Jeremy Lennert

One reason for keeping the ruins and knights piles face-down (except for the top card) is that many Dominion players will pick up an unfamiliar card from the supply so that they can read it and see what it does, and they could accidentally expose the next card when doing so if it were face-up.

If everyone playing knows what the 10 knight cards are or the table is arranged so that all players can read these cards easily without touching them, then I could see how face-up piles might be more convenient. But if you’re playing in a group where players might take advantage of seeing the cards underneath, keeping them face-down is a precaution for those groups to take.

The blue card backs reveal when Dracula goes to see–and if the hunters had even the vaguest notion of where you were before that, they probably know which sea you’re in (or can narrow it down very quickly). And the sea zones are mostly linear, which means in many cases they’ll know where you are every turn you’re at sea.

You can sow a lot more uncertainty if you visit the Atlantic Ocean, and then go exactly one more sea move before landfall. The Atlantic is connected to four different ocean spaces, so even if they know where you came from, that still leaves three sea zones you could be in–a much larger area to search to pick up your trail (and inconveniently spread-out). You need to land immediately after that, though, or you eliminate a lot of options again.

When a card falls off of Dracula’s trail, he has the option to add it to his catacombs. This keeps any encounter on that location in play, so that it can still harm a hunter who blunders into it later.

In my experience, things rarely work out that way. The encounter will often be gone by the time it falls off your track, and even if it isn’t the hunters likely know the card’s location, which means they won’t trip it accidentally–plus, a face-up location card in your catacombs means that the hunters can be sure you haven’t visited that location again. This may discourage you from moving cards into your catacombs.

However, there’s another important reason to use your catacombs, which is that you get to “fortify” the location with an extra encounter when you move it there. Even if the hunters are never going to trip that encounter, this can be used to cycle encounters out of your hand, giving you more chances to draw the ones you want. If you move most of your locations to the catacombs when they fall off your trail, you can draw new encounters at nearly twice the normal rate–and if you don’t want the card there, you can always remove it at the start of your next turn.

Outbreaks can place disease cubes in a city whose infection card has never yet been drawn. This may seem like it’s not a concern, since the city only has one cube, and isn’t likely to be drawn during the infection phase.

However, if the color of the cube matches the color of the city, this is still a potential danger: epidemics cause you to draw an infection card from the bottom of the deck (i.e. one that’s never been drawn before in the current game) and immediately place three cubes in that city. Just one stray cube could push that 3 up to a 4, setting off an instant and unpreventable outbreak!

You still need to prioritize your actions, and this usually won’t be your biggest risk. But if you can take care of the lingering cube on the way to something else, that’s one less thing that can go wrong at the last second…

In campaign mode, in addition to giving you useful items, search cards also give you extra gold to spend between quests.

That extra gold transforms into permanent items that you can use for the remainder of the campaign, and can potentially be worth more than the reward you get for actually winning the quest. Furthermore, if the starting gold recommended in the “epic play” rules is any indication, the game is balanced on the assumption that the heroes will collect nearly all of the search tokens.

Don’t forget to search!

The game claims to support parties of anywhere from 2 to 4 heroes, and has rules for adjusting monsters’ stats and the amount of threat tokens the overlord collects based on the number.

These adjustments do not compensate for the difference. Larger parties can make more attacks, have more freedom to optimize their equipment by trading treasure draws, and can cover lines-of-sight more effectively to curb spawning. The difference is dramatic.

Expect a significantly easier time the more heroes you bring (or a harder time, if you’re the overlord). Most players I’ve seen recommend parties of 3 or 4 heroes for the base game quests, and 4 heroes for expansions. If you don’t have enough players, you can always have someone control two heroes.

If there’s a specific haunt you want to play, try this:

Look in the haunt table and identify the places where your chosen haunt’s number is listed. Usually they’re all grouped in the same column (under a single omen). If this is the case, it’s a good bet that the haunt relates to that omen, but not to the specific starting room.

Figure out the required omen, and set it aside during set-up. (Shuffle the rest of the omens as normal.)

Whenever you explore an omen room, make a haunt roll before drawing an omen card (but include the omen you’re about to draw in the number you’re comparing against). If the haunt doesn’t begin, draw an omen from the deck. If the haunt does begin, instead, take the omen card you set aside during set-up, resolve its immediate effects (if any), and then begin the chosen haunt (determining the traitor as normal).

Some custom characters I designed:

http://www.mindflare.com/descent/heroes.htm

Since you can’t control what terrain cards you’ll draw, you should aim to make as many of them as possible useful to you.

If you can avoid touching a particular terrain, that’s usually best–it gives you maximum options if you draw that terrain.

But you’re going to end up touching everything, and probably sooner rather than later. Once you’re touching a terrain, look for places that you would want to build if you drew that terrain. If you can’t find any, look for a way to touch a new patch of that terrain that you would like to build on. It may not be what you’re hoping to draw, but if you draw it anyway, you’ll be glad you have something at least semi-useful to do with it.

Touching a large patch of terrain you don’t want to build in–and no other terrain of that type–risks disaster if you start to draw that terrain a lot. Get yourself a better option as soon as you can.

When a card or ability lets you place or move a settlement, and you have no existing settlements adjacent to the terrain or region you’re required to place in, you can ignore adjacency for that placement. Don’t squander this opportunity! Place the settlement far away, close to some useful location that would be very difficult for you to ever reach using adjacent placement.

This will allow you to expand outward from several different starting points, rather than just the one, expanding the range of useful locations you can try to build towards. More potential targets means a greater chance of finding something useful to do with whatever cards you happen to draw.

Each board offers a unique ability. Most boards have two locations that offer that ability, but some only have one.

One person I played with said those abilities were more limited because they were more powerful. I’m not sure that was the intent, but even if they’re not inherently better, they’re going to run out faster simply because there are fewer available. Therefore (all else being equal) it’s easier to claim a wider variety of abilities if you start with one of these–and a wider variety means more options, which means a better chance of being able to do something useful with whatever cards you happen to draw.

Don’t trust the turn sequence in this game; especially in a large game, Dr. Lucky’s movement can cause the turn order to jump around erratically. If you’re not careful, it may be a very long time before you get another turn!

All else being equal, try to end your turn in a numbered room. That way, you’ll at least get a turn when Dr. Lucky arrives in that room (well, almost always). Think of it as a safety mechanism, to make sure the game doesn’t pass you by.

If there are two ways to accomplish something, and one of them involves using the Vanir, that is generally the wrong way. The Vanir are flexible, but expensive.

It’s tempting to say that the Vanaheim track is “for emergencies”, but the problem is that you need to invest in it before the emergency occurs if you want to use it like that, and in most cases I think you could have spent those actions to prevent the same emergency you are using it to solve, with actions leftover. There are some specialized tactics where it is actually more efficient than other options, but basically it’s just something to use when you have a spare action and nothing else productive you can do with it.

Let’s go over the options and their costs:

2 Actions to Move Valkyries: The standard action in Midgard lets you do that and more for 1 action, so this isn’t even worth considering unless you’re bumping up against the once-per-turn limit. Even then, it’s very expensive; I don’t think this can ever be more efficient in the long-run, so it would have to be some sort of emergency.

3 Actions to Take 2 Vikings from the World of the Dead: That’s an average of 0.67 vikings per action. With good bag management, you should easily average twice that using standard actions. It’s even less efficient than substituting an elf for a viking (they’re strictly better and cost 1 action each), or forging a weapon that you’re only ever going to use once (as long as you don’t block another player by doing so), or even (in most cases) spending an action to trade with another player for whatever you currently need. So you need several different things to all go wrong at once before this has any possible utility.

