Month: April 2023

Board Game Strategy Book?!

I have been wanting to write a book for a long time. I want a book to introduce anyone to board game strategy to exist. And, I enjoy talking about board games and strategy. So let’s do it, finally! (This is where I would insert a picture of my Gillian tattoo, but I have to wait until 5/17/23 before I’ll actually have it.)

So, there is content out there that talks about board games from a design perspective and plenty of content with game specific strategy, but what I want to create is a book that draws upon my moderate array of board gaming experience, to define the overarching strategy concepts that I bring to any game I play. As I have done with Epic, I want to level the playing field as much as I can to enable other people to actually compete with me (not that I’m overconfident or anything and don’t frequently lament my downfall at the hands of my own hubris).

My favorite part of board/card gaming is the face to face social interaction between two+ people actively competing to win (without being jerks about it) and having a great time while doing it. Gen Con 2022 I competed in (and won) both a Jaipur tournament and a sealed SolForge Fusion tournament, and while both were fun, the Jaipur tournament with the casual, banter-filled atmosphere, subjected to my aggressive heavy camel-taking strategy that caught everyone by surprise, was far superior. Having opponents who actively knew how to play at the highest level forced me to see new devious tactics (such as heavily manipulating the market by taking a bunch of leather with camels to fill my hand to 7, triggering my opponent to think it was safe to take all of the camels, only for them to pop up 3 luxury goods to the table with a smirk on their face, for me to counter-smirk by dropping my leather right back to the table to take the luxury, *sigh* so beautiful *sigh*)…where was I again?

Right, I want MORE. More gamers who see the beauty in high level competitive play for its own sake (without feeling the need to cheat or maliciously angle-shoot etc.). I want to provide a groundwork for the average person to truly experience what I believe to be the heights of strategic gaming, ideally in an amusing to consume format without needing to devote the thousands of hours I’ve accumulated (which still is not where near enough).

Call for Assistance

In order to actually progress towards this goal of a board game strategy book, I need motivation, more gaming experience, and the collective knowledge of all of you to challenge my ideas (so they can grow) and to inform me of similar content I can standardize against. My plan is to complete a first draft without looking around too much to lower the possibility of accidental plagiarism, but after that, if there are established terms already in use, I might adopt those while also providing references/links to other high caliber content.

Roadmap

First, I want to develop a list strategic concepts that are present across a wide range of games. In order to do that, I am creating quick summaries of the games I know well including Goal of the Game, Game-specific Tactics to achieve that goal, and strategic concepts that inform why those tactics are valuable. So, when I have the motivation to work on this, I plan on filling out this summary for at least one more game.

Once I have filled out most of the games below, I want to identify the strategic concepts I want to talk about the most. (In addition, I plan on seeing if any of those are concepts you all want to see explored first.)

Then, when I have the motivation, I will try to go one concept at a time. First a definition of the concept. Followed by an in-depth explanation, likely ending with examples from the list of games below. In addition, to providing references/links to others who have discussed this topic, such as the “Who’s the Beatdown” article by Mike Flores … although reading this article, it seems incredibly unapproachable to anyone without a background in Magic which I actively will want to avoid to keep this book more generically approachable. (I’m also not entirely sure how I’ll have these transfer over into the book.)

Progress So Far (as of 4/29/23)

I took a week off of work to begin working on this book which I’ve had the idea to work on for a long time. This is as far I’ve gotten so far. I am hoping blogging my progress going forward will be able to help maintain my motivation to keep going (since I haven’t worked on it since 3/19/23). But phew, I’m beat, will come back to later.

Book Goal

Casually explain high-level board game strategy so readers can develop their own game-specific tactics.

Jaipur

Goals of the game is to get the most victory points

  • Early discs for the low value
  • Big as possible sets
  • As much luxury as possible

Tactics

  • Turn in your non-luxury goods if you see your opponent take them at start of game
  • Turn in non-luxury so as not to flip more cards
  • Avoiding taking camels to avoid flipping luxury cards for opponent
  • Taking camels to gain handsize advantage
  • Swapping out non-luxury goods for luxury to also stifle market
  • Taking a bunch of camels when your opponent has none or a nearly full hand
  • Turn in cards to clear up space in your hand for more cards

Strategy

  • Pay attention to what opponent has and minimize their potential points
  • Limit opponents’ potential plays
  • Focus on maximizing assets for self in comparison to opponent (opportunity cost)
    • Taking the Ruby instead of your 5th Leather
  • Card Advantage
  • Risk Management

