Gabriel

Here are a few tips on how to win against “Hunt for Gollum” in case you’ve hit a wall.

Use Eleanor. A lot of the sting in the encounter deck comes from “When Revealed” effects (such as Old Wives Tales). Use Eleanor to cancel these. If possible also throw in A Test of Will – since you have to add additional cards after and before questing, it is possible to end up with more than one “When Revealed” effect per turn.

Include Lorien Guides and Northern Trackers. This encounter deck is extremely location heavy and many of the locations have nasty side effects when traveled to. You therefore need to get rid of locations as soon as possible.

Make full use of the additional cards you add in the quest phase in stages one and two. Remember you get to choose which card(s) goes into the discard pile and which card goes to the staging area. Your priority should be to get the crows and the hunters from Mordor into the discard pile and to choose a “When Revealed” effect to add to the staging area, which Eleanor can then cancel (see above).

Deal with locations quickly. Especially the Old Ford – this can seriously get out of hand later in the game with more allies on the table so try and get rid of this location early in the game.

Consider using Legolas, the guides will help clear the active location quickly, which leaves Legolas free to attack and place progress tokens on the quest.

Consider using Bilbo. The extra card per turn soon adds up – over 10 rounds you are drawing an extra 5 cards each in a two player game. Helpful for getting to your power cards such as the trackers and guides, not to mention Gandalf.

This variant makes the game much more fluid and shorter.

SETUP:

Take all cards needed to play in 3 players game set up

At the beginning of each phase, give 10 cards to each player (one card is discarded without knowing what it was)

Each player selects four cards and gives the other ones (6) to his opponent.

Each player selects 3 cards and discards the other, making a starting hand of 7 cards for each player.

GAMEPLAY CHANGES:

All the cards with two arrows on the side applied to your opponent but also to yourself

Each player can buy from the bank the resource of his choice for 3 coins (one coin reduction made by yellow cards is also applied to purchasing from bank)

The fighting phase at the end of each phase is considered as a one to one fight. During the last fight the winner recovers 5 points of victory but the loser takes as many -1 taken than the difference of shields during this battle (for example, if you win with five shields against 1 shield, the loser takes four -1 tokens)

Variations from the multi-player game follow:

GAME PREPARATION:

Per Player
1 player board, 3 Doubloons, 1 Indigo (for governor); 1 corn (for 2nd player)

Remaining Plantations
Remove 3 of each type of plantation from the game. Uncover 3 plantations (one more than the number of players)

Quarries
Remove 3 Quarries from the game (use 5 quarry tiles)

Buildings
Use 2 of each Production building, and 1 of each Violet building

Victory Points
65 total Victory Points

Colonists
40 (in supply) + 2 on the colonist ship (minimum = player number)

Goods
Remove 2 of each type of good from the game

Cargo Ships
Use the 4 and 6 capacity cargo ships

Trading House
No change

Role Cards
Remove 1 prospector from the game

GAME SEQUENCE:

The Governor begins and selects a role. Subsequently the players alternate selecting roles until both players have selected 3 roles. Place one Doubloon on the remaining role card. The Governor then changes to the second player and the above sequences is repeated. All further rules are the same as in the Multiplayer game.

SETUP

Each player must bring their deck and story deck (this is important – in two player, only one player really needs to bring their story deck, but in multi, everyone has to).
No changes to deck building rules.

One player is appointed “First Player,” and his story deck is shuffled. Lay out three stories in front of that player. Then, all other players search their story decks and lay out the same three story cards in front of them. Play proceeds clockwise beginning with the “First Player.”

Rules change: on the first turn, all players draw 2 cards. No player gets a story phase on their first turn.

GAMEPLAY

Each player takes their full turn, as in 2-player, one phase at a time.

COMMITTING TO STORIES

Rules change:
When a player takes his story phase and com- mits characters, each opponent beginning with the leftmost opponent and continuing clockwise, gets ONE chance to “intercept.” As soon as one opponent chooses to intercept, no other player may do so. To intercept, players must commit atleast 1 character to “block” the active player.