4 Actions to Rearrange Top 6 Enemy Cards: This is kind of like trading Frey’s ability (extra actions) for Odin’s (rearrange cards). But Frey’s ability is far stronger than Odin’s, and this actually isn’t nearly as good as Odin’s ability, because you can’t put cards on the bottom of the deck. I have difficulty even imagining a situation where this would be worth it.

5 Actions to Move an Enemy Back Once: If you’re playing well, pushing an enemy backwards should typically take about half that, though there are some rare situations where it will take more than 5 even with good bag management (mostly if you’re using my “Baiting the Snake” strategy). There are also situations where the once-per-turn limit will prevent you from fighting enemies as often as you want, in which case you can use this to (expensively) get around that limit (investing only the actions you can’t usefully spend on anything else, as previously noted). It’s tempting to keep this “charged up” for emergencies, but again, unless there’s a strategic reason to deliberately create that emergency (e.g. “Baiting the Snake”), you’re probably better off spending those 5 actions to prevent the emergency in the first place.

6 Actions to Kill Any Face-Down Frost Giant: I think this one is actually useful, but only in very limited circumstances. This is significantly more expensive than killing a frost giant normally, but it lets you pick whichever one you want, so if you have 3 out of 4 pieces of a rune, this will let you complete that specific rune more efficiently than searching randomly for the last piece. But if you have to use it twice for a single rune, you’re spending more actions than the rune is worth, and if you opt for a strategy of killing ALL frost giants and completing ALL runes, then you’re better off doing it through regular combat.

For your first game, you may be better off simply removing Vanaheim so you’re not tempted to overspend on it.

Many players focus on cleaning one one bag of vikings close to the rainbow island, so you can cycle vikings in and out of that bag easily. That’s an important strategy, but you should also make one trip all the way out to the black bag at some point, to take advantage of the fact that it starts out with a lot of vikings in it.

It might seem like you can’t beat a bag that’s 100% vikings, but you need to keep spending actions to refill the bag. Since it costs an action to put 5 in and another to take 3 out, you’re averaging 1.875 vikings per action (assuming no interference from Hel or Surt).

The black bag starts out with 15 vikings and 3 fire giants, which means your first action there will get you an average of 2.5 vikings. You only need 62.5% vikings to draw an average of 1.875, the same as cycling vikings through an empty bag, so it continues to be better until it drops to 5 vikings/3 fire giants or 6 vikings/4 fire giants.

You probably won’t be there long before Jormungand pushes you back, and you don’t need to hit those numbers exactly, but this can provide a useful one-time boost to your viking collection (especially in the early game, when you haven’t finished cleaning a bag yet). Once you’ve got the low-hanging fruit, don’t try to clean the black bag, just go back to focusing on white.

As a side bonus, this puts more vikings into circulation (rather than leaving them trapped in a bag you aren’t using), which simplifies logistics and reduces the odds that you’ll complete the Sigel rune without having 15 vikings available in the world of the dead.

When you defeat a general, only one player gets the corresponding “slayer” title, but everyone who helped draws 3 hero cards. Even if you don’t have many dice to contribute to the fight and there’s little risk of your allies failing without you, it may be worth going a bit out of your way just to participate and get the extra cards; depending on how far out of your way it is, it may be more efficient than rumors at the inn, and more dice in the general fight always improves your odds.

However, you should not necessarily expect your allies to wait for you–if the general moves before you strike, you’ll need to spend a whole extra round gathering at his new location. If you’re just joining for the cards, arrive early.

Note that (according to the FAQ) you need to contribute at least 1 die to the fight to count as “participating” (though that die doesn’t necessarily need to come from a hero card).

When grading reviews and tips, remember that you’re supposed to be indicating whether the post is helpful. That’s not necessarily the same as whether you agree with the post or like the philosophy behind it. Ask yourself these questions:

Is it informative?
A review or tip can be helpful even if you disagree with the conclusion, or unhelpful even if you agree. If you read a review that says a game is great “in spite of its bland theme”, and you decide to avoid it because theme is really important to you, then that review helped you, even though you didn’t agree with it. A review that only says “this game is awesome” is not going to help someone decide whether they’ll like it, even if you agree that the game truly IS awesome (though short reviews are not necessarily bad, IF they provide useful information).

Is it specific?
Reviews and tips should highlight the unique aspects of the game, not just traits that are common to a broad class of games. “Work together with your allies” applies to all team games. “Appropriate mood music enhances the experience” applies to pretty much all games. “You can make the game shorter or longer by changing the number of victory points required to win” works on virtually any game whose goal is to reach a fixed number of points. These may be helpful for someone playing their first-ever board game, but probably not to people visiting a site specifically dedicated to board games.

Is it significant?
Don’t vote “no” just because you’ve seen a strategy before, but do vote “no” if it’s something that even a newbie could reasonably be expected to know. If someone posted a tip for Checkers saying “try to capture enemy pieces”, that may be sound advice, but it’s not helpful advice.

Does a strategy or house rule do what the tip claims?
You might not think a particular strategy or house rule is fun to use, but if the tip clearly explains what it’s for, and it accomplishes that goal, then it’s probably still “helpful” – at minimum, it tells you something to watch out for. House rules, in particular, aren’t there to make people play “right” – they’re there to help people choose how they’d prefer to play. Of course, if it doesn’t work as advertised, or the tip doesn’t explain why you would want to use it, then the tip is probably not helpful, even if you can think of a reason to use it.

If you don’t know whether it works, maybe you should hold off on grading it until you’ve tried it out – the tip isn’t going anywhere.

You may be tempted to focus your submissions on a few of your favorite games, thinking that you can write the best tips and reviews for the games that you know the best.

That’s true, but statistically, most people’s favorite games are also popular games, which means a lot of other people may have written reviews and tips before you. That can make it difficult to cover new ground.

If you still find that you have something you want to add, by all means, do so! But if you feel like your points have already been made, look up some of the less-popular games that you’ve played. There are still a lot of games (and expansions!) on this site with little or no user content posted.

Maybe you don’t know that game as well as your favorite, but if you really reflect on your experience, you’ll probably think of something that would be useful for players exploring the game for the first time; it could be as simple as the most important mechanic for new players to focus on, or a subtle implication of one of the rules that took you by surprise your first game. You don’t necessarily need a brilliant insight – the fundamentals are just as important as advanced and nuanced strategies (and they tend to get more likes!), so if no one else has covered them, then you don’t need to be a master to be helpful.

Being listed in the “Recent Player Reviews” or “Recent Game Tips” boxes on the main page can get a lot of people to read and grade your review or tip who otherwise might not notice it.

If you post many reviews or many tips in rapid succession, you push your earlier ones out of the “recent” lists faster, resulting in less exposure. You may also give readers the impression that you are spamming, which can cause them to grade you more harshly.

Spreading out your reviews or tips across several days or weeks gives each of them more time on the front page and makes you appear more thoughtful (and it may even make you more thoughtful, since you’ll have more time to think about something before you finally post it).

The rulebook doesn’t seem to mention this, but the designer has said elsewhere that the game was balanced for 4 heroes, and that playing with less than that is a challenge.