Mindbug 

Goal of the game is to reduce your opponent to 0 life

  • Have an uncontested attacker
  • Finish off opponent
  • Get your opponent to only Mindbug cards you can deal with

Tactics

  • Offer a card you have a counter to in hand
  • Mindbug a card you don’t have a counter to in hand
  • Attack when your opponent can’t stop it, otherwise don’t without reason
  • Only play as many cards as are needed (advance towards goal)
  • Don’t chumpblock unless necessary
  • Know the possible cards, especially finishers
  • Play cards that are great for you that are actively mediocre for your opponent to steal
  • Play support cards before their value is apparent
  • Learn your opponent’s playstyle and card preferences to counter them
    • Bluff and/or change it up once your opponent learns yours
    • Read body language
  • Card economy have your cards gain more value than the cards needed to stop them
    • Kangasaurus Rex multiple creatures, Plated Scorpion kills two, Strage Barrel
  • Know when to break your own rules
  • Tempo
    • Know what needs to be answered immediately and what can wait
  • Mindbug decision depends on
    • Board state
    • Both Players’ health totals
    • Cards in both players hands
    • Potentially cards in both players’ discard piles
    • Remaining Mindbugs
  • Playing cards you don’t need to buy time/chump blocking

Strategy 

  • Read your opponent react to body language and anticipate plays
  • Think multiple moves in advance
  • Preserve resources/timing
  • Card Economy
  • Tempo
  • Stay Focused

Arkham Horror LCG

Goal of the game is ultimately to win the final scenario

Each individual scenario progress the Act Deck usually by getting clues and surviving

Make your character stronger by maximizing victory points and avoiding trauma

Tactics

  • Maximize action economy by getting multiple clues/doing multiple damage in one action
    • Kill vs evade
  • Card efficiency (how much value per card per resource)
  • Specializing vs Generalizing (Clue vs Kill), evade/will
  • Teamwork (countering their weaknesses and relying on their strengths)
  • Getting permanent buffs out as early as possible to maximize use
  • Maximizing character powers
  • Risk management (token bag)
  • Split or stay together
  • Search effects especially for finding experience cards
  • Clearing off more clues than needed to get VP, Hunting down VP enemies
  • Negating doom to give extra actions
  • Prepare for known treachery cards (blind vs returning)
  • Cycling skills

Strategy

  • Action and Card Economy
  • Teamwork (countering weaknesses and relying on strengths)
  • Maximizing buffs (value) as early as possible
  • Anticipate Treachery
  • Risk Management
  • Card Advantage
  • Card Quality (experience cards, getting out key pieces, cycling)

Dominion

Goal of the game is to have the most VP in deck at end of the game

Usually by getting more provinces (or colonies) faster than your opponent(s)

Exploiting other VP gaining strategies to subvert province rush

Tactics

  • Thinning deck to improve card quality (trashing cards)
  • Get card draw to gain access to more and better cards sooner
  • Buy high value cards
  • Disrupt opponents strategy (buy their cards, play targeted attacks)
  • Maximizing the value of your cards/turns
    • Spending all of your money
    • Playing towards the strengths of your cards, away from their weaknesses
    • Prioritize synergy though
  • Plan strategy ahead of time
  • Adapt as your plan sputters
  • Don’t buy non-synergistic cards just because you can (curses, moat)
  • Don’t buy more actions than you can play (Card Quality)
  • Be careful about buying VP before your deck is ready (Provinces/Gardens)
  • Pay attention to remaining VP and have a general idea what opponent’s have
  • Watch out for inadvertently helping opponents (Trade Route, Council Room)

Strategy

  • Plan your strategy at the start of the game
  • Card Quality
  • Maximize card value
  • Adapt (Anticipate Treachery)
  • Tempo
  • Stay Focused
  • Card Advantage

