Banza

Kinda basic, but when you win you only win that round, instead of winning the entire game. To win the entire game you need to win 3 rounds total (not in a row).

Every now and then we’d get cards that wanted us to do random stuff like ask another player if they’d like a drink, and if they say yes you get money. However, if everyone said no, then instead of walking away empty handed we’d let them get 50% of the money they would have received if they pulled it off. Kind of lame, but so is this game.

This game is so perfect as a filler I was struggling to come up with anything that needed to be fixed. I’d say the only problem we had was running into a tie, we tend to like games to only have one winner. So in the event of a tie, I’m thinking something like being able to start pulling tiles from the the outside edge of the board would allow the game to continue. It’s not perfect because they can trace the paths and choose a tile that won’t kill them, however it is interesting because they could choose a tile that would kill the other player.

If anyone has a better solution to ties, please post!

I mentioned in my review of the game that something a little more complicated would add a lot of replay value to this game, so I came up with a fun little variant that could probably use some more tweaking but on the surface sounds pretty fun.

All players start out as humans fighting against the Zombie apocalypse. You will get attacked (your turn), and will have to either run away (roll 3 runs) or fight the zombies off (3 shots). However, if you get hit 6 times (6 brains), you become a Zombie!

Once you’re a zombie, on your turn you get to attack one of the remaining humans at the table! The same rules apply like normal, if you get 6 brains they become a zombie, if you roll either 3 runs or 3 shots you get fended off.

As a zombie, you win if your team is able to convert at least half of the table to Zombies within 6 rounds. If the humans are able to fight off all 6 waves of zombies with half of them surviving, they win.

The concept itself sounds pretty fun, but I just picked the numbers of everything off the top of my head. Would probably have to figure out some laws of probability to get the chances for both teams to win roughly 50% of the time to make it exciting.

Always building is fairly obvious, but you should always trade as well. Just asking for the exact same stuff over and over can be pretty amusing as well. This is more important in this version than in the 4 player version as well because the state of the board will be changing so much.

Similar to Jim’s house rule about using the board for a really good 4 player game, you can use this game as a super crazy epic 2 player game. Basically assign 3 colors to each player, take 2 turns, and go crazy. Your own colors can help go towards longest road as well.

I don’t do this very often, but if you’re playing against someone who is godly at this game and want to make it a little more even, you could put a cap on how long a word can be.

I still tend to lose against people with PHDs and vocabulary freaks, but here’s how I tend to do fairly well.

1. Avoid short words unless you have absolutely nothing else to play. Alternatively if you have any difficult letters it’s usually fine.

2. Don’t build towards multipliers. Let your opponents build towards them, and then you can take them after. Even if I have combos that will let me get to a multiplier in two turns, I usually get it stolen from me.

3. Don’t over think it. Usually if I don’t find a better word within a minute, I’m probably not going to find it unless I think about it for hours. For the sake of time and efficiency, only give yourself about a minute per word.

4. Play with word combos during other players turns. Kind of obvious, but don’t take a break here.

5. Praise people for their amazing words (even if they arent). This keeps the atmosphere light and makes it easier for you to concentrate instead of being competitive.

All kind of obvious stuff, but that’s how I like to play. Maybe it will help someone, who knows.

Robert V. Bolton had a good house rule on here to roll a D6 to randomly set a hand size limit. You could potentially even have a dice with more sides, however this is a good rule. I would also suggest however, allowing players who have reached their hand limit to discard cards in order to get more draws. Example, discarding 2 cards = 1 extra draw. Players can discard up to 4 cards in a single turn to get their typical 2 draws.

Blocking the computer players has less repercussions than when playing against human players. You should give priority to completing your own routes of course, however if you see colored tickets available that might block a computer player, you should try to take them if you don’t have a better option.

When I play against the computer, I pretty much decline all trades. However, if you get a really subpar starting setup you will most likely have 1 resource you have a lot of trouble getting. So you can just skip all trades unless it’s showing the resource you need, then evaluate which resource they’re wanting from you and decide if it’s a good deal.

Also, trading against the computer is pretty easy and isn’t much of a risk. Just pick which resource you want and try 1 of everything to see if any of them pick it up, and if not then you can either trade with the bank or just forget about it.

If someone is next to you, you can use your reverse cards to take away their turns, or use skips and + cards on them. So I try to sit next to people who are usually lucky and/or really good at Ameritrash type games.

I’ve made the mistake of going to college and then going to night school and getting a salary DECREASE. Just choose one or the other.

You want to stay as close to the center as possible. If you’re on the outside edge it really limits your options on where you can move.

Since this game is ultra casual, losing really isn’t a big deal. Also, if you’re playing with 4 or more players, odds are ONE person is going to get ridiculously lucky. Why not have it be you? Sure, you could lose with 0 points, but you might also roll 13 in a single round! Besides, playing the strategical way is fun at first but becomes dull after awhile.

If you make a line 4 or longer, people have a really good chance of getting the two blocks needed to finish the line. However, it’s pretty rare when a line is 3 blocks long for someone to have the three exact colors of that exact shape, or the 3 shapes of that exact color. It’s better to start a new line somewhere than to make a line 4 or longer.

Combining this strategy with the “Hold your cards” strategy from Granny should help improve your win rate.