Smaller groups have more trouble covering the board and can’t hoard as many hero cards for the big general fights. When you get below 3 heroes, you’re going to have a hard time even holding enough cards to reliably kill a single general, due to the per-hero hand limit.

If you have fewer than 4 players, consider having some play multiple heroes, especially if you don’t have much experience with the game.

Many of the quests in this game give fairly pitiful rewards. If you compare the actions needed to complete a quest to the actions needed to accomplish a similar effect using your basic actions, you’ll find that many quests are actually worse than regular actions unless you happen to be visiting the quest’s location anyway.

But a few quests give incredibly powerful rewards. A unicorn that lets you move 2 spaces for one action and improves all your combat rolls; boots that give you 2 extra actions on every single turn. A lot of the time, your main incentive for completing a quest is actually the ability to draw another quest, because that means one more chance to draw one of the quests that are actually good.

This has important repercussions for deciding when and whether to complete a quest. Completing quests is often more desirable in the early game (when you’ll have more time to complete the new quest and exploit an ongoing reward), and the speed of completion is often more important than the usefulness of the printed reward (unless the reward is one of the awesome ones). If the quest tells you to discard it after a single failed attempt, that’s often a good thing, since it makes it easier to rid yourself of that quest and draw a new one.

The text on the syndicate card is somewhat misleading. My first game, I was convinced that a syndicate gave 2 coins for each retracted bid and a second syndicate would stack to give 4 coins for each retracted bid. It wasn’t until I bought 2 syndicates and tried to claim those 4 coins that the more experienced players explained that the second syndicate merely lets you claim the bonus for two separate ports on the same turn…

…which means I probably unwittingly cheated at least a couple of times earlier that game, taking the bonus twice in a turn when I had only one syndicate…

So, for those teaching the game, this is a good thing to make sure you cover carefully.

When you’re saving up to sell a big set of matching tiles, it can be very helpful to know how many are left to be drawn. If you’re nearing the end of the bag and you know there are more matching tiles in there, you can try to get them before you cash in, leveraging the quadratic price increase. On the other hand, if there are none left to draw, then you’re wasting your time (and storage space) trying to find more.

The designer has posted a large FAQ here:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/filepage/58401/defenders-of-the-realm-faq

The FAQ is 19 pages long and contains a lot of clarifications and background commentary, but it also contains a number of rulings that I would consider “errata” – things that I don’t think could reliably be deduced from the stuff that comes in the box, even with extreme thoroughness. Since the FAQ is huge and doesn’t separate these out, I’ve made a list for easier review…

1. Varkolak’s general ability prevents the use of the quest reward from “Amulet of the Gods” (+1 to dice rolls), but does NOT prevent the rewards from “Find Magic Gate” (+2 dice), “War Banner of Valor” (ignore effects of losing), or “Amorak’s Blessing” (cancel general’s ability).

2. The Cleric’s “Turn Undead” ability happens before taking damage for ending your turn (in conjunction with #16 below, this implies that it happens at the end of the daytime phase, NOT at the end of your turn as printed.)

3. The Cleric’s “Turn Undead” ability is optional.

4. The Cleric’s “Sanctify Land” ability rolls only 1 die per action.

5. The Eagle Rider’s “Ground Attack” style can only be used to reroll ALL dice in an attack or NONE of them, not just some of them.

6. The Ranger’s “Archery” ability attacks all minions in one adjacent location, not in all adjacent locations.

7. The Sorceress’ “Ambush” ability grants a bonus on the first attack made during a turn AND the first attack after each movement (e.g. you can ambush minions in your current location, move somewhere else, ambush again, move back to your original location, and ambush again, all in a single turn).

8. If you run out of minion tokens, you can take the minion on the Sorceress’ character card representing her shifted shape, BUT she suffers 1 wound if you do so.

9. If the Sorceress is forced to return to Monarch City as a result of losing a battle against a general, she automatically shifts back into human form.

10. The Wizard’s “Fireball” ability can be used by discarding a card matching the color of any minion you are fighting, and works against all minions you are fighting.

11. The Wizard’s “Teleport” ability can be used to go to any location on the map, even locations that aren’t reachable by actual magic gate travel (such as inns, or Monarch City when there is no gate built there).

12. If the Wizard uses his “Wisdom” ability to discard the Monarch City darkness spreads card, you still reshuffle the decks. If the Monarch City darkness spreads card is drawn for a “general movement only” step, you still reshuffle the decks. (There is nothing in the FAQ that says what happens if you discard it as part of the “Dark Vision” purple card–I would guess you reshuffle, though the order of steps becomes important.)

13. The purple hero card “Magic Gate” cannot be used to place a gate at an inn.

14. When performing two consecutive “Rumors at the Inn” actions, you may change your called color between the two actions if you wish.

15. Minions defeated by the “Battle Fury” purple card count towards quest requirements. Minions defeated by other purple cards do not.

16. Wounds for “ending your turn” in a space with minions actually occur at the end of the daytime phase, before drawing cards.

17. Participating in an attack on a general is optional. A hero is considered to participate if they contribute 1 or more dice (whether from hero cards or otherwise).

18. Balazarg’s general ability corrupts all cards used against him, not just red cards as the rulebook says.

19. Balazarg’s general ability requires you to roll separate for each card you are using and discard that card if a 1 is rolled, not just “a card”.

20. Gorgutt’s general ability “parries” an attack for each natural 1 rolled (that is, for each physical die that shows a 1, before applying any bonuses or penalties from abilites).

21. If a general has multiple red wound boxes, they heal at the slower rate (one per round, rather than one per turn) as long as their health is in a red box, not just for the first wound.

22. Consistent with the text on the “slayer” cards, but not the rulebook, a hero with a “slayer” ability can spend a single action to defeat all minions of that color in his location AND perform a normal attack against other colors of minions in the same location.

23. The “slayer” cards do not work in combination with the Ranger’s “Archery” ability. (Note: the reason the FAQ gives for this appears to be in error. It’s not clear whether that means the answer is wrong, or the answer is right but the reason is wrong.)

24. If the active hero is wounded as a result of losing a battle against a general, wounds are taken first from that hero’s unspent life tokens for the current round, meaning his number of remaining actions will also be reduced.

25. At the end of the Evening Phase, all players must discard down to 10 cards in their hands, not just the active player (this can come up due to the extra cards drawn when defeating a general).

26. Minions are never placed on an inn location, even if an adjacent area has an overrun.

27. When adding 2 minions at once to a single location, a maximum of one taint and one overrun can occur in that location (even for demons).

28. When a darkness spreads card calls for 1 Orc to be placed in each “empty” location, a location with heroes or generals is still considered “empty”, but a location with ANY kind of minion is not.

29. However, when a darkness spreads card calls for 1 Orc to be placed in each location with “1 Orc and only 1 Orc”, that affects all locations that have exactly 1 Orc, regardless of the presence of other minions.

30. The purple card “Battle Luck” allow the “active player” to reroll his combat dice. When fighting a general, the “active player” is considered to be whichever player is currently rolling, not necessarily the player who is taking his turn.

The Eagle Rider has the lowest base number of actions, but he can move up to 4 spaces with a single action, and he gains an extra action if he ended his previous turn on the ground in a blue location or in Monarch City.

It turns out Monarch City is within 4 steps of everywhere. That means an Eagle Rider currently in Monarch City can go literally anywhere on the entire board for 1 action.