Only the intercepting player may commit char- acters to “block” the active player. All players may trigger card effects as normal, starting with the active player and proceeding clockwise.

WINNING A STORY

Rules change: When a player other than the first player wins a
story, he claims that story for himself. That play- er then set aside that story for himself.

The First Player then shuffles that story card back into his story deck, then draws and plays a new story card. Each other player follows suit (ie. Their success tokens on the won story are lost, just like in 2-player), searching their story deck for the same story that the First Player has put into play.

Note: if you have already won the story card that the First Player has put into play, then you are “short” one story card (ie. You’ll only have two of them out). However, you still can inter- cept the active player’s characters at a story card even if you don’t have it out.

If the First Player wins a story, he places that story in his won pile and pulls out another story. That won story will not show up again during the game.

WINNING THE GAME

The game ends when a player has won 3 story cards. There are no further rules changes.

FFG recommends you buy two core sets to be able to play with four (4) players. This is not true, you can easily play with up to 4 players using a single core set. All you’ll need is a way to track threat for the additional players. I do recommend buying an addition core set however, for the added flexibility of deck building. One core set doesn’t have enough duplicates of some of the more powerful cards.

Here’s a simple house rule you may like: units who’s strength has been reduced by half (2 or less infantry figures remaining or 1 cavalry figure remaining) role one less die in combat (minimum of 1).

Introduction

This article gives you a basic, beginning method for building a deck for Magic: The Gathering. It is not the end of the subject – there are worlds of variants, special cases, exceptions, and alternatives that a more advanced player with a large pool of cards might confront. Instead, this article seeks to establish some basics of the game, giving you a style of play that will fit well in a wide variety of places and situations.

A deck is 60 cards…

Everyone knows that a basic Magic deck is 60 cards. But you are immediately confronted with the eternal question as soon as you start picking out those cards – how many land cards and how many other cards? Lands are necessary, but we don’t want too many because they don’t help us win the game directly. Other cards help us win, but we need land to put them into play.

Let’s take a look at three special cases to help us with this dilemma. These are as follows;

1) 20 land and 40 other cards
2) 25 land and 35 other cards
3) 30 land and 30 other cards

Most people would agree that in most cases, the first one is a bit too little and the third one is a bit too much. But, what we really need to know here is how likely it will be that we will draw a certain number of land over a certain number of cards. Let’s run some tests and see how many lands are drawn in our first 9 cards. Yes, you typically start the game with 7 cards, but if you go first, you’ll want to have played 3 lands on your third turn, by which time you will have had 9 cards. That is, this projection counts beyond the opening hand into the first few draws to improve the usefulness of our data.

So, if we draw a few opening hands with each deck structure… say 10,000,000 each, then we might get data that looks a bit like this;

number of land 30/30 results 25/35 results 20/40 results
0 10019 49673 168482
1 120151 410135 978230
2 606055 1392401 2327779
3 1640630 2544703 2958635
4 2648366 2769177 2219411
5 2636320 1856992 1015151
6 1619834 764543 282351
7 592813 186502 45947
8 116321 24540 3883
9 9491 1334 131

number of tries 10000000 10000000 10000000

There’s something subtle to notice here. Even with such a different land to non-land ratios, we see in each case that we hit a sweet spot. For 30/30 it’s a bit above 4, for 25/35 it’s between 3 and 4, and for 20/40 it’s closer to 3. That’s not much of a spread considering the very different constructions. This data tells us that it is best to pitch the average cost of a card at about 3 in almost any deck! We should, therefore, build a deck with about 24/36 to 26/34 and an average converted mana cost of about 3. This will help our deck play as consistently as possible, absolutely minimizing the number of mana floods and droughts.

