I ended up just buying it rather than waiting for Christmas, and figured I'd ask for the expansions instead.
My wife loves the game about as much as me, and we've played quite a few games. This has given both of us a lot of time to think things out. Chapel
is a lot more powerful than I thought. In one of the first games I played, my cousin made good use of it, but my wife and I really put it to use in the last game we played (also with a third player). Basically, before buying provinces, my deck looked like:
Gold
Gold
Gold
Laboratory
Adventurer
Chapel
I think the Cellar would have been better than the Lab, but I didn't think that far ahead, and I had five copper my first turn so I jumped at the opportunity. Really, at that point, you get a Province every turn unless you get unlucky enough to draw four+ Provinces/Chapels. My wife and I hit that point at the same time, and the game ended five turns after that. My poor sister-in-law would watch each of our turns unfold and just say "crap".
It does look like a Thief would really hurt a deck like that. Really, most of the attack cards would slow it down, but the Thief would be down right brutal.