult to replace your MB (I have several cellars waiting to be converted in Airags, but I haven’t drawn the card in weeks).

There are three ways of doing it really, Affair of the Box, Spinning the Wheels, and at the Foreign Office. All are almost equally efficient. Affair of the box gives absinthe, whereas the other two directly give Broken Giant, so are slightly more action efficient, simply by merit of having less conversions.

I don’t know about the Foreign Office, but confronting Affair of the Box and the Velocipede Squad, the former’s an action shorter than the latter (14 compared to 15), so the extra conversion action evens that up. Affair of the Box does drain more Connected: the Church, as it lowers it converting from Absinthe to Broken Giant, but it yields an extra reward of 6x Correspondence Plaques if you choose the Criminals/Revolutionaries side.

Currently being grinding as well, I usually go with a cycle of Velocipede Squad and three cycles of Affair of the Box, for a total of exactly 27 Broken Giant bottles and 18x Correspondence Plaque (if I did Velocipede Squad only, revenue would be 28x Broken Giant, but no Correspondence Plaques).

Thanks. I see the Portly Sommelier reasonably often, having ruthlessly trimmed my deck previously (though having to get Connected: the Church back has added some cards to it), so I’m not too worried about that.

Even including conversion actions and connections, AotB beats out Velocipede squad by the tiniest of margins. Not counting church connections AoTB is more efficient by about 0.43 actions per bottle of Broken Giant, which still works out to something like 40 actions since you need so god-damned much of it. Maybe a bit more actually since I’m working in Broken Giant and haven’t bothered to take the conversion minimums for Cellars into account.

Meanwhile, converting all that Strangling Willow from AotB would take about 440 c.p. of Church connections. This is still only ~18 actions if you have a Tiny Jeweled Reliquary, though, which is less than the extra actions you’d spend on the less efficient Velocipede grind.

All of this is assuming money for a Reliquary and the Whispered Secrets to feed it are no issue, but I’m pretty sure the Correspondence Plaques and rewards from Strangling Willow conversions might actually pay for your Reliquary anyway over the course of the full grind.

(Also, I’m not entirely sure which path in the Foreign Office gives wine? The wiki doesn’t suggest that any do.)