The Cost Curve

If we know that the average cost of about 3 is best, we next need to consider how we’ll get an average of 3. We could just pile things together and average their costs, but it’s often easier to have a structure as way to remind us to have our costs fall along a regular curve. A regular curve is another way we build consistency. Take two examples, assuming 36 non-land cards;

1) 18 cards that cost 1, 18 cards that cost 6 = average cost 3.5
2) 6 cards each at 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 = average cost 3.5

In the first example, we have 18 cards that will remain unplayable until we can get 6 lands in play! Even though the average cost is a good number, nearly 3, it is very likely that we’ll draw some cards we won’t be able to play before the game is over… and unplayable cards are useless cards. Instead, we should reduce the number of the most expensive cards. Similarly, we should avoid all cards that are very cheap; generally, they aren’t as powerful as cards that cost more mana. As our mana sweet spot is about 3.5 in 24/36 deck, we’ll probably want cards in the 2, 3, and 4 cost range, with a few quick cards at 1 and a few powerful, but expensive cards at 5 and 6 cost. Something like this perhaps;

4 at cost 1
6 at cost 2
8 at cost 3
8 at cost 4
6 at cost 5
4 at cost 6+

If we use this as a guideline, perhaps pulling one in one place and putting it in another from time to time, we’ll continue to maintain the deck that is most likely to play well – consistent and playing the best cards it can without drawing too many expensive or trivial cards.

Creatures versus Non-creatures

The game of Magic is generally won when you reduce your opponent from 20 life to 0. It’s fun and flashy to do this with a combo or to try to win in one of the alternate ways, but those are pretty advanced methods, highly specialized around certain cards. In general, the far more common method, the reliable and tested true way to get the job done is to attack with creatures. Whether swarming with fast little ones or controlling the game until your giant monster can command the field, you’re going to want a good portion of your non-land cards to be creatures. In practice, we can extend our cost curve, breaking each step into creatures and non-creatures. For example;

2 creatures and 2 other cards at cost 1
4 creatures and 2 other cards at cost 2
5 creatures and 3 other cards at cost 3
6 creatures and 2 other cards at cost 4
4 creatures and 2 other cards at cost 5
3 creatures and 1 other card at cost 6

This gives us 24 creatures and 12 other cards, making the majority of our cards the most useful and effective type of card – creatures. Note that generally as you go up in cost, it becomes harder to find worthwhile cards that are not creatures, so you may want to skew more towards creatures among the more expensive cards.

At this point we have a very effective basic structure, one which is pretty easy to fill in and roll. But a few additional tips can help even more.

Basic Strategy

Generally, you’re going to be best off with two colors. Each color in Magic is specialized around doing certain things with access to only some styles of offense or defense. When you build to one color, you’re missing complimentary effects that occur only in another color – no destroying enchantments in red and no direct damage in blue or green, for example. Beyond two colors in a deck and you are often stuck including many cards whose sole purpose is converting mana of one color to another or searching your deck for the right lands. Those are slots that could have been spent on taking it to the opponent. For the purposes of this guide, 3, 4, or 5 color decks are too hard to manage. So, when we pick a pair of colors, what are we looking for?

Essentially, all colors contribute one thing beyond their creatures – the ability to control the field of play. Thus, you want to look for cards that will let you render enemy creatures useless. Red does this by blowing them up. Green does this by making yours too big to stop. Blue does this by manipulating them, stopping them from entering play or sending them back to the hand. Black can damage them or simply annihilate them. And white can borrow many of the other colors effects in different ways. This is the most useful thing to add after creatures – things to eliminate enemy creatures.

It is also handy to be able to deal with other sorts of cards. Red and green are good against artifacts, white and green against enchantments, and blue can stop many things, but only temporarily or at a cost of your own development and black tries to empower you to race past difficulties in your way by sacrificing some things to get others.

As most of the game is about creatures, making sure your creatures are effective can be important. This means finding a way for them to get past enemy creatures if possible. Creatures that evade through special effects like flying or being unblockable are very powerful – they are often blue or black. Green uses trample to power through, and red does sometimes too. White will try to control the field, dictating who can block … or who survives long enough to block.

