Tips & Strategies (6)

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Tips & Strategies (6)

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9
I play black
Guardian Angel
Platinum Supporter
Marquis / Marchioness
69 of 69 gamers found this helpful
“Be Sure to Grab the First Available Basket”

If you’re not fortunate enough to receive a basket in your initial 3 cards, you need to make it a priority to grab the first available basket. The basket’s only purpose is to allow you to hold 2 additional cards in your hand – it’s certainly not the most powerful card in the game. However, if your opponent gets the only basket early in the game, it will be pretty easy for them to keep you from getting one later in the game.

The extra hand limit they’ll enjoy will allow them to stock up on foraging sticks… which they can use to buy any baskets that come out in the future before you can get to it. The game is incredibly lopsided if one player can hold 10 to 12 cards all game while the other is stuck at 6.

In fact, trying to keep baskets from my opponent is the first strategy I try to execute each game. I’ve always won by 20+ points when I can control the baskets. If your opponent either starts with a basket or gets one on their first few turns, don’t worry about this tactic and focus on the more straight-forward path of cooking the best mushrooms.

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7
Knight-errant
Cooperative Game Explorer
Amateur Advisor
Gamer - Level 6
53 of 56 gamers found this helpful
“Pans are key”

Depening on what the initial card layout shows, pans may initially be plentiful or scarce. Since you start out with one pan for free, you can score points at least once, but you ARE going to need more. You should try to acquire pans whenever you can so that you can continue to score, and try to avoid situations where you are fighting to get pans with your opponent. After all, if your opponent loses the chance to score points, you essentially stop them from going for the win.

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9
USA
Platinum Supporter
Petroglyph
BoardGaming.com Beta 1.0 Tester
54 of 60 gamers found this helpful
“Oops! You've got too many cards!”

One of the challenging parts of this game is the hand limit. It’s easy to lose track, and there are no rules in the book for how to deal with it, as it can provide a significant unfair advantage to someone with too many. We’ve resolved this by having the person with too many cards hold out their hand and allow the opposing player take out a card at random for the discard pile. This really keeps you on your toes.

House Rule ~ If you’ve got too many cards in your hand… you lose that many cards at random. (“…and don’t let it happen again!” says Granny.)

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7
Book Lover
Knight-errant
Tinkerer
Novice Reviewer
53 of 61 gamers found this helpful
“For the love of little brown mushrooms, pile shuffle”

This may seem like an obvious tip, but I have found pile shuffling to be the best way to break up clumps of similar cards in Morels (or any set collection game, for that matter). I pile shuffle at the end of play while I sort out the night cards, and then a couple of times before playing the next game (along with any other shuffling method I may choose to employ). Doing this ensures a more even spread of card types throughout the deck, which makes for more enjoyable and strategic play.

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53 of 62 gamers found this helpful
“Get rid of the conveyor belt”

The best way to deal with the fiddliness of this game is to set up a circle instead of a conveyor belt. Have 2 figures “walk” around in the circle of cards. Improves speed of game greatly. See BGG for details.

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9
Mask of Agamemnon
Paladin
The Gold Heart
Cooperative Game Explorer
52 of 63 gamers found this helpful
“Solo Play Rules”

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