Star Realms

Goal of the game is to reduce your opponent to 0 health

Tactics

  • Buy cards of the same faction to trigger ally effects
  • Thin your deck to get to your better cards sooner
  • Add card draw to get to your better cards sooner
  • Counter what your opponent is doing by buying cards that are incredible for them, but still reasonable for you
  • Buy counter cards (destroy target base if base heavy)
  • Gain cards that give more money early, more damage late
  • Discard is decent early game to disrupt buying
  • Discard is good late game if opponent’s deck is thinned or you have a lot
  • Health Gain is good if your deck is bigger (costs) more than your opponent’s and/or your deck is more thinned than theirs
  • Damage is more important early if your opponent gets bases (bases are better if your opponent doesn’t have/can’t get damage)
  • Explorers are good early to help get more expensive cards, and should be scrapped to thin deck later
  • Everything is better with a thinned deck, but prioritizing a thinned deck without the ability to survive opponent’s aggression or get high value/synergistic cards isn’t good
  • Scrap your economy and Scrapping cards late game if they don’t provide efficient additional effects
  • Rush to get highest value cards (Brainworld) before your opponent can
  • Adapt based on trade row (if it shows a lot of efficient, inexpensive damage, maybe don’t go minor economy + scrap)
  • Card Quality (some cards are just better than others for the same purchase cost)
  • Kill bases unless you can win, best bases first
  • Buying cards that are less than you can afford that you know your opponent will want and can afford

Strategy

  • Card Quality
  • Maximize card value (ally triggers)
  • Anticipate and Perform Treachery
  • Tempo
  • Card Advantage
  • Maximizing value as soon as possible (bigger ships earlier give more chance for value)

Widget Ridge

Goal of the game is to generate the most spark

Tactics

  • Prioritize money cards early to get high value cards (card quality)
  • Pay attention to connections (maximizing value of cards)
  • Focus on getting a great full-construct and/or reusing connect abilities 
  • Draw cards and thin deck good (Card quality)
  • Timing/sequencing of effects, play cards that want you to have less spark first
  • Keeping cards in your workshop vs letting them hit discard pile
  • Buying cards that are less than you can afford that you know your opponent will want and can afford
  • Buy Accessory/Augments with the only connection(s) opponent’s devices can use

Strategy

  • Card Quality
  • Maximizing value of cards
  • Minor Anticipate/Perform Treachery
  • Timing/Sequencing of effects

Radlands

Goal of the game is to destroy all of your opponent’s bases

Tactics

  • Develop efficient ways to deal damage, ideal 1 water for 1 damage
  • Avoid relying on 2 water for 1 damage as it is less efficient
  • Protect your key cards with characters in front of them
  • Protect your damaged bases
  • Target the most disruptive cards of your opponent
  • Draw cards to have more option for both junk effects and play effects
  • Choose synergistic bases with a reasonable starting hand size (Don’t pick all 0 starting hand bases)
  • Spend all of your water every turn
  • Don’t underestimate spending 2 water to draw a card
  • Take your time
  • Time your effects for the biggest impact (events as 0, get a bunch of punks then return everything to hand, etc.)
  • Muse is bonus water every turn
  • It is largely an efficiency puzzle
  • Play to your bases/cards strengths/synergies

Axis and Allies (2nd edition 1940)

Goal of the game is to get your opponent to surrender by making it practically impossible to achieve their win condition

Tactics

  • As the axis, be aggressive, plan your first 3 turns thoroughly
  • As allies, react to what your opponent does, but don’t let them bait you too hard
  • As the soviets, planes are great at disrupting a fragmented advance
  • Overwhelming force to preserve your units
  • Infantry to take hits protecting your higher value units that deal hits
  • Can opening with other nations to make way for haymakers (Italy for Germany, Britain for US)
  • Income taken from opponents compound for you, but stretching yourself too thin leaves you open to counter attack
  • Every turn you spend building up is a turn your opponent’s spend building up
  • Tempo is incredibly important for Axis while Allies largely have to delay to give time for their economy to crush
  • Generally don’t leave territories with units outside of the borders
  • Don’t free France, use their production instead?
  • Axis need to focus on taking as much territory as possible so needs units that can
  • Don’t let highly valuable units and or territory be taken for little cost

Strategy

  • Maximize economy while minimizing opponent’s economy
  • Axis need to win as quickly as possible

Great Western Trail 2nd Edition

Goal

Epic Card Game

Goal of the game is to either reduce your opponent to 0 hit points or draw from an empty deck

