Tips & Strategies (6)
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City of Iron - Tips & Strategies

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Tips & Strategies (6)

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9
I play black
Guardian Angel
Platinum Supporter
Marquis / Marchioness
Account Deletion {Family Gamer}
Mar 13th, 2014| Strategy
92 of 93 gamers found this helpful
“Grab a Few Non-Producing Buildings Early”

There are many exciting paths to victory in City of Iron, and I love to watch how the game unfolds each time. But I always do my best to stick to a few early-game strategies that bear fruit as the game goes on.

You have the ability to place 5 buildings in your opening city, and while it’s great to land the extra coins per round granted by purchasing goods-producing buildings, I absolutely always do my best to purchase the warehouse (lets you purchase future buildings at -1 cost) and at least one card-drawing building before scoring the A round (if you’re not familiar with the game, there are 3 phases – A, B & C – and scoring only takes place at the conclusion of each phase).

This may make you a little bereft of coinage in the early stages, and even put you behind in victory points when the A scoring card comes out. But it can make you a force during the B and C rounds. The ability to keep your hand filled provides the biggest advantage, and the money you sacrifice early means less to you than your opponents as you don’t have to spend as much.

I rarely bid for first action until the C round. But I will absolutely bid whatever I think it will take to go first when the warehouse comes out early in the game.

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6
Miniature Painter
Novice Reviewer
Knight-errant
garbled {Avid Gamer}
Mar 18th, 2014| Strategy
63 of 64 gamers found this helpful
“Concentrate on unclaimed resources”

Early in the game, try to claim different lands via the explorer. This will allow you to build the more advanced stuff, that requires specialized land types. When deciding what type of resource to go after, look at the lands other players have, and concentrate on the ones you can easily get a majority in. Some of them, like the silk, are worth massive VP at the scoring rounds.

Also, don’t spend too much money/time fighting over turnips or shrika. These goods don’t give bonus VP for having a certain amount, so getting alot of them won’t help you as much as it might appear.

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4
Jungle Elves - Summoner Wars
I play blue
MallyLee {Casual Gamer}
Mar 18th, 2014| Tip
63 of 64 gamers found this helpful
“Keep the big picture in Mind”

I played this for the first time over the weekend and focused on getting different resources which worked out really well until I ran out of room on my land board. While I recommend getting many different resources for the VPs during scoring, keep in mind the need to expand. Also, my boyfriend had the cards that give you more citizen and military cards so I’d recommend trying to get those early on. While I would only have 1 citizen card in my hand, he would have about 5 and a mixture of citizen and military.

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7
Pet Lover
Treasure Chest
The Gold Heart
Novice Advisor
Bonnie {Avid Gamer}
Mar 23rd, 2014| Tip
63 of 64 gamers found this helpful
“About to Score, grab'em now!”

Planning ahead means possibly using an action or two storing cards to be built later, if they happen to be resource cards prepare to pay for and build them on a scoring round. When the score cards come out, that is the turn to build up your resources and thusly victory points. The rest of the turns you can concentrate on other buildings if you like, but really focus on the building on those turns.

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8
Canada
El Dorado
Professional Advisor
Senior
Lone Token {Avid Gamer}
Mar 12th, 2016| Rule
63 of 64 gamers found this helpful
“2 player biding”

To add a little more unknown for the bidding in a 2 players game we cover the first and the 2 last spot of the bidding track and use a D4 to simulate a third player bidding

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7
Zealot
IceDragon13 {Avid Gamer}
Apr 10th, 2014| Tip
63 of 66 gamers found this helpful
“Unique Cards and Your First Round of City of Iron”

The first time you play City of Iron, you play without the unique cards. If you’re someone who reads through instructions linearly, you might not realize that the unique cards are the Fixer, Strategist, Genius, and Gunslinger and that The City State of Arc doesn’t have a unique card and the Hogmen have two. (The City State of Arc has 2 non-card abilities, which is why it doesn’t have a unique Citizen/Military card) This is denoted at the end of the rulebook, but can easily be overlooked, and can lead first-timers to waste time thinking they’re missing cards (*cough cough* voice of experience).

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