I found it highly effective to have him use “ground” tactics and end each turn on Monarch City (until he was needed to fight generals). Go anywhere on the entire board, every turn, to complete quests or perform surgical strikes against monster hotspots that other heroes can’t easily reach. With the reroll from ground tactics, you will usually only need one attack to defuse a potential overrun, so you can hit two spaces per turn (as long as the 2 spaces aren’t on opposite ends of the board) and always get back to Monarch City with your extra action for ending your previous turn there.

It’s a simple but effective formula.

I hear many people say that when other players start buying victory cards, you have to do the same. I think this is a misconception, perpetuated by players who wait too long and only realize it when their opponents get the jump on them. If your original plan was sound, an opponent buying a Province shouldn’t ordinarily cause you to change it.

Basically, you should be taking the shortest path that gives you “enough” victory points to win (typically one more than your fair share of Provinces). The “shortest path” does not change just because the other guy buys an early Province, and if you are already on the shortest path, any change to your plans will only slow you down.

Put another way, falling behind in points may be bad, but panicking and ruining your economy is worse. If your opponent is making a mistake by greening too early, you should capitalize on that error, not duplicate it. If your opponent is greening before you because he’s ahead of you (or perhaps just using a different strategy), trying to match him but running out of steam before you have enough points is just going to guarantee his win. And if your deck is good enough to get enough points, you should start buying them whether your opponents have started or not.

So buy green cards when it’s right for you–not when it’s right for your opponent.

One of the loss conditions is 3 village tiles haunted. Tiles generally get haunted as the result of a haunter ghost, which you will have the opportunity to see coming at least a round in advance. Therefore, when tiles you don’t urgently need are haunted, you may be tempted to leave them until you actually need one of them or you see a third haunting is imminent.

However, village tiles can occasionally be haunted without warning, as a result of the Shapeless Evil ghost entering play or a bad roll on the curse die. This can result in immediate defeat if you already have two tiles haunted! (I’ve lost more than one game this way…)

Try not to leave more than one tile haunted at a time, to give yourself a buffer.

Most games are won with Provinces. A Province costs $8, which means that with a 5-card hand, you need your average card to provide at least $1.6 in order to afford a Province that turn.

Thus, as a rule of thumb, gaining a Silver is generally better than gaining nothing (it will push your average value towards $2/card, which is above the magic threshold), while any card noticeably weaker than Silver (in particular, Copper) is likely a card you’d rather not have in your deck.

Buying Silver when you don’t want anything else is generally safe. There are also several cards that lend themselves to quickly amassing a large deck full of Silver (e.g. Bureaucrat), and this is an effective strategy in some games.

However, beware the exceptions!

1) If your opponents are regularly playing Militia (or similar cards), leaving you with only 3 cards in your hand, you need to average $2.67/card for a Province.

2) In a game with Colonies (from the Prosperity expansion), you’re probably targeting $11 instead of $8, which moves the threshold to $2.2/card–just a hair above a Silver.

3) Some strategies depend on drawing a specific card (or combination of cards) more than on having a certain amount of money.

In these situations, a Silver may become worse than nothing before the end of the game. You will probably still need a few to get your economy going at the beginning, but judge carefully when to stop, and avoid cards like Bureaucrat that will continue gaining Silvers forever.

In most cases, the most efficient way to conduct combats is to spend enough vikings that you will succeed on a die roll of 1, and keep an elf in reserve so that you can still win if you happen to roll a 0.

However, because Tyr gets to roll a combat die twice, the probability distribution is different for him. For Tyr, it’s usually most efficient to have two elves in reserve (and spend one less viking per combat). This allows him to benefit from his increased probability of a lucky roll while still guaranteeing a win.

For those who like to see the math:

In the ideal case, you have a bag with no fire giants, so you can reliably spend 3 actions to put in 15 vikings and 5 actions to claim them all, for an average cost of 8/15 = 0.53 actions per viking.

Claiming an elf always costs 1 action.

The die has 1 side with 3 hammers, 1 side with 2 hammers, 2 sides with 1 hammer, and 2 sides with 0 hammers.

If you spend enough vikings to win on a roll of 1 and use an elf when you roll a 0, there’s a 1/3 chance you’ll spend the elf, so you’re spending an average of 0.33 actions to replenish your tokens versus at least 0.53 with vikings.

If you spend one less viking and risk a second elf, the second elf will be used up if you roll either a 0 or a 1, so it has a 2/3 chance of being used up and will often (though not always) be less efficient than the viking you could have spent instead.

But Tyr rolls twice and selects the better result, so he has a 1/9 chance of his best roll being a 0, and a 3/9 chance of his best roll being a 1. Therefore, his first elf only needs to be spent 1/9 of the time, and his second elf 4/9 of the time, which is still lower than the best-case viking cost.

Attacking a face-down frost giant nets you one piece of a rune, but that’s worthless unless you actually complete that rune. The runes come up in random order, so there’s little chance of getting a specific one you want. If you choose to attack haphazardly, you can end up with a bunch of incomplete runes at the end of the game.

So there are two main strategies here: either plan to kill ALL the frost giants and complete ALL the runes, or only fight face-up frost giants (and use the Vanir to find the last piece of a rune if you luck out and happen to get 3 out of 4 pieces). If you try to go a middle road, you’re probably just wasting resources.

When evaluating which cards to take, it’s important to take opportunity costs into account. Every card “costs” a card draw when it enters your hand; that is, if you had never bought that card, then you would have drawn one of your other cards instead.

I find it’s helpful to imagine that every card says “-1 card” on it. In these terms, it’s easy to see why a Gold is better than a Copper and a Silver: either gives +$3, but the Copper+Silver combo gives -2 cards, while the Gold only gives -1 card. It’s also easy to see why some cards that appear to have only positive effects can actually hurt your deck: that simply means their benefits don’t outweigh the inherent -1 card penalty.

Similarly, I imagine action cards as all saying “-1 action” on them (in addition to the -1 card).

When a card says “+1 Card”, that doesn’t mean it gives you “extra” cards, it just means that it doesn’t reduce your cards like normal. Playing a “+1 Card” card leaves you with the same number of cards in your hand as you started with. When an action card says “+1 Action”, that just means it doesn’t reduce your actions; you will still only be able to play a single “terminal” action on your turn.

When viewed in this way, it’s easy to see that Village really gives you “a free action” (that is, it’s net effect is simply +1 action, once you subtract the opportunity cost). Laboratory gives you “a free card”, and Market gives you “a free $1 and buy”. (Though beware of drawing these cards when you don’t have an action to play them).

Remodel trashes a card from your hand and gives you a card costing up to $2 more. So, it basically adds $2 to the cost of one card in your deck. Taken at face value, that sounds like a way to gradually improve your cards.

But playing a Silver adds $2 to the cost of one card, too–the one you buy that turn. Remodel costs more, requires an action to play, and removes a card from your hand that you could otherwise have played that turn. Described in those terms, it sounds terrible to the point of comedy.

But it’s actually quite a respectable card, once you realize that +$2 is incidental to its real purpose: virtually the entire value of Remodel comes from exploiting a mismatch between a card’s cost and that card’s value (in the sense of utility).

Victory cards are very bad in the early game–if you look only at the economic value of an Estate, it should probably be worth around -3 (since it generates $1 less than a Copper). But it costs 2, so if you Remodel it you get a card worth up to $4, instead of a card worth, say, $-1. The cost only went up by $2, but the value went up by more like $6 or $7!

