Aselus

My favorite side rule in Nghtfall is double draft. You start the draft with a hand of six cards. The first two picks being the same as in the base game (pick one, pass the pile, pick one, pass the pile).

The last two picks on the other hand follow the same pattern as the last pick in the original draft (you get four cards, pick one to go in the center and one to discard, pass the last two cards. Get two cards, pick one to go in the center the other to discard.) We have found that this makes for an interesting dynamic in what is picked/put on the table and allows for more choice during the draft phase.

This is an odd one, but how honor/dishonor works in the base game makes them pretty un-interactive. We’ve found this works well oftentimes to make dishonor ‘global’ and honor ‘negate’ dishonor globaly as well(based on the largest gains/losses from any one player.

example:
4 players
player 1 makes all players lose 2 honor (still only counts as -2 token)
player 2 gains 2 honor
player 3 gains 2 honor
player 4 makes all players lose 4 honor (still only counts as -4 token)

at the end the gain/losses are compared yours vs largest opposite on the table:
player 1 has 0 (largest opposite to -2 is 2)
player 2 has 0 (largest opposite to 2 is -2)
player 3 has 0 (largest opposite to 2 is -2)
player 4 has -2 token

if using this system, it’s important that military players are effected by honor loss as far as honor requirements on personalities go. 🙂 hope at least some people enjoy! (although i know it’s a pain it does make these two deck types at least a little interactive with the rest of the board)

An interesting thing to do with this game is to take two cards from one category (this mostly works for creatures, as some spells require attachement/etc). and put one behind the other. every two cycles (meaning after each player has gotten two turns with a card as a faceup card) you switch the two faced cards and all the dice of said type now become the new card.

You can do this with any number of cards, but two seems to work best, not all cards haveto be two faced, We have played with instances where the first two~three that are flipped twice are two faced. 🙂 hope you have fun with this!

Eminent domains only source of chaos is by default the planet deck, we wanted to increase this a little bit without just unbalancing the game, so what we did was create a stack of a ‘destiny’ deck. You take two cards from each Stack and one Politics card and you shuffle them up.

At the beginning of each first player turn (rotating one counterclockwise every cycle, meaning if you have normal play going clockwise in a three player game, on the third turn the third player will be the first player): You flip a card from the destiny deck and it is now a ‘role’ for all players (in which no one is the leader). It does lead to some interesting statistics and shakes the game upa bit. Enjoy!

There are a few way to get a longer game out of Eminent domain, here are three we have used:

1) end game after 3 piles are over + add blue tokens into regular tokens.
2) Play with 1.5 sets of cards (does require you to buy two sets)
3) Increase technological requirements to +1 planet of what they are (for t2 and t3)

mixing and matching these will lead to a longer game if you so desire! NOTE: prestige planets tend to be a bit overly strong in longer games, so taking them out of these games is sometimes a good idea.

Much like in card games you can count what the percentage chance of a certain dice being in your head is. A lot of the times you’ll be drafting dice into your ‘deck’ and you’ll be aiming for the stronger dice to pull into that draw, but there is one thing that sometimes gets forgotten by a lot of players and that’s the ability to draw quiddity to be able to keep rolling your ‘deck’ forwards. As such always think (especially when you don’t have enough quidity to buy the ‘strong’ dice) about the weak cards(spells especially) that have a hight quidity ratio on them as filler for your deck. A spell that has an ok effect + quidity and high quid values on 50% of it is a great buy for example if this is your goal.

First (or second) turn when you get your free card, what should it be and why?

Well if you’re first player and noone has gone before you, play to your hand more then your planet! yes, the technology available to you will be based on what type of planet you have but all three types are decently good at helping any strategy at tier 1, which is something most players ignore.

Few facts to consider:
The faster you get that first planet flipped, the sooner you can effectively use your research cards.
If you have Policies +military it might be a good idea to trade policies for military
If you have Policies +1xcolonize it might be a good idea to trade policies for colnize, but you really don’t haveto.
Scan as a first action can get you what you need for the role phase/help you setup your second hand for what you want so don’t be afraid to retain/throw away policies on the first turn

Just remember to aim for that first flip asap, and then aim for a two card research hand to be able to get a tech, it makes a big difference being able to start your clock/research sooner considering how fast the games go.