The major limiting factor on creatures is that the opponent will see them coming. To get that essential edge of surprise and flexibility to interrupt an opponent’s offense or defense and turn the tables in your favor, you’ll need surprises that leap from your hand at any moment to monkey wrench the situation. There’s nothing wrong with a slow Sorcery or Artifact if it is really good, but most of your non-creature cards should probably be Instants, cards you can play at a moment’s notice to turn things to your favor and set the tempo.

Creatures, creature removal, controlling other things on the field of play, making your creatures count with evasion or power, and the ability to surprise your opponent with instant speed effects are essential. No matter what pair of colors you choose, pick these effects first and often.

Color Ratios

When you play two colors, you’re going to have to split your land among the colors you end up with, but you’ll want to make sure the ratio of lands in each color match the amounts you’ll need to play your cards.

Generally, you’ll want to avoid cards with more than 2 repeated specific mana symbols. That is, if a card costs 3 green and 3 more, it better be a card that is very likely to win you the game – it has very specific costs as well as a high cost. Try to keep cards to only 1 or 2 of specific mana symbols in their cost as much as possible. This helps keep your deck consistent and reliable.

Another aspect of this is making sure that cards of each color occur at each cost level. If all your white cards are 4, 5, and 6 cost and all your red cards are 1, 2, and 3 cost, then you run the risk of not drawing spells of one color with land of the other.

To avoid this problem as much as possible, go through the cards you’ve selected and count the mana symbols on the casting cost of the cards. Let’s say, for example, you go through the deck and find 38 blue mana symbols and 22 black mana symbols. Reduce this ratio to the lowest common rough equivalent. 38:22 is almost 2:1 (40:20). In a deck with 24 land then, we want lands in this ratio – 2 Islands for every 1 Swamp – so 16 Islands and 8 Swamps. Perhaps, if we hit a few too many black cards with two black mana symbols in their cost and don’t have many like that in blue, we could go to 15 and 9 or even 14 and 10, but generally we’ll do quite well at 16:8.

Some Final Tips

At the beginning of the game, we want land, but as the game progresses, drawing land is less useful. Try to consider including cards that have effects on them that let you spend mana you aren’t using to cast new spells. These make good use of late lands. Or look for cards that let you discard cards from your hand for additional effects – discarding your 10th land card to give a creature +2/+2 turns a worthless land draw into a game winning play.

Cards that let you draw more cards or search your deck for cards are always worth considering. Remember, if the card does nothing but that, consider if you would have been better off drawing a different card instead, but finding that missing mana, the killer creature, or that decisive spell at just the right time is very powerful. And just drawing more cards every turn will find you tools to win almost as surely as searching.

Conclusion

Using this method, you can build the most consistent, reliable deck you can; it’s still a card game and you’ll always be subject to the vagaries of chance, but at least this way you aren’t giving bad luck extra help. A deck built using these guidelines will generally do well in almost any situation, but it is still just a basic deck. As you use a tool like this, you’ll begin to see opportunities play to different sorts of strategies or strengths and you’ll wander away from a basic deck to more advanced Magic… good luck!

Here’s the deck, which was built using two (2) Core sets and The Hunt for Gollum expansion:

HEROES
Eoywn
Bilbo
Glorifindel/Beravor

NEUTRAL
x3 Gandalf
x3 Song of Kings

LORE ALLIES
x2 Henmarth Riversong
x3 Erebor Hammersmith
x3 Daughter of the Nimrodel
x3 Rivindell Minstrel

LORE EVENTS/ATTACHMENTS
x2 Secret Paths
x3 Strider’s Path
x2 Protector of Lorien
x3 Forest Snare

SPIRIT ALLIES
x2 Lorien Guide
x3 Northern Tracker

SPIRIT EVENTS/ATTACHMENTS
x2 Unexpected Courage
x2 A Test Of Will
x3 The Galadrahim’s Greeting

LEADERSHIP
x3 Sneak Attack
x3 Dunedain Mark
x3 Steward of Gondor
x1 Celebrian Stone
x1 Faramir