Conversely, victory cards become very valuable near the end of the game, and Remodeling your Silver or Gold into Duchies or Provinces (respectively) can earn you a lot more points than if that Remodel had only given you +$2…depending on what else is in your hand, of course.

Deck-thinning cards drop in value once you’ve finished trashing your unwanted cards, sometimes making them candidates for Remodeling. Some expansion cards (particularly in Hinterlands) have high prices because they do special things when you gain them, rather than because of their value once they’re in your deck–they’re great cards to Remodel, too.

But if you’re Remodeling a card that’s still useful to you (relative to its cost), Remodel is effectively just a Silver with -1 Card and -1 Action that turn. In the early game, you probably shouldn’t aim to Remodel anything except Estates and maybe Curses. Even Remodeling a Copper is usually a consolation prize at best, and can actually hurt you in a lot of cases.

Infection cards are only reshuffled when you draw an epidemic, and you know how many epidemics there are (depending on the difficulty).

If there are still lots of epidemics left, remember you’ll likely need to return to any problem spots you’re dealing with right now, so hoard cards or place research stations accordingly, and focus more on urgent risks than completely cleaning up an area.

But once there are only 3 epidemics left in the deck, then any infection card in the discard pile can only be played a maximum of 3 more times during the game. That’s a great time to treat the city down to zero disease cubes (if you can), so that you won’t ever need to return (as long as there are no outbreaks nearby). Especially those pesky cities in the middle of nowhere!

When you get lower than that, you can begin to safely leave a certain number of disease cubes in a city (again, as long as you control outbreaks nearby). No sense wasting an action to treat that last cube if there aren’t enough epidemics left for it to have any chance of outbreaking!

Different races and special powers become more or less powerful depending on the stage of the game.

You’re going to want to decline your first race as fast as possible so you can start collecting points from two races, so it’s preferable if your first race expands quickly or has an ability that works while in decline.

If either of your first two races have the Spirit power, then they’ll both want to fit this mold so you can get three races into play.

A good middle-game race should be more versatile. You’ll usually want to be able to do strategic damage to other players, defend your borders, and maintain good point totals both while active and (later) while in decline. Races that acquire more race tokens over time often do well in this phase, since they’ll have more turns to take advantage of them.

Usually you’ll take your final race during the last turn or two, which of course should be a quick cash-in to get as many points as possible under the wire. You won’t decline your last race, so how it performs in decline won’t matter. This tends to be the best time to take those abilities that give you straight victory points, whether as a one-time bonus or an ongoing effect.

Small World race selection often happens in “waves” as several players decline near the same time, whether due to running out of steam or simply needing a different power for the next phase of the game.

If you pay attention to others’ development and decline a little on the early side, you’ll get first pick of races for the next “wave”. Since different races are more effective during different stages of the game, this will sometimes let you grab a combo that was passed over in the previous round of selections but that will work great in the present.

The rules allow each hero to discard one of their random skills during set-up and draw a replacement skill of the same type. The skill cards in Descent vary a lot in their usefulness, so it is almost always worth redrawing one of your starting skills to try to get a better one.

Typically, you’ll want to discard whichever skill is least useful to you, but you also need to pay attention to the skill types, because some types are more likely to be useful to certain heroes. Each skill deck contains some skills that only work with a particular attack type (Subterfuge being the worst offender), so if you’re a melee-focused hero and you draw a Subterfuge skill that is actually somewhat useful to you, you may want to hold onto it and redraw a Fighting skill rather than risk drawing a skill that only works with ranged attacks.

The_Immortal has compiled a useful guide evaluating the difficulty of each of the game’s quests:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/271256/journeys-in-the-dark-quest-difficulty-rating

When you step into a new area and see a bunch of monsters and a shiny treasure chest…opening the treasure chest is often the first thing you should do. One hero can usually run past all the monsters to open the chest on the same turn they open the door, and this allows all heroes to use the treasures from the new chest when fighting the monsters.

I wouldn’t do this if you already have weapons of the same treasure level as the chest, but otherwise this can often make the fight significantly easier.

Note that this gets harder if the “Hordes of the Things” power card is in play, as the overlord can often position the extra monsters to block you. In that case, it may help if you have Acrobat, Fly, Telekinesis, or Knockback.

Dominion often gives a noticeable advantage to the player who goes first. In my regular group, when the ending condition is met, instead of ending after the current turn, we end immediately before the first player’s next turn. This allows everyone to take an equal number of turns during the game.

The first player still usually has an advantage, since they get the first chance to play attacks and their choices are less likely to be constrained by empty supply piles, but at least this makes things a little more even.

By the time you’re playing Prosperity, you’ve likely learned that trashing your bad cards to thin your deck can be really powerful. Since Bishop can trash cards, it might look suitable for that purpose.

The problem is, Bishop allows everyone else to trash a card, too. Spending your resources to thin your deck may be good, but spending your resources to equally thin everyone’s decks is generally not so impressive. Bishop doesn’t give you any relative advantage in deck-thinning, and therefore usually should not be bought for that purpose.

Instead, the purpose of Bishop is to generate victory point tokens. And notice that it’s better than Monument at generating points only if you’re trashing a card worth at least $2.

This dramatically changes when and how you should use it.

That +$4 on Baron is a lot higher than most cards, and might make you think you could build an economy around them.

But you need to discard an Estate each time you want that +$4. Now, yes, if you were going to have the Estate in your hand in any case, that’s pretty awesome, because the Estate normally does nothing for you, so that Baron really is giving you $4.

However, if you’re starting to contemplate intentionally gaining more Estates just so that you can discard them with Baron, then suddenly you’re “using” two cards to get that $4, instead of just one. Each Baron/Estate pair gives you only the same amount of money as two Silvers (and costs an action to play, and it only works if you draw them together).

Getting an early Baron and using it on your starting Estates can be a handy way to jump-start your economy. But Baron is only a good card when you would have had that Estate anyway.

The Schaef suggests playing Outpost and Tactician on the same turn. Another way to combine Outpost and Tactician is to play Tactician on the bonus turn granted by Outpost. This way you’re only giving up a “mini-turn” to play Tactician and double your next (full) turn, and you don’t even need any +action cards to pull it off.

If it’s your first time playing, Moneylender may look like it gives you a lot of money on the current turn for a cost of less money later–after all, that’s what moneylenders give you in real life, right?

But that +$3 needs to be discounted, because you trash a Copper from your hand that would otherwise give you $1 on the current turn; a Moneylender and a Copper actually gives you the same money that turn as if you had a Silver and a Copper. And Silver costs less, and doesn’t require an action to play.

Trashing a Copper is actually the bonus that you pay for when you get a Moneylender instead of a Silver. The average card in your deck will usually be better than a Copper by around turn 4, which means that trashing Coppers improves the average hand you’ll draw from that point onward.

Moneylenders are actually very useful, but for the reason opposite what a new player might guess.

To a new player, the Feast card generally looks like a way to buy yourself a $5 card for the cost of $4 and a delay in when you get it. Viewed in this way, if often looks very attractive.

But there’s a hidden cost. In order to turn your Feast into a card costing 5, you need to play the Feast–which costs an action. And before you play it, you need to get it into your hand–which costs a card draw (or more, if for some reason you can’t or don’t play it the very first time you draw it).

So yes, buying a Feast is kind of like getting a free $1. But would you rather have +$1, or +1 Card and +1 Action?

Buying a Feast is rarely worth it.

