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Dead Men Tell No Tales - Tips & Strategies

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Tips & Strategies (6)

Lone Token {Avid Gamer}

Jun 7th, 2015| Tip

11 of 11 gamers found this helpful

“Exploding Barrels”

The game asks to place the die on the barrel in order to remember that it exploded.

but during the game, when we reduce or increase the fire level we manage to move the dice and we loose track on which barrels have exploded.

Instead, when the barrel exploses we put a token on it.

Would have been nice if the game had included some barrels tokens for that purpose

Moshibashu {Casual Gamer}

Jul 31st, 2016| Strategy

“Jade: The Terminator of Deckhands”

We have found that Jade is almost essential to the game because she is so good at defeating deckhands with her ability to kill two deckhands with one action. We have played where Jades only job is to deal with deckhands so that everyone else can work on dealing with fires, battling skeletons, and collecting treasure. Just walk into the middle of a group guns blazing and you will return to a manageable number. Combine her ability with the dagger and she can take out even more in one turn!

Moshibashu {Casual Gamer}

Aug 5th, 2016| Strategy

“A Benefit of Swapping/Trading Items”

Fighting skeleton crews to get treasure can be difficult. We found that it’s almost necessary to spend an entire turn building up your battle strength before you can try to battle successfully. We started adapting the strategy of starting a battle using the pistol, that way if you lose you don’t lose all of your battle strength or fatigue. Then trading or swapping the pistol for the sword and trying the battle again in the same turn. Hopefully you’ll get a good dice roll by that time!

burgerchief {Casual Gamer}

Aug 6th, 2016| Rule

“To help make the game easier/harder”

The first few times we played we randomly rolled a lot of high numbers for the fires on the starting tiles. It made us lose the game quickly. Conversely, we’ve had games with mostly low numbers when we wanted more of a challenge. So we used this house rule:

Want a harder game? Instead of randomly rolling the dice for the starting fire on the tiles, just set them at challenging number like a 4 and up. And in such a way to max fatigue early on. Want an easier game? Just set the starting fire dice to lower numbers to give you more time to get used to the game and arrange in a way to limit fatigue.

Moshibashu {Casual Gamer}

Jul 28th, 2016| Rule

“Even in a Lose, Don't Be Afraid to Keep Going!”

There are many different ways to lose a game of Dead Men Tell No Tales. I love the house rule of, “If you lose, but people want to continue playing, the answer is always YES, LET’S KEEP GOING!!” This is definitely one of those games where that rule can be applied. For example, one time, after a long game, we lost because the explosion timer reached the end, but we were all still alive and slowly crawling to the finish with our treasure in hand. So we decided to keep going and this lead to an exciting finish as we no longer troubled ourselves with fighting fires and instead ran off the boat with our treasure as quickly as possible while room after room exploded around us!

Moshibashu {Casual Gamer}

Aug 2nd, 2016| Strategy

“Exploding Rooms aren't Always Bad”

If you are having trouble keeping the number of Deckhands in order and are able to let a couple rooms explode without losing the game or closing off necessary doorways, allow rooms with trapdoors to explode. This will lower the number of Deckhands that spawn because there will be fewer trapdoors on the board.

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Dead Men Tell No Tales - Tips & Strategies

Tips & Strategies (6)

Add your own Tip, Strategy, or House Rule

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