Giants - Tips & Strategies

While Giants is listed as a 3-5 player game, the designer took time to put together rules for 2 players, which can be found in the .pdf below.

There are some changes to the number of pieces each of the two players start with compared to the main game (1 chief, 1 sorcerer, 2 workers, 3 tribe markers, 7 bases), but the biggest change is the existence of a neutral third tribe – the six workers from a different color are used (no chief or sorcerer).

The third tribe exists to help with movement of moais/headdresses (they don’t participate in the auction).

During Phase 3 – Placement of Workers – there is an additional action available to the players. You may play a tribe marker from your reserve to recruit or move a neutral worker. The worker must be either off the board (not used yet), or not currently controlled by your opponent (has no tribe marker next to it). You can choose which space to put the worker on and you mark it with your tribe marker. It will now score points for you if your opponent uses it during the transportation phase.

When removing workers from the board, the neutral workers stay out waiting to be claimed in a future turn (you take back your marker, losing ownership of that worker).

If on a future turn a neutral worker is on the board and is unclaimed, it’ll work for free (you can transport through it without giving points to either player).

Final scoring is the same as the regular game.

http://www.matagot.com/docs/2_players_rules.pdf

Giants is an enjoyable game with multiple paths to victory. Unfortunately, it was discovered that one path to victory essentially didn’t require a player to play the game.

It is possible for a player to spend the entire game accumulating Rongo tablets, bypassing the rest of the game (auctioning, moving, and placing moais), and gaining points for these tablets at the end of the game. Tablets can be gained by paying a tribe marker. It was conceivable to gain enough points to be competitive, or even win, by accumulating all of your tribe markers quickly, and using them to take Rongo tablets.

End game scoring previously gave 3 points for each completed (two-halves) Rongo tablet. This gave something to those that had accumulated but were unable to use their tablets (similar to many games where cash at the end of the game was given some value). It was never intended for the bulk of your score to come from these tablets. To keep players playing within the spirit of the game, the following is the official rule:

Rongo tablets have no value at the end of the game.

I find this to be an excellent change. Tablets normally only bring a small number of points at the end (if you’re playing within the spirit of the game), and it’s a very simple fix that doesn’t change the rest of the game while counteracting an unintended, and undesired, strategy.