When you’re unsure which of several fires you should put out, focus on cities that are connected to the most cities of the same color. These are usually the ones with the greatest risk of inducing chain-reactions when they outbreak.

Cities of a different color will never get more cubes of that color except from adjacent outbreaks, and therefore cannot outbreak in that color unless things really get out of hand. But a city of the same color is at risk even if it has never had another cube the entire game, since the epidemics add 3 cubes at once to a brand new city.

The requirements on trading cards (if you’re not the researcher) can seem daunting, but don’t overlook this option. If you rely only on random draws, you can be one card short of getting a cure for several consecutive rounds; if you announce that you’re close right away (when you draw at the end of your turn), and carefully consider everyone else’s cards of the same color, you can often find a way to get that cure on your next turn. (Remember you can TAKE cards on your turn as well as GIVING them, and that any excess cards of that color can now be freely spent for travel.)

Especially if that’s the last cure you need to win the game, getting it even a single round earlier (one turn per player) can make a huge difference.

The bloody battle marker causes you to lose a defender each turn you attack the army that has it. That can chew through your defenders quite fast if you’re not careful, but with some planning, you usually won’t need to lose any defenders at all:

1) When you draw a card that moves the bloody battle marker, it’s the last thing that happens on that turn, so you get a little warning. After dealing with any imminent threats that turn, use your remaining actions to push the army that’s about to get the marker as far away as possible, to maximize the time before you need to fight it again.

2) Save an attack spell or two in case that army gets too close; you don’t lose defenders for magical attacks.

If you’re careful, then most of the time the bloody battle marker will move on to some place else before you need to attack that army again.

If you’re forced to charge into the bloody battle anyway, try to make lots of attacks against that army in a single turn; only the first attack each turn causes a casualty.

When you draw an advance for the gate track, if the two armies are in the same space, they both advance, but if they’re in different spaces, only the rear one advances.

Whenever the two armies are on the same space, make sure to immediately attack one of them to separate them; a single victory effectively halts both armies for another tick. Once you do, don’t attack the other army unless you think you can win a third fight that turn to separate them again.

Once the armies are on different spaces, you can’t attack the rear one, but you can still target it with a Slow spell if you want to keep it back even longer.

The oil, acid, and lava upgrades only help you when an army is in the “1” space. If you leave an army in the “2” space at the end of your turn, then it will often advance once and let you use that upgrade, but there are a few cards that will make an army advance twice, in which case it will destroy your upgrade and breach the wall.

The solution? Count the double-advance cards. The day deck has 3 cards that advance the gate armies twice and 1 each for the east and west armies, while the night deck has 1 card each with double advances for gate, east, and west.

Once the one card (or 3 for the gate during the day) have been drawn, then it’s safe to let that army come right up to your door again and again, allowing you to gain maximum benefit from an upgrade on that track. You may even want to wait until one of these cards is drawn before building the upgrades, so you know where best to put them.

The Unearthly Swiftness event card allows Dracula to move twice in a turn. One obvious use is to flee the hunters, but since it adds 2 cards to your trail, you can also use it to push a New Vampire encounter off your trail and mature it one turn early.

If that turn makes the difference between the hunters killing it or not, you just earned yourself 2 VPs!

Sometimes the game lets you take a tao token of any color. I find the following guidelines are helpful in deciding what color to choose:

1. If you’re planning to fight a specific ghost and you don’t yet have enough tao to guarantee a victory, choose that color. A bird in the hand and all that.

2. Otherwise, try to build up a lot of tao tokens in a single color that other players don’t have. This generally means you won’t need to move around as much in order to spend them, and increases the odds that someone can handle a strong ghost when it shows up. However, you shouldn’t usually have more than 3 tokens of a single color.

3. Try to avoid taking two colors that are positioned at opposite sides of the board, as this will make it harder to spend them both.

4. When in doubt, take the color with more remaining tokens in the supply. This reduces the odds that someone will be unable to take a token at the Herbalist Shop due to rolling a color that you’ve run out of, or that you’ll be unable to set the Circle of Prayer to a desired color.

Jared’s tip is incorrect: trading someone enough cards to discover a cure does NOT allow you to bypass the hand limit, because you must discard down to 7 before discovering the cure.

The rules state (emphasis added): “If the number of cards in hand ever exceeds 7 as a result of drawing cards (or performing the Share Knowledge action), the player must immediately discard cards in excess to the Player Discard Pile.” This is reiterated in the description for the Share Knowledge action itself.

You will almost always need to discard some cards in order to hold enough matching cards to discover a cure, even if the discovery is going to be your very next action.

Since two people have already written tips complaining about the Saboteur dominating their games, I think it’s worth pointing out that it’s actually a rather weak card, and there is no necessity to buy it even if your opponents are doing so. It can only ruin your game if you let it.

Look at it this way: Saboteur forces each opponent to trash a card, and lets them replace it with a card that costs 2 less (or less). So it gives you a relative economic advantage of +2 coins; each other player loses 2 from the value of one card while you don’t.

But you can get the same relative advantage simply by playing a Silver, allowing you to buy yourself a card that costs 2 more than would otherwise be possible that turn; if that card is hit by a Saboteur, it simply turns into the card you would have bought in the first place if YOU had played a Saboteur instead of a Silver. And Silver costs 2 less than Saboteur, and doesn’t require an action to play.

Plus, players hit by a Saboteur can gain no card at all, at their option; for example, if you sabotage a Silver, they’re not forced to take a Copper. So you’re not even getting that full +2 relative advantage in all cases. Saboteur also lets your opponents cycle their decks faster, which is generally to their advantage. And inevitably, it will sometimes trash a card that your opponent is happy to get rid of, such as a deck-cleaning card they no longer need, or an action card they’re happy to turn into a victory card near the end of the game.

Or, if you prefer empirical evidence, the stats recorded at councilroom.com also indicate that Saboteur has the lowest win rate of any card in Intrigue.

The one place where Saboteur really shines is that it destroys “brittle” strategies, where your opponent needs to have exactly the right cards to make their engine work. But if you use a flexible strategy, then you can beat someone using Saboteurs simply by outpacing them economically, using virtually any other cards you like.

If I were to ban Saboteur, it would be because no one wants to use it, not because everyone feels like they have to.

Pandemic has a very short difficulty ladder. I often measure difficulty changes in co-op games by asking: if you can win on the hardest difficulty level, how many turns can you afford to waste on the easiest difficulty and still have a similar chance of winning? For Ghost Stories, it’s around 12. For Yggdrasil, it’s close to 20, maybe even more. For Pandemic, it’s more like 3 or 4 (split among all players, when dropping from heroic all the way down to introductory). The random variation within a difficulty level is greater than the average difference between levels.

Moreover, because of the way the deck is prepared, a hard game with a lucky shuffle is indistinguishable from an easy game with an unlucky shuffle until very late; you couldn’t even tell what difficulty you were playing on if someone didn’t tell you…

Suppose someone set up the deck for normal difficulty but told you that you were playing on introductory difficulty. There’s only a 52% chance you would see anything to prove them wrong before drawing the 4th epidemic, and more than a 19% chance that you couldn’t prove them wrong even after that (until you drew the 5th and final epidemic).

Or suppose the deck is set up for heroic but you think it’s normal. There’s only a 42% chance you’ll figure it out before drawing the 4th epidemic, and a 29% chance you won’t figure it out even then. In my experience, the game is usually nearing a conclusion by that time.

