Add your own Tips, Strategies, & House Rules! Vote for tips that you think are useful.

Tips & Strategies (7)

Filter by: Order by:
Gamer Avatar
7
Comic Book Fan
Book Lover
Pet Lover
33 of 34 gamers found this helpful
“Beginner Gamers”

Caverna can have a lot of overwhelming components, so here’s a few helpful items:
1) The game’s a beast to set up, a Plano organizer for the smaller items and 1 for the room tiles will work for both game play and storage. Otherwise a series of bowls or sorting trays, maybe on a lazy susan for easy access for all players.
2) Read the manual and try a solo game before teaching it to others, or do a 2 player game. 2 player has fewer rounds and fewer components.
3) While its always good first time out to focus on a single simple strategy, especially in a game with so many options – no matter what path you take always consider food. Place tiles to cover squares that offer quick food tokens, acquire at least 2 farm animals that will breed, or sow some seeds – cause you’ll need to feed your workers.
4) Don’t forget that resources can be traded for food.
5) Don’t worry about acquiring more workers your first game, just focus on a single path, and just enough food for your workers. Spending actions and room space for new workers takes away from other options and creates a need for more food.

Gamer Avatar
7
Finland
Advanced Reviewer
Strategist
36 of 39 gamers found this helpful
“The coveted holy cows”

Cows seem to be the holy grail of this game. Most difficult to get and challenge to get in large numbers before game ends. Of course they’re what everybody wants. Unlike other farm animals, you can’t acquire these unless adventuring or trading for rubies and food.

First make sure that you have ample supplies of food, usually through harvesting vegetables. Then go down on rubies and get as much as you can, if you have a ruby mine or two you can accomplish this in one turn.
Make sure you have a large pasture, preferably with stable, ready for incoming onslaught of cows you just traded. Combine this with Milking parlor and you have provided for your dwarves for rest of the game and cashed in neat amount of extra victory points.

Gamer Avatar
5
Petroglyph
Arrowhead
33 of 37 gamers found this helpful
“Avoid competing for actions”

Choose a totally different strategy from other players to avoid competing with them. For example, if all players but one compete for a crop-growing strategy, the one player who doesn’t will often have the run of the board for all the actions not related to crops and fields.

Gamer Avatar
3
Critic - Level 2
33 of 37 gamers found this helpful
“Workers”

My group has tried a wide range of different strategies with the number of dwarves (workers) used. I have found that it really doesn’t work to only have the base amount (2), so my tip is to always make room and food plans to have at least 3 dwarves total.

Gamer Avatar
8
Norway
Plaid Hat Games fan
AEG fan
Tasty Minstrel Games Fan
32 of 36 gamers found this helpful
“Organizing the game”

This game has LOADS of components. To leave it all in the box as it comes will make the setup take quite a while.
So I bought a fish lure box to stash all the animals and all the other resources. Take the lid of the box, stack all the tiles and you’re good to go.

Gamer Avatar
3
I'm a Real Person
32 of 38 gamers found this helpful
“Foamcore organizer”

The only thing I dislike about this game is the amount of time it requires to set it up. Fortunately, there are DIY solutions to cut this time to about two minutes. With a bit of foamcore, craft glue and cutter you can make yourself nice organizer tray to hold all the components.

You can find photos, tips, tools and blueprints to make it here:
Caverna organizer
and here:
Blueprints

Gamer Avatar
5
Detective
I Walk the Talk!
9 of 12 gamers found this helpful
“Box Organizer from The Broken Token is a Must”

If you own Caverna, I highly recommend buying the Caverna game organizer from The Broken Token. Their organizer kit allows you to easily organize all of your tokens, tiles, cards and game boards in the original game box. It features three removable trays to make game setup and tear-down a breeze. Gameboards lock everything in place during transportation. Caverna ships with a lot of baggies but you won’t need a single one with this box insert! It’s almost cooler than the game itself, though it costs about $35. Totally worth it if you like to play Caverna.

Add your own Tip, Strategy, or House Rule

You must be to add a comment.

× Visit Your Profile