So, you have your deck, you have the opponent across from you, and you have the will to win! This small article is to tell you what to expect in the first turn of the game (uhh from a very ‘basic’ overview, i’m not going to be pointing out specific cards) depending on deck type as well as what your options are if you’re piloting one of these decks.

First turn personality(cheap) + holding(2~4gc)
This is most commonly a play that will be seen out of clock decks(honor/dishonor possibly enlight), although a The advantages of this sort of play are that there is a person right away to throw something on the personality turn 2(spell, attachement, etc.) or to take advantage of an ability elsewhere. Also if an honor deck buys a 4gc personality for full on turn 1 they are giving themselves a headstart. The disadvantage here are in that 1) the personality gotten is boxable(or less) and due to that useless by themselves.

First turn personality(7~8gc)
This is most commonly done by a ‘blitz’ style military deck that has the means to try and threaten a province turn two, but all in all is a very risky play, because you are costing yourself a turn of early economy (over the two holding start) especially if an attachment (more gold) is needed turn 2 in order to actually threaten a province. A dishonor or enlightenment deck might also do this play if the printed text on the personality is strong enough (i.e. Bayushi Kazutoshi or Bayushi Rentatsu out of scorpion. will both be good choices as they start messing with the opponent right away and in the case of rentatsu furthering your victory condition starting turn 2!!!). The downside to this play is always money, you are (again) giving up a turn of gold, which ends up meaning that on turn 2 you will only be able to either buy a person+holding or 2 holdings[note: if you are going second this is slightly aleviated by non-exp bamboo harvesters]

First turn two holdings
This is by far the most common play, and 90% of the time the best play. You get funds into the game to be able to be effective on your second turn to the best of your ability. The only times you should stray from this is if you know that your opponent is going to do one of the other plays or if you know that one of the other plays will get you a distinct advantage in the game (taking a province turn 2, starting clock early, etc.). Also while doing this it is important to note that most of the time, early game higher gold holdings are worth more then utility, since they will let you bring more things out turn 2.

Hopefully this helped some people 🙂 ~Aselus

First a disclamer: There are a lot of tutorials on how to play this game, and this is not aimed to teach you what ‘personalities’ or ‘strategies’ are, it is aimed to show a few different opening plays (i’ll call them Fuseki since I am a go player, and this is a japanese themed game ^^).

Between all the different themes there are four distinct victory conditions that can be subdivided into three different categories of decks for mid/late game: defensive decks, control decks and agressive decks. And although there is far more depth to the game then that, there are a few things you can expect to happen before the game even starts based on the analysis of this three party state.

Defensive Deck – a deck defined as a type that wants to goto battle and defend. This type of deck is usually of the honor/dishonor veriety, but can include some military decks.

– Will want to get into an opposed battle, in order to further its victory condition, but will probably not attack you.
– Will likely favor a play with a personality/holding on the second turn
– WIll have some things that further its victory condition in the open/limited phase, to deal with control/other defensive decks.

What does this mean?
XXX if you are military:
– have a plan in your mind to ways you can attack un-opposed. (unopposed movement like A Brave New World, Cavalry, etc.)

– it is unlikely that they will attack you, So make a note to avoid your defensive meta(cycle cards in your hand you don’t see yourself using on the offensive or to meta their victory condition). i.e.: if you have a choice between two personalities and can’t buy both, avoid the one with the ‘if defending’ action on him

XXX if you are honor/dishonor:
– ask yourself whether your clock is faster then theirs, you need to figure out as soon as possible, whether you or them will be the one who hasto switch to military to be able to focus towards that goal.
– if you are the stronger ‘military’ and their clock i faster, see the second military note

Offensive Deck – for the most part this includes almost all military decks, a deck that needs to attack soon and fast in order to bring you down, or a deck that plans on slow rolling you, a lot of offensive decks will not even defend in battle, in order to have a good stance on the attack.