The point is, if you can consistently win on introductory level, even jumping straight to heroic will probably not cause you to lose.

One of the hardest parts of Dominion is deciding when to switch from building your economy to buying victory points.

I’ve tried erring on the early side and erring on the late side. I’ve tried carefully counting cards and coins to determine the average money I’ll have per hand. I’ve run test games against various predetermined strategies to see what would finish fastest.

To my surprise, I’ve found a very simple rule that gives the same result as the complex strategies most of the time: start buying Provinces on the second turn you can afford to do so. The first turn you get 8 is usually a fluke, but the second usually means your economy is strong enough to make the transition.

As with any heuristic, there are exceptions, and a good player will know when to break this rule. But this is a great rule-of-thumb to use as a baseline, without requiring complex math or memory-frying card-counting.

The next time you play, see if it doesn’t give the same result as your usual method.

You are often presented with the choice of making two attacks (with a battle action, or a ready action with attack + guard order) or making a single aimed attack (ready action with aim order + attack).

When presented with this choice, aiming is basically never a good idea. It’s a holdover from the Doom board game, where you had to worry about ammo. In Descent, an extra attack is dramatically better in virtually all cases (even when fighting stealthy monsters in the Tomb of Ice expansion). And in the very rare case where you find aiming is better…that’s usually a sign that you shouldn’t waste your actions attacking in the first place.

(This advice doesn’t necessarily apply to the advanced campaign expansions.)

The Crystal Ball lets you place a card of your choice on the top of the item or event deck. It is often overlooked, but can be very powerful once you learn enough cards to pick a good one for the situation. Try using one of the following items in your next game:

Revolver – Make attacks with speed+1, at a distance, with no risk
Rabbit’s Foot – Reroll 1 die each turn
Medical Kit – A reusable healing item (requires knowledge roll)
Armor – Reduce all physical damage by 1
Dynamite – Take out a whole room at once
Music Box – Can immobilize explorers and monsters with low sanity
Angel Feather – Declare any number from 0 to 8 instead of rolling dice (one time only)

“But what if I never draw an item?” I can hear you ask. Easy–next turn, put an event that gives you an item on top of the event deck!

Image in the Mirror (reversed) – Draw an item automatically
The Voice, Something Hidden, Groundskeeper – Knowledge roll 4+ for an item
Locked Safe – Knowledge 5+ for 2 items, remains until you succeed
Skeletons – Sanity 5+ for an item, remains until you succeed

There’s also some great events for moving around the house, if that’s what you need to do…

The Walls – Draw a new room tile and put your explorer there
What The…? – Move the room and everything in it to a new location
Secret Stairs – Permanent connection to room of your choice on another floor (into the Mystic Elevator is a fun choice)
Secret Passage – Permanent connection to a room of your choice on a random floor
Mystic Slide – Reusable Might 5+ to move to any room on a lower floor, random basement room if you fail

On the other hand, if you’re the traitor, you may be better off just putting awful events on top of the deck to hurt the other players. Some juicy choices include:

Lights Out – Can only move 1 space per turn until cured (no roll to avoid)
Whoops! – Lose a random item card (no roll to avoid)
Footsteps – Guaranteed damage if drawn anywhere but Chapel
Grave Dirt – Roll Might 4+ or start taking 1 damage per turn
Webs – Roll Might 4+ or get stuck for up to 3 turns
Hideous Shriek – All players must roll Sanity 4+ or take damage
Rotten – Does more damage on a failed roll than most events

It’s easy in this game to make the mistake of fighting too often, hoping for a specific die roll you need.

Even including wilds, any given die has only a 1/3 chance of giving you the color you’re looking for. With the typical 3 dice, that means a 70% chance that you’ll get at least one useful result, but only a 26% chance of getting two, and less than a 4% chance of getting all three.

Sometimes you need to kill a ghost right away, but whenever practical, try to get enough tao tokens to guarantee a victory first. You don’t lose the extra tokens if you happen to roll well, but they’ll save you from wasting your turn if you don’t. Even a 30% failure rate adds up fast if you keep doing it over the course of the game. If you’re 2 tokens short before the dice, it’s rarely even worth the attempt; visit the herbalist or tea shop instead.

Other Useful Probabilities:
With 4 dice (green’s power), odds improve to 80% for 1+ dots, 41% for 2+ dots.
With 3 dice and a reroll (green’s other power), it’s 91% for 1+, 58% for 2+.
With 2 dice (if one is trapped), 56% for 1+, 11% for both.

If you’re fighting 2 ghosts and need 1 each of 2 different colors, odds are 19% with 2 dice, 41% with 3 dice, 58% with 4 dice, 69% with 3 dice and a reroll.

If you lose your last Qi because your board is full during your yin phase, you also lose the opportunity to act during your yang phase, effectively costing you a turn.

If you spend your last Qi to use the Sorcerer’s Hut, then it’s possible for an ally to revive you before your next turn, so that you lose no time at all. The Graveyard gives you back 2 Qi for the cost of a single player action plus a curse roll, which is actually a pretty good deal (especially if you can arrange for the green monk to revive you, since he will be either resistant or immune to the curse).

Don’t be afraid to spend your last Qi…just make sure someone is standing by to revive you, first!

The Sorcerer’s Hut and the Buddha spirit traps can automatically destroy a ghost regardless of its strength. You might think this means you should use them on the strongest ghosts, but you often shouldn’t, because the strength-4 ghosts also give sizable rewards if you fight them normally.

The strength-3 ghosts with no rewards and the strength-2 ghosts that curse you when they depart are both excellent targets (though the latter can also be handled effectively by the green monk, who is either resistant or immune to curses). You should sometimes kill these with the sorcerer even if you have the tao tokens to exorcise them normally; it can be more efficient.

Tormentors (curse you every turn) and Black Widows (lock tao tokens) are situational targets. Exorcise them normally if it’s convenient (for the yin-yang reward)…but if it’s not, don’t hesitate to use the nukes. You don’t want them hanging around. (Though if green has the ability that lets him ignore the curse die, you can also move tormentors to his board to neutralize them.)

The buddha spirit traps can also stop ghosts from using their arrival abilities, so you should trap the Shapeless Evil (haunts a tile immediately) and any ghost that triggers another ghost draw, whenever possible. It may feel like a waste to use them on a strength-1 ghost, but preventing the second ghost draw effectively buys you another turn, which you can use to reset the trap.

Each combat card in the game tells you what happens if you win, depending on what card your opponent played. However, it doesn’t list what happens when you lose, which makes it easy to overlook some important interactions, such as the fact that Dracula’s Strength power will protect him from a hunter’s Stake even if he loses the roll, or that Holy Water is the only hunter card that even has a chance to stop Dracula’s Escape as Mist.

I printed out two copies of these reference tables showing all the interactions:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/filepage/15835/fury-of-dracula-combat-chart-pdf
and it made combat much more interesting.

The Fortune spell hardly ever gets used at a cost of 4 arcane energy. A cost of 1 energy makes it much more tempting.

Remember, you can use powers before your terrain card if you choose. The powers that move a settlement you’ve already placed can sometimes be used to remove your last point of contact with a given terrain, thereby letting you ignore adjacency when you place on that terrain later during your turn.

This opportunity doesn’t arise often, but sometimes it can be a real game-changer.

The abilities of the various deities in Yggdrasil vary quite noticeably in power. This can change the difficulty quite a bit in small games, and may encourage one or two players to hog the spotlight in others. I’m trying the following changes:

I take Tyr as my benchmark. He’s in the middle of the pack, and has a versatile ability that can be used often.