You will always have to choose wisely when discarding cards, and it changes depending on which phase you are. I win fairly consistently, and this is the drawing/discarding strategy I like to use for each phase:

Phase 1 – If the card in the discard pile is a pair for ANY of your cards, pull it. Then discard ANY cards that are singles (starting with cards 10 or higher). Once you no longer have any singles, just pick a pair to start discarding, usually pairs that are 10 or higher. Eventually you’ll get your two pairs of three.

Phase 2 – Use the same strategy as above, focusing on pairs. However, TRY to not discard singles that are forming your run of 4. If you have to discard singles that form the run, go ahead. I find the harder part of this phase is getting the pair of three than the run of 4.

Phase 3 – Same as above.

Phase 4 – One of the easiest phases. Just draw cards that fill any gaps in your run, and discard PAIRS. Eventually you’ll have one of everything but you’ll probably get your run of 7 before then.

Phase 5 – Same as above, slightly harder.

Phase 6 – Same as above. Might take 2 rounds, so try to avoid holding onto skips and cards 10 or higher.

Phase 7 – Follow the same strategy as phase 1. Once you have a full hand of pairs, choose pairs to start discarding. Once you have a full hand of pairs of three, choose one to start discarding.

Phase 8 – Easiest phase in the game, fairly obvious what to do here. Look at which colors you have the least of, and discard those. Eventually you’ll have your 7 colors.

Phase 9 – Follow phase 7 strategy. Hardest part will be getting that pair of 5 or drawing the amount of wilds you need. Might take 2 rounds, so try to avoid holding onto skips and cards 10 or higher.

Phase 10 – Same as above, just need a pair of 3 in addition to the pair of 5.

I can’t tell you how many times I was ahead and then lost to farmers. The problem is it’s hard to really “control” the outcome of farmers, however I can tell you that I tend to have better odds of not getting wrecked in the farmer scoring phase when I have 3 farmers out there.

Source: http://dominionstrategy.com/2012/07/30/building-the-first-game-engine/

I’ve tried the strategy in the link above and it works really well. If you want to cheese win, you can do nothing but Smithy + big money, and once you’re setup you do nothing but buy provinces. However, if you want a strategy that beats Smithy + Big money, use the following strategy:

$8 or more to spend: Province (if you have 5 or more Smithies)
$5: Duchy (if there are 3 or less Provinces left)
$2: Estate (if there are 2 or less Provinces left)
$6: Gold (max 2)
$5: Market (max 5)
$4: Remodel (1), otherwise Militia (1), otherwise Village (if you have less Villages than terminal actions), otherwise Smithy
$3: Village
$2: Cellar (max 2)

When we played two player and sat on the same side of the table, the game experience was really fun. But once we tried to play with 3-4, it kind of fell apart. We’d have to either make the cards difficult to read for some, or slightly less difficult to read for everyone. However, if you simply use a turn table/lazy susan that you use for dinners, it solves this problem really well. Simply spin it towards yourself on your turn!

We find that hands CAN take forever in two player, so to speed things up we’ll just end the hand once the discard pile is higher than the draw pile.

Whenever we have someone who hasn’t played the game before, we like to make them immune from players being able to use their monsters to attack them. If they want the challenge we of course skip this, but some people are intimidated and just want to learn the rules their first play through.

It’s pretty rare, but because of the rarity the points make sense. If you have a full qwirkle in your hand, you can play all 6 pieces on top of an already existing matching qwirkle, for a total line length of 12. You can vary the amount of points, and whether or not you have to play the full additional six or if you want to just be able to play to 12 in a single line.

Rather than waiting until the tiles are run out, we sometimes like to end the game once someone reaches the start of the score board. This is good for speedier games, or when you’re playing in an area that doesn’t have a large playing surface.

The main thing is removing the robber, you can do whatever you’d like on the 7 roll. When we play with non-competitive players we find this makes the game more fun for them.

We’ve found this is a good handicap when playing with new players. Most of the time this is the losing condition, we never had problems containing outbreaks or finding cures.

The most important resource in the game in my opinion is treasure. More treasure = more items, which will inevitably lead to you being more powerful. Fight your own monsters as much as possible, and help others fight monsters for treasure as much as possible.

First of all, you want to be sure your first settlements are touching at least 1 of every resource type. Otherwise you end up getting resource starving and having to convert a lot, which risks you having more than 7 cards and getting screwed by the robber.

Next, you want to either be near a 6 or 8 Iron or Brick, or the closest you can get to 6 or 8. Depending on which resource you will get more of will dictate your long term strategy. If you’ll be getting a lot of brick, you’ll want to focus on building roads and settlements, and going for the longest road card. If you’ll be getting a lot of Iron, you’ll want to focus on cities and going for largest army.

I prefer to choose tickets that connect to each other very easily. You can complete your tickets quickly to avoid the points penalties, work towards longest train, and also pick up additional tickets without worrying too much.

When my wife and I play this two player, we found the Medic+Dispatcher to be highly useful. Once you have a disease cured, you can have your Medic simply move to a city to automatically remove any disease cubes from there with a single move. On the Dispatcher’s turn, you can then move the Medic. You can eradicate diseases very quickly this way.