Tactics

  • Play burn to finish off opponent, if they spend their gold on their turn, you get 2 gold in a row before they can spend another
  • Combine 0s with specific ones to do all of the damage at once and force a response
  • Pace your 0’s to stay ahead and make your opponent’s removal inefficient
  • Play the most powerful cards
  • Play cards your opponents aren’t expecting in powerful ways
  • Include enough cards to reliably hit loyalty effects
  • Provide continual pressure that your opponent can’t keep up with
  • Heal to get out of range of your opponent finishing you off with burn
  • Pay attention to your opponent’s likely drafted cards or common included cards in deck archetypes to either counter them in draft/deck building or play around the most devastating blowouts
  • Play to your outs, play to win, not to just not lose, unless that is how you win (delaying your loss for a couple turns if you that makes it so you can’t win is guaranteed to lose)
  • Take your time to think through all of your lines
  • Card advantage, have more cards in hand to have more options and to get to your best options faster
  • Card filtering to find your best cards (MGH, Zannos)
  • Maximize the value of your cards by including cards that support them
  • Preserve your gold until after your opponent spends theirs, bait/force opponent to spend first
  • Know when to cycle vs hold onto a card for value
  • Ideally never have a turn where your opponent spends their gold and you do not
  • High risk plays can win games, but can also lose them
  • Overload your opponent’s answers
  • Mindgames are a thing
  • Attack alone and early if your opponent has no good answers in play
  • Have a plan to beat the most common cards/decks/strategies
  • Don’t reveal new cards to loyalty if you don’t have to/don’t always reveal all cards you can
  • Practice/test
  • Match threats to answers
  • Hold off on your free mass discard pile removal to bait opponent into making bad plays, prioritize getting one otherwise have an aggressive enough deck to not need one
  • Recycle your best cards first/strategically to get to what you expect you will need in order
  • Play to your strengths playstyle wise

Strategy

Magic: The Gathering

Goal

Netrunner LCG

Goal

Rise of Augustus

Goal

Battlestar Galactica

Goal

Agricola (Worker Placement)

Goal

Hanamikoji

Goal

Ticket to Ride

Goal

Catan

Goal

7 Wonders Duel

Goal

Wingspan

Goal

Race for the Galaxy

Goal

Trekking Games

Goal

Alchemists

Goal

Splendor

Goal

Carcassonne

Goal

Under Falling Skies

Goal

Sushi Go

Goal

Camel Up

Goal

Dixit

Goal

Specter Ops

Goal

Tikal

Goal

Ninjato

Goal

Acquire

Goal

Takenoko

Goal

Mandala

Goal

Thurn and Taxis

Goal

Paperback

Goal of the game is to have the most victory points in your deck by game end

Tactics

  • Prioritize cards that have more value to you
    • If you can come up with long words to snag the common letters, emphasize card draw and multi-character cards
    • If you struggle to think of long words, emphasize high buying power individual letters
  • Generally avoid wilds/VP early, unless you can get card draw and big words, as they can dilute your buying power
  • Minor filtering
  • Have a large vocabulary (outside knowledge)
  • Get the double/triple word scores to get the highest value VP cards
  • Focus on using your most powerful effects to get even more powerful effects

Strategy

  • Play to your strengths
  • Maximize value

Smash Up

Goal

7 Wonders Architects

Goal

Kahuna

Goal of the game is to have the most victory points by controlling islands at 3 points

Tactics

  • Build up cards in hand to make a devastating sequence of plays
  • Hold onto or play island cards to manipulate what gets shuffled
  • Place bridges on opponent’s controlled islands that they can’t kick off
  • Solidify your own islands to protect against losing pieces
  • Secure key connections before your opponent can, if you see them take dangerous cards
  • Start by making a safe foothold to build off from
  • Knowing when not to take a card, manipulate turn order at cost of a card
  • Drawing from deck to hide your information, especially if nothing valuable on display, likely to get you garbage though so usually better to take a tangentially valuable face up card
  • Make big plays right before the end of a round to score that round’s points
  • Only use 2 cards to remove a bridge as a last resort or in a combo play to remove multiple bridges (card advantage)
  • Focus on protecting your bridges and slowly expanding
  • Losing a lot of in play bridges is the main way to lose the game

Strategy

  • Sequencing/Timing
  • Card advantage (not spending two cards removing bridges often, almost always taking cards, using fewer cards to knock out/negate more cards played by opponent)
  • Anticipate and Initiate Treachery
  • Pay attention to what opponent takes and how eager they are to take it
  • Maximize value of cards

Push Fight

Goal of the game is to push one of your opponent’s pieces off of the board

Tactics

  • Trap and isolate a circle on board edge
  • Maneuver pieces to form a wall to obstruct opponent’s movement
  • Constrict opponent’s space to maneuver
  • Force opponent to make specific moves and/or pushes
  • Keep circles centralized
  • Get a square into opponent’s back line
  • Push just own pieces
  • Use pieces to form pushable lines
  • Look into opponent’s potential plays/responses
  • Exploit anchor for positional plays, protects whole line from being pushed back
  • Pay attention to what board state will look like after push

Strategy

  • Limit opponent’s potential plays
  • Exploit weaknesses
  • Maximize value of anchor
  • Maneuver board into favorable end state

Medieval Academy

Goal

Princess Jing

Goal

Firefly The Game

Goal

Mindbug Beyond Evolution Spoiler!

