Forbidden Desert - Tips & Strategies

Keep the party close together except when recovering a piece of the ship or uncovering a lone tile. This way you can share water at an oasis and jet pack together.

Every player needs to watch their water level closely. Make sure new players to the game understand that alerting other players to their water level is important.

Trying to time when to discover the wells and refill your water has been key to survival in our games. First the binoculars are helpful equipment that let’s you hopefully discover the mirage and which 2 sources will have water. We try to time our meetup to refill our water when someone has 2 or 1 water left, watch out for Sun Beats Down though to spoil your plan.

The Navigator role reads “Move another player up to 3 unblocked tiles per action”

When we first played with the Navigator we misread this as “move another player up to 3 unblocked tiles per turn” – this says I can use 3 of 4 actions to move one player 3 tiles… A somewhat useless role that we’d often groan about when drawn.

What the card actually says is awesome – One action = another player moving 3 tiles. Once we understood this and drew the Navigator we were able to use him to shuttle people around the board with ease. So the Navigator no longer moves much but frees up everyone else to remove sand or excavate with their 4 actions.

Also when combined with the Climber role this 2 person team can do big things in your game. See my tip on Climber to understand how awesome that role is.

Once you’ve excavated both the tunnel tiles do your best to keep them clear! Not only are they protection from the “Sun beats down” but they allow you to move from one to the other which is extremely helpful when the sand begins to pile up.

If you draw the time +2 card use it asap. It only becomes harder and now it costs less excavating.

Use the jet cards as late as possible. We once had to use 2 jet packs in 1 turn to save someone who was completely imprisoned in sand (needless to say we lost), but the jetpacks are for that last spurt to the ship in the end. Also remember that if you give the climber the jet pack, he can teleport 2 other people. If another role uses the jetpack, he can transport 1 other with him, if that him is the climber the climber always has his ability “on”, so again 3 people move together.

When we used jetpacks early, we always lost.

The Meteorologist is potentially extremely powerful, life- and game-saving.

However, his/her strength shines most on bigger games (and/or higher difficulty). If you’re playing just 2 or 3 players, you can get away w/ not using the Meteorologist. But at 4 or 5, too many Storm cards are drawn to not take the Meteorologist, imo.