Frey: You may take one extra action per turn, but one of your actions must always be in Vanaheim.
Frey is clearly the strongest. Forcing him to take his extra action in a world with low action-efficiency blunts his advantage, and possibly provides a reason to use some Vanir actions that come up rarely.

Thor: You receive a +1 bonus in combat against enemies (but not frost giants).
Thor’s a bit ahead of Tyr on low difficulty, and a LOT ahead on high difficulties when you almost have to kill all the frost giants.

Odin: Draw 3 enemy cards on your turn instead of 1. Choose one to play. Put each of the others on the top or bottom of the enemy deck, in either order.
Odin’s pretty good in solo play (if you carefully count cards), but less useful in large games. Drawing 3 instead of 2 is very little help when the power applies every turn, but a significant upgrade when it’s intermittent.

Freyja: You may take two or three of your actions in the same world, if you choose. If you fight frost giants multiple times, or fight the same enemy multiple times, you receive a +1 bonus to your second combat, and a +2 bonus to your third.
Freyja’s not bad in large games, but a lot weaker in small ones. Creating a safe window to attack a single enemy many times is easier in small games. (+2 may sound like a lot, but keep in mind the average for that turn is +1 like Thor, and most turns will average worse than that.)

Heimdall: When you visit Midgard, you may move the Valkyries up to 2 spaces, and you may take one viking directly from the World of the Dead (in addition to pulling 3 tokens from the appropriate bag).
This is a huge upgrade, but a free viking from the world of the dead is just +1 to one combat (compare Thor), and you typically visit Midgard noticeably less often than you fight.

The rules tell you that the game is more difficult with more players, but I was still unprepared for how large a difference it makes. After a little testing, I would say a 6-player game with the angry enemies but no Ragnaroks rivals the difficulty of a solo game including every single special card.

If you find the game difficult, perhaps try playing solo or with only one ally until you get the hang of it. If you’ve found a difficulty you like, but end up playing with a different number than usual, adjust accordingly.

If you examine the dice, you’ll find the green dice add mostly damage and the yellow dice add mostly range. Unless your hero is getting bonus damage from some other source, you’ll generally want to start with a weapon that has a green die. This will often make the difference between killing early monsters in one hit or two, and speed is critical.

If playing a hero with evenly-split trait dice, a melee weapon is a good bet–they have the highest damage, and are the cheapest, both of which will be important if your hero has an inherently weak attack. Even heroes with 1 melee die and 2 in another trait should sometimes consider starting with an Axe, since it’s cheaper and stronger than any ranged or magic weapon, and your starting weapon is likely to be replaced with a treasure from a chest pretty soon anyway.

The Bow in the town shop is basically a trap. Even if you have the errata’d version with Pierce 1, buying it is still almost never a good idea.

And never start with 2 weapons (unless one of them is purely for the off-hand bonus). You can only use one at a time, and the tactical versatility you get by having two types of weapons isn’t worth nearly as much as the 2-3 potions you could have bought instead.

Maturing “new vampire” encounters is key to winning as Dracula. If you don’t have any in your hand or on your track, use Dark Call to try to get one as early as practical. Try to use your Hide power to protect new vampires with delaying encounters, such as Bats (blocks a hunter 2 turns) or Fog (blocks all hunters for 1 turn), and use your trips to sea to manipulate the time of day so that if a hunter finds one, it will be at night.

If you have 2 new vampires in hand, though, you shouldn’t necessarily use them both at once; when one matures, it removes everything else currently on your track, so you need to space them out if you want to mature both.

Hunters, try to visit every city on Dracula’s trail, even if you know where he is, so that you can kill new vampires before they mature. Leave extra time, if possible, to deal with defenses. Also, some events can reveal encounters–try to use these to identify locations that are safe to ignore.

It can be very tempting as Dracula to attack the hunters at night, especially when a single bite can take down Mina and earn you 2 victory points. However, no matter how great your tactic cards may be, you are still dependent on winning a die roll to gain any benefit, and if the hunters have the right items (which they usually will), it only takes a few unlucky rolls to lose the entire game, even at night.

Prioritize your own safety! Attacking the hunters can pay off, but it’s a gamble. If you can stay safe without fighting, just run down the clock and make the hunters do the work.

I’ve designed a point-buy system for creating custom Descent heroes, implemented in an Excel spreadsheet (with macros). It can be downloaded here

It features highly flexible stat allocation, roughly 300 hero abilities to choose from, a random hero generator, and easy customization if you’d like to tweak the rules. (Not balanced for the advanced campaign expansions.)

You can allow some enemies to advance farther than others without losing, and with the standard deck (no angry enemies or ragnaroks), you can choose two enemies to only fight once each (as long as Nidhogg doesn’t pull them). If you’re only fighting them once each, then forging their weapon isn’t efficient; it’s better to just spend extra vikings, or push them back indirectly with the Vanir or the runes.

The best enemies to choose are usually Nidhogg and Jormungand, since their powers don’t become stronger as they advance.

Any enemy in Odin’s Residence at the end of the turn will cause you to lose, but enemies that move into Odin’s Residence don’t get to use their ability that turn. Deliberately letting Nidhogg into the last space will prevent him from pulling another enemy on that turn, meaning one less battle you need to fight to win the game.

Of course, you’d better have a plan for how to deal with Nidhogg when he finally gets there. Leaving the Vanir ready on the “automatically push one enemy” option, leaving a revealed frost giant with the last piece of the Mann or Tiwaz rune, or simply stockpiling lots of vikings can all get the job done.

This is an advanced strategy for experienced players, but it can make a difference, especially on higher difficulties.

The asymmetric gameplay in Descent can disguise large differences in player skill, and both sides benefit from understanding how the other plays. Give everyone in your group a chance to play as the overlord.

Raising morale gives you an extra action every turn, which adds up fast. Keeping your morale at maximum should be a high priority until around the dawn of the third day, when there are few enough turns left that it starts to become questionable.

The Paladin’s reroll ability is very good.

So good, I kind of feel like I’m cheating if I select him…

I did an extensive rebalancing of Descent, with stronger monsters, improved player scaling, numerous new treasures, skills, feats, and overlord cards, and all-new quests. It can be downloaded here:
http://www.mindflare.com/enduringevil/

A few fatigue is often the difference between making one attack or two, or between finishing off a wounded monster or not–and taking out an extra monster will usually prevent as much damage as a healing potion heals.

New players often focus on healing potions, but long games swing in favor of the overlord, so vitality potions are usually much more effective.

The yellow, green, and blue taoists all have two different and useful abilities. The red taoist really only has one ability (give someone a free move each turn), with the restriction that one side of his board only targets himself and the other cannot target himself. That’s kind of a let down, and the side restricted to self-targeting isn’t nearly as useful as the other.

So I recommend combining these into a single ability:

“At the start of his yang phase, the red taoist may move any player (including himself) one space.”

And adding a new ability for the other side of red’s board:

“At the start of his yang phase, the red taoist may move one ghost to any open position.”

This gives red two genuinely different abilities that fill a similar strategic niche, like the other three taoists have (in this case, the niche of reacting more quickly to threats and preventing players from wasting turns because they aren’t close to anything). Each of the powers has some situations where it is preferable to the other, and based on my experience, they seem to be closer in overall power than red’s official abilities.