There are several good combos in here. The powerhouse in both games was Bilbo + Protector of Lorien. With this combo I was able to defend against any enemy (including a pair of Hill Trolls which I engaged one at a time). Multiple Song of Kings turns out to be pretty nice, since you can then have multiple heroes with it, and therefore more flexibility when choosing who pays for what. Te Northern Trackers — always nice — were barely necessary. Especially in the HFG scenario, just being able to quest Eowyn + Glorifindel for 7/8 was huge. A pair of Dunedain Marks turns just about any hero into an attacking powerhouse. My only concern was that it was almost too easy, especially in Hunt for Gollum where you often get to chosoe which encounter cards you’ll face. But I’m looking forward to seeing if this deck has what it takes to handle Escape From Dol Guldur.

But the real kicker was being able to include the most powerful Leadership cards without having a Leadership hero. Thumbs up to Song of Kings… it’s quite a potent card.

Below are four deck lists that you can build out of two Core Sets. They’re each fifty cards and they should provide compelling gameplay for four players and a lot of variety for a solo player or a pair of players.

(Lore / Leadership)

Breakdown: 34 Lore, 14 Leadership, 2 Neutral

Slap Self-Preservation on Gloin and you’ll be a defensive beast.

Heroes
Denethor (Lore)
Gloin (Leadership)
Glorfindel (Lore)

Allies
Brok Ironfist x 1 (Leadership)
Daughter of the Nimrodel x 3 (Lore)
Erebor Hammersmith x 3 (Lore)
Faramir x 2 (Leadership)
Gandalf x 2 (Neutral)
Gleowine x 3 (Lore)
Guard of the Citadel x 1 (Leadership)
Henamarth Riversong x 1 (Lore)
Miner of the Iron Hills x 3 (Lore)
Silverlode Archer x 1 (Leadership)
Snowborn Scout x 3 (Leadership)

Events
Beorn’s Hospitality x 1 (Lore)
Gandalf’s Search x 2 (Lore)
Grim Resolve x 1 (Leadership)
Lore of Imladris x 3 (Lore)
Lorien’s Wealth x 2 (Lore)
Ragadast’s Cunning x 2 (Lore)
Secret Paths x 2 (Lore)
Sneak Attack x 2 (Leadership)
Valiant Sacrifice x 1 (Leadership)

Attachments
Dark Knowledge x 1 (Lore)
Forest Snare x 2 (Lore)
Protector of Lorien x 3 (Lore)
Self Preservation x 3 (Lore)
Steward of Gondor x 2 (Leadership)

(Leadership / Tactics)

Breakdown: 34 Leadership, 14 Tactics, 2 Neutral

Getting Steward of Gondor on Aragorn usually means good things.

Heroes
Aragorn (Leadership)
Legolas (Tactics)
Theodred (Leadership)

Allies
Brok Ironfist x 1 (Leadership)
Faramir x 2 (Leadership)
Gandalf x 2 (Neutral)
Gondorian Spearman x 3 (Tactics)
Guard of the Citadel x 3 (Leadership)
Horseback Archer x 1 (Tactics)
Longbeard Orc Slayer x 3 (Leadership)
Silverlode Archer x 3 (Leadership)
Snowborn Scout x 3 (Leadership)
Son of Arnor x 2 (Leadership)
Veteran Axehand x 3 (Tactics)

Events
Blade Mastery x 2 (Tactics)
Common Cause x 2 (Leadership)
Ever Vigilant x 2 (Leadership)
Feint x 1 (Tactics)
For Gondor! x 3 (Leadership)
Grim Resolve x 1 (Leadership)
Quick Strike x 1 (Tactics)
Rain of Arrows x 1 (Tactics)
Sneak Attack x 2 (Leadership)
Valiant Sacrifice x 3 (Leadership)

Attachments
Blade of Gondolin x 1 (Tactics)
Celebrian’s Stone x 2 (Leadership)
Dwarven Axe x 1 (Tactics)
Steward of Gondor x 2 (Leadership)

(Tactics / Spirit)

Breakdown: 34 Tactics, 14 Spirit, 2 Neutral

The theme here is pumping up your heroes to an incredible level.

