"Absolutely" no way? You've never seen Terranova, Braathens, Vigo and a couple of torturers on the board at the same time? That's not "old school." That's just your basic run of the mill assimilate lineup in a long round.
Disclaimer: None of the claims below apply to Assimirrors due to clown fiesta nature of these.
Now.
I've never seen anyone play 2 Torturers in the same round as the first three and
still win. That's not how Torturers work...you aren't supposed to play them r3 unless your opponent played around your Terranova really, really hard. Even then, unless you're hunting a specific high-value unit (in which case you hold Torturess till said unit is played so she loses a bunch of value), there're more desirable cards to play that round. And even if you have 2 torturess on board in R3 - which you really shouldn't - it's still just 5 conditional and effectively hardcapped 1/2 point engines.
Besides, you
aren't supposed to even have two in your deck in the first place. There's too much to cram in - the Illusionist Package, spies, Blightmakers, actual bronze specials...
But even if that wasn't the case...the highest Torturess played for engine value from hand (i.e. early and not through Joachim) I've seen this season was like 13 at the end of a 10 cards R3, after a bunch of highly irregular shenanigans with Double Cross and CdG.
The piggie does need a trigger: Sabbath, and that piggie may get 2 points per turn, but those 5 selfeaters on the board only go up by 1 when it lands. What if they went up 2 points each, also?
Sabbath is a non-condition for Relicts. Granted, you still can't play Piggies first thing in the round.
But neither can you start gaining optimal assimilate value immediately, so realistically they start working around the same turn in a round (except Piggie has a better chance to take off earlier because of Mammuna).
And then piggies just continue ticking, and consistently reach 10~16 value without any additional help, and can do even better occasionally - while Torturesses need triggers (why the former is much better is painfully obvious when you compare Assimilate tempo pass to Relict tempo pass)
Selfeater is a self-replicating engine that ALREADY produces 2-3-4-5 etc. points a turn after playing a single instance of self-eater, so it kinda does what you suggest here. For 6 provisions.
The closest thing Assimilate has to a self-replicating 2-points-a-turn engine is Vigo for 8, and he creates 1-power copies. Otherwise, you're stuck with whatever your opp is playing, which might occasionally be Shieldmaidens or, y'know, 2-point dryads...and only occasinally will be a plug-and-play 2 point engine. Your question makes no sense.
Most importantly, you get, like, 3-4 total reliable double procs (of either kind, put together) in a match. They're kinda capped, y'know? Now look at Fleders or Messengers or Addicts or Piggies or whatever. They're freaking bronzes, too. That don't start at 4/5 like the assimilate engines, I might add.
upd: all in all, Assimilate is a pretty weak engine tag nowadays, compared to all the new shiny stuff out there. It's strong because it can copy broken units, not because the tag itself is good. The best evidence for this is that competitive Assimilists run Illusionists and not Ducal Guard.
Assimilate itself = 1 CONDITIONAL point per turn, outside of double proccing, which is laughable. If it wasn't, we'd still see NR Frigates and Drummers, which we evidently don't.
and has to spawn a goofy token), but there are just too freaking many. The number of these cards amounts to self-and/or-double proccing nearly every turn, which gets insane when there are 4, 5, 6 assimilate engines on the board.
