Dark Soul Tonto

Why? Because the smuggler and governor are limited by the 2d6 to only 11 locations in the base game already. If you add the expansion, you’re going up to 20 tiles, and the governor and smuggler keep hanging about the same 11 tiles. If you want to have more chances at getting at them for encounters, and perhaps splitting them one side of the board and the other, use a D20 to relocate them. It will add variety to the game and if a particular player is dependent on hitting those guys up for his strategy, you can give him something else to worry about while you get on with the business at hand.

If playing the base game with some deep thinkers or players new to the game, just go for the throat and use the simplest strategy available. Money all the time. Warehouse, warehouse, market, repeat, maybe go gambling at the tea house if it’s well placed for you, throw a relative back in jail and take the money, then raid the gem dealer’s store again and again. You can rack up 3, maybe even 4 rubies before anyone’s caught on to what you’re doing. The vulnerability is that you can stall out at 4 gems and have to switch it up to win, which takes time and allows the others to perhaps get back in the game, but the pressure is on them, not you.

It may not sound sexy, to have an encounter with the smuggler, but there’s a great move hidden in this rather bland rule. Encountering him, you can get a gem/diamond/blue thing (whatever you want to call it), and that’s the rarest resource in the game. For 2 lira, it’s yours. Get it fast, and get to the 3 warehouses, double back to the sultan’s palace and you get a ruby for dirt cheap before anyone else has thought of it.

You will need some surefire way to generate cash in the game, and capital buildings are better than trade goods, and more reliable, as well as being an instant gratification, rather than a slow build. Privateers is especially good, as it drains the other players banks to feed yours. Spoils of war is a one time effect, but can be valuable in the right situation.

The two crucial resources, but which is better? You need wheat for 3 things you build in the game, but brick for only 2. So why is brick crucial? There are only 3 brick hexes in the game, 3 ore hexes, and 4 hexes for the other 3 resources. Brick is better early game, to get your road network started and to get a couple settlements placed, and a good start can be essential, so I rate brick a higher priority than ore. But wheat is the absolutely essential ingredient, in my view. You need it for settlements, cities and development cards. Control the wheat, and you stand a better chance at winning.

When playing with my family, we house rule being allowed to buy a stairs/hallway along with a regular room buy on the same turn, if you have enough cash. It helps the kids and makes the wife glare less at you, trust me on this one. Keep ’em happy!

You can do quite well without fretting over being first each round. In fact, you really need others to do the dirty work for you, and by that, I mean, get the other players to buy up the low numbered locomotives. It’s a low efficiency action to continue to buy locomotives round after round. Also, if you happen to sit in 4th place the entire game, that’s 27 points you tally very quietly, without attracting any attention to yourself that you might be a threat to win.

This is one of my top 5 favorites, and I can throw out about 400 pts every game. There is no need to go all in on engineers in order to win. Advantage tokens to get the Kiev medal and end of game scoring cards are far more important.