Heroes
Dunhere (Spirit)
Gimli (Tactics)
Thalin (Tactics)

Allies
Beorn x 2 (Tactics)
Gandalf x 2 (Neutral)
Gondorian Spearman x 3 (Tactics)
Horseback Archer x 3 (Tactics)
Lorien Guide x 3 (Spirit)
Northern Tracker x 1 (Spirit)
Veteran Armorer x 2 (Tactics)
Wandering Took x 1 (Spirit)

Events
A Light in the Dark x 1 (Spirit)
A Test of Will x 1 (Spirit)
Blade Mastery x 3 (Tactics)
Feint x 3 (Tactics)
Hasty Stroke x 1 (Spirit)
Quick Strike x 2 (Tactics)
Rain of Arrows x 3 (Tactics)
Stand and Fight x 1 (Spirit)
Strength of Will x 1 (Spirit)
Swift Strike x 2 (Tactics)
The Galadhrim’s Greeting x 1 (Spirit)
Will of the West x 1 (Spirit)

Attachments
Blade of Gondor x 3 (Tactics)
Citadel Plate x 3 (Tactics)
Dwarven Axe x 3 (Tactics)
Horn of Gondor x 2 (Tactics)
Power in the Earth x 1 (Spirit)
The Favor of the Lady x 1 (Spirit)

(Spirit / Lore)

Breakdown: 34 Spirit, 14 Lore, 2 Neutral

Unexpected Courage on Beravor is probably the single best two card combo in the game. This deck gives you a great chance of pulling it off.

Heroes
Beravor (Lore)
Eleanor (Spirit)
Eowyn (Spirit)

Allies
Daughter of the Nimrodel x 3 (Lore)
Gandalf x 2 (Neutral)
Henamarth Riversong x 1 (Lore)
Lorien Guide x 3 (Spirit)
Northern Tracker x 3 (Spirit)
Wandering Took x 3 (Spirit)

Events
A Light in the Dark x 3 (Spirit)
A Test of Will x 2 (Spirit)
Beorn’s Hospitality x 1 (Lore)
Dwarven Tomb x 2 (Spirit)
Fortune or Fate x 2 (Spirit)
Gandalf’s Search x 2 (Lore)
Hasty Strike x 2 (Spirit)
Lore of Imladris x 3 (Lore)
Lorien’s Wealth x 2 (Lore)
Stand and Fight x 2 (Spirit)
Strength of Will x 3 (Spirit)
The Galadhrin’s Greeting x 3 (Spirit)

Attachments
Forest Snare x 2 (Lore)
Power in the Earth x 2 (Spirit)
The Favor of the Lady x 2 (Spirit)
Unexpected Courage x 2 (Spirit)

If you are looking to delve into the deckbuilding aspects of this LCG, I strongly suggest you purchase two core sets. One core set alone lacks enough duplicates of strong cards to form good decks.

Not quite sure if you’ll like Munchkin? Direct your friends to the Munchkin Rigged Demo, a short Flash demo that introduces you to Munchkin and teaches the basics of the game.

http://www.worldofmunchkin.com/game/demo.html

Logisitics is a pretty interesting card – it doubles the amount of action you can take in the settle phase.

The first thing you learn about Logistics is that if you’re paying a high cost for worlds, you can bankrupt yourself in short order. Just because you have the opportunity to settle mediocre worlds, does not mean you should do so. Always have a coherent plan. It’s the only cost-3 development in Gathering Storm I can think of that doesn’t have a cardflow bonus of some kind.

One of the most powerful abilities of Logistics is to go “goal hunting”. With your ability to put down more carp, you can aspire to simultaneously pursue Most Blue/Brown, Most Production, UpliftUpliftUplift, AlienAlienAlien, First 8, First Rainbow, First 4 Goods, Most Explore, Most Consume, Most Rebel Military Worlds, the list goes on.