– Will try to start taking provinces as soon as possible
– Will probably try to attack on turn three, turn 2 blitz plays are also possible out of a few blitz decks(crab is best at this)
– Will probably have almost no open/limited actions
– likely to be aiming to attack, and will avoid defending most of the time

What does this mean?
XXX if you are military:
– You are likely to be racing them to take provinces. This means whoever goes first has the initial upper hand. This being said, if you have ways to take this tempo away from them (retribution, a perfect moment, etc.) use it, but always think on which of you will haveto defend in the last battle(s), a lot of times the game comes down to this last battle and being prepared to defend if you will be the defender is important (means not having 4 cards 3 of which are Sneak attack ;-))

XXX if you are defensive honor/dh/enlight:
– this is the deck you are aimed at doing well against, but don’t get cocky, remember to think of ways s/he can take multiple provinces and to account for those.
– if s/he has a big unit deck that is likely to get into a battle unopposed (kensai, berserker, follower), start digging for ways to get into that battle so that you can do your shinanigary(tm word)

XXX if you are control
– Aim at cards that will delay him attacking you, but remember that he is very likely to win a battle once he gets into it, so towards mid game you will need at least some way to slow down his taking to one province so that he doesn’t beat your clock.

Control Decks – A deck that aims to stop battle from happening all together (usually by focusing on actions that happen in the Open/Limited phases of the game.

– likely to not want to goto battle at all
– will have lots of open/limited actions
– is on a ‘clock’, meaning wants to get to their victory condition asap, and just delay you from yours.
– will have a limited amount of actions once in battle(but still some)

What does this mean?
xxx if you are military
– Dig for your open cards that can be used as meta for bow.
– early game if you have a choice to take a province or give them x honor, take the province. Slowing down their access to dynasty cards can mean the difference in the end.
xxx if you are a defensive deck
– aim at your strongest offensive cards, and attack. control clocks are usually faster then yours, since you won’t be able to use your battle actions uneless you are in a fight
– If you can dishonor and the opponent is an honor deck, aim it at the personalities that will gain the opponent the most honor, to slow down the clock and give you time to build a personality pool(Slanderer is great)
– don’t buy for full unless they’re DH, this is an odd one, but in this case you know their clock is faster, so pretend honor doesn’t really exist.

Conclusion
The above are just some basic thought to have going through your head and plans that should start formulating as you sit across the table in a game. There are obviously more detailed thoughts that should be considered for specific types of decks (like big follower decks vs berserkers vs kensei vs naked lions, etc.) but I hope that this gave you some insight into what your first set of plans could be. 🙂

Like this? Want more? like/tell me, I am considering writing a series of
fuseki/joseki(yes i know this means corner play, -_-)/Yosei articles in more details if enough people are interested.

This is a basic strategy for this game, as anyone who has playe dit knows, the leader changes almost every turn and the board is always in flux, but there are a few things that are good to do:

1) combo construction sites(this one is obvious, but important, saving construction sites for a place where you can secure a good difficult to break foothold(like if you have a capitol is important, if you use them too early, more then likely you’ll jsut make yourself appear the target and get them taken away. The factory that lets you draw 5 cards is key here, as you will allow yourself breathing room to hold on to them if you have a few.
2) throw away ports/give them to other people if you can
3) if you have a plaza in your hand: placing it in a location away from the opponent territory and in your territory is a very important tactic, it can essentially give you two moves in a row. If you also have a stadium(or capitol) in roder to turn those moves for the opponents into essentially walls for your territory.
4) Power stations are great, but try to combo them with construction sites, or place them somewhere where you know they will lock your territory in and not your opponents, to make it not obvious that you have one (unless you’re dropping multiple construction sites) try to have a few edge cases always present where you can.
5) trading hands with shopping complex can be crippling if you use enough factories to draw a lot of cards and use up all the good ones.

forming a strategy depends on the players in this game as in most others, but remember to not over think placement as there are many ways to move/remove tiles, playing to a few different locations and then trying to connect midgame can have its advantages (especially in making you appear less of a target, and is usually my main recommended play. Have fun, and I hope that this helps!