When I was sent this card to spoil for the upcoming kickstarter expansion Mindbug Beyond, I saw the Play effect and my mind focused entirely on that, forgetting everything else since that aspect is so powerful. Looking back and seeing it has Hunter and Tough too, I am shook.

For those of you who do not know, Mindbug is a two-player card game where you play cards to attack your opponent from 3 life to 0. There are only creatures, but you both get exactly 2 Mindbugs that can be used to permanently steal a creature when your opponent plays it, gaining all of the effects as if you had played it. I love this game so much it made it into my (still healing) tattoo from two weeks ago.

(That is Rhino Turtle on the end there. The full hand being Arkham Horror LCG, Dixit, Epic, Dominion, Jaipur, Radlands, Widget Ridge, Rhino Turtle [Mindbug].)

The card is Swiss Army Bug. It is a 4-power creature with Hunter, Tough, and Play: You may copy the Play effect of another creature. I confirmed that the Play effect can copy any Play effect of any creature in play by either player. As of now the Play effects are:

Core Set: Compost Dragon, Grave Robber, Giraffodile, Ferret Bomber, Brain Fly, Tiger Squirrel, Kangasaurus Rex, Mysterious Mermaid, Axolotl Healer, and Killer Bee

New Creations: Hungry Hungry Hamster, Ratomancer, Goreagle Alpha

The effect that immediately came to mind was copying Killer Bee. Due to the nature of Killer Bee’s unpreventable life loss if your opponent is out of Mindbugs, this can be the extra copy you follow up with after your actual copy of Killer Bee draws out your opponent’s last Mindbug. Having this can also allow you to play Killer Bee early to get that 5-power Hunter into play before your opponent can get any value from Sneaky characters.

As someone who is personally a big fan of having multiple of the same effect in hand, so I can double Ferret Bomber you (or now quadruple), this is a card I am definitely looking forward to. It can also give you extra copies of the one-ofs Giraffodile, Brain Fly, Mysterious Mermaid, and Ratomancer (or let you borrow the effect of those played by your opponent).

That being said, as is the case with Compost Dragon and Grave Robber, any play of Swiss Army Bug while your opponent has a Mindbug requires you to analyze just how powerful any of the in-play Play-effects would be against you. This also means sequencing your Play-effects becomes more important because if you do have a Killer Bee in play, you are at 1 life, and your opponent has a Mindbug left, you can’t play Swiss Army Bug, no matter how tempting the Kangasaurus Rex trigger undoubtedly is.

Finally, even just a 4-power Hunter, Tough is a card I would frequently be happy to have online early. This can be especially true if your hand is nothing but low power creatures (and/or you can exploit its 4 or less power). Playing this out early when the Play-effect is inactive will likely get your opponent to let you have it, since not triggering the strong play effect makes it appear to be a throwaway. Then, any 4 or less power creature you get Mindbugged becomes hunter fodder for your Swiss Army Bug. Of course, after the first time you do this to your opponent, they might get wise and realize they need to Mindbug this early, until you follow it up with all of the Rhino Turtles (*deviously contented sigh* good ol’ Rhino Turtle).

My only complaint about this card is that it is a “may” effect. It doesn’t force the controller to trigger a play effect such as Goreagle Alpha’s You lose 1 life point (like Mysterious Mermaid does). While I haven’t been able to think of a situation where I could force my opponent into both needing to Mindbug this and immediately losing if they do (if it wasn’t a “may” effect), my sadistic side is disappointed that I never will be able to. Sadness.

Anyways, I know I will be buying multiple copies of the Beyond expansion when it goes live on Kickstarter soon, so I can distribute them to all of the people I have hooked. Great game, and if you haven’t tried it yet, I highly recommend it.  (Here’s the dice tower review by Tom Vasel on it as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-9G24mEsgw)