But unless your draws are lucky, you’re going to need to keep a large hand size in order to get critical mass on so many potential targets. Thus, it’s important to get worlds for cheap. A small military – say Space Marines or Mercanary Fleet – often suffices for goal hunting. Replicant Robots is a nice “virtual military”, and when it’s paired with Contact Specialist, it’s particularly versatile.

Expanding your virtual hand size is also important. Getting the Settle phase bonus for yourself is not enough, since it only fires on the first of the two settles. Cards that draw on settle are very nice to have: Terraforming Robots, Terraforming Guild, Galactic Markets, and Imperium Fuel Depot all can lead to a self-sustainaing settle rampages. You may never need to call Trade again.

The decapitating roundhouse kick of Race for the Galaxy comes in two player advanced, when one player gets Improved Logistics, a decent hand size, a 6-dev that scores lots of points for worlds (Terraforming Guild, perhaps), a settle rebate power (Terraforming Guild, again perhaps), some settle discounts, the right cards, and calls Settle/Settle. Possibly two turns in a row to get a size-15+ tableau.

Sometimes you don’t have exactly the right cards, and you call Settle/Settle anyway, and hope. It’s a gamble, and if you fail, we call it “crapping out”. There is no dishonor in this. Getting the decapitating roundhouse kick set up takes the entire game, and it’s possible to get wrongfooted in the setup stages. Sometimes you’re badly behind, and need a high-variability hail-mary to get back in it.

Because the goal hunting and decapitating roundhouse kick abilities are so explosively powerful, your opponent is not going to call build phases for you if you’re looking like you’re mostly ready to go. This has two important implications:

1) You can actually play Improved Logistics to deter your opponents from calling Settle when you have nothing. Making a big show of this never hurts. There’s this thing where I mime placing Logistics like the card weights 10 pounds, then all the surrounding cards are bounced into the air by it’s impact on the table. That gets the message across, even in chaotic 6p games.

2) If you can surprise with Logistics, then you can draft others’ Settles for maximum effect. The extreme case is 2pa, where you put down Logistics and some other essential development just when they call Settle/Settle to lay down a bunch of slow-yield production infrastructure – say they’re placing Doomed World for Lost Species Ark World. If you end that turn with 8+ tableau, that move was almost a complete zero for them, and a huge point scorer / card cycler for you.

The big problem with Logisitcs is that the setup for the truly powerful moves takes multiple builds and good hand management. You’re probably going to have to get speculative at some point, and either assume you’ll draw some good builds, or assume your opponent will call build at a convenient time for you.

Of course, one freedom you have with Logisitics is to not build it. If you can’t get this crazy settle machine wired up and ready to go then don’t pay the cost for some machinery that doesn’t help you. Funding and building the beast takes maybe 5 turns, and that’s often too *ed long.

A good closer for your settle rampage is Pilgrimige World or Galactic Markets – better to turn all those goods into VPs. For a more sophisticated move, you can transition to a produce-consume strategy. What are they gonna do? Call settle on that? I think not. They can draft, or they can call Develop and maybe shoot themselves in the foot when you place Dropships and transition back to a settler strategy.

Improved Logistics is a flexible card, and one you should be loathe to discard because of it’s explosive surprise power.

Currently, the Police pawns can move up to 2 crossings. After all Police pawns have moved they choose which action to take. Often however a Police pawn is so far out of position due to whatever circumstance that they are effectively useless. Try this alternative: On a Police pawns’ movement they can choose to move 0-3 crossings. If they choose to move the full three (3) crossings they completely forgo any actions for this turn. This adds a layer of choice, strategy, tactics, and overall tension that we’ve found to be even more appealing.

I recommend new players that graduate up to the 2-player advanced game as soon as they get fairly familiar with the basics as the advanced game makes for much quicker development up front.