Tips & Strategies (53)

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Tips & Strategies (53)

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5
Dragon Clan - Legend of the Five Rings
Legend of the Five Rings Fan
Phoenix Clan - Legend of the Five Rings
34 of 35 gamers found this helpful
“Draw Pattern for Quidity”

Much like in card games you can count what the percentage chance of a certain dice being in your head is. A lot of the times you’ll be drafting dice into your ‘deck’ and you’ll be aiming for the stronger dice to pull into that draw, but there is one thing that sometimes gets forgotten by a lot of players and that’s the ability to draw quiddity to be able to keep rolling your ‘deck’ forwards. As such always think (especially when you don’t have enough quidity to buy the ‘strong’ dice) about the weak cards(spells especially) that have a hight quidity ratio on them as filler for your deck. A spell that has an ok effect + quidity and high quid values on 50% of it is a great buy for example if this is your goal.

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9
I play black
Guardian Angel
Platinum Supporter
Marquis / Marchioness
96 of 100 gamers found this helpful
“Don't Worry About the Wilds' Creature Count”

The one rule of Quarriors that never caught on with me is ending the game when 4 creature cards in the Wilds are empty. While most of the rules of the game flow seamlessly with the theme, this one just doesn’t make sense to me… why would summoners quit battling when their summons are healthy, just because they’ve summoned most of what’s available?

I have completely ignored this rule since my 2nd or 3rd game. It helps streamline the game, because it’s one less thing I’ll have to be mindful of. And at the same time, it will almost never change the outcome; I’ve noticed only once or twice where 3 cards have gone empty, let alone 4.

I do understand that this rule adds a potentially neat strategy for players with “weak” dice bags… if you know your opponents have Questing Wizards and Quake Dragons, and you’re sitting on a bunch of Goblins and Ghostly Spirits but up by 4 points, it behooves you to end the game now before they overrun you, which they certainly will. The problem is that, even in a 4 player game, it’s highly unlikely that the supply of dice representing 4 creatures will ever be low enough to need just 2 or 3 more purchases to win.

My dice bags usually end up with between 9 and 11 dice in them… at most, 5 of them are creatures purchased from the Wilds, with a few portals, a spell and some Quiddity. Unless somebody in your game is trying to build a 20-die bag from the onset, there’s likely not going to be enough creatures gone to let you execute on a “trigger the end early while I’m up by a few points with my low level creatures” strategy.

Finally, the most frequent complaint I hear about Quarriors is that it ends just as you’re really excited about the dice in your bag. Eliminating this rule makes an early end less likely, and may give you a few extra turns with that built-up bag. The game isn’t going to take longer than a half-hour anyway… no need to rush things!

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7
Paladin
Herald
Advanced Reviewer
BoardGaming.com Bronze Supporter
40 of 42 gamers found this helpful
“Creatures, portals or spells - what to buy?”

Each turn you must divide the total quiddity you rolled between buying new dice and summoning creatures. Here is a small set of advices what dice to buy to gain advantage over other players:

* Buy creatures first. You can win without extra creatures but, well, not likely.

* If you roll a lot of quiddity and no good creatures (or just a cheap one), buy the heaviest critter you can afford. Even if you are allowed to buy two dice that turn, one strong one is usually better. You can also live one turn without summoning an assistant you could summon, if that one extra quiddity gives you a nice biggy early.

* If you have heavy creatures in your collection invest in portals. Even one heavy creature acquired early makes portals a good investment!

* Remember that spells cost you nothing to cast and they persist from one turn to another. Don’t overload your collection with creatures, after getting a few, start acquiring spells. But if the spells selected for that game look weak to you, keep buying portals as long as they are available.

* If the game becomes stale (because creatures repetitively kill each other), look whether there is a spell that can break the tie. Spells like Victory Incantation, Victory Spell or Life Cantrip may be valuable.

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4
I'm a Player!
Advocate
31 of 33 gamers found this helpful
“Remember to Cull”

One thing that seems counter intuitive at first to some players is the idea of Culling dice, the act of removing dice from your bag forever. You may Cull 1 dice for every 1 creature you have scored with, but its sometimes hard to remember that you will want to Cull.

Why Cull? Simple – you are getting rid of the fat. Think of your bag as a human body. If you don’t Cull, its a lot like you’re sitting on the couch, watching TV and eating pizza. The bag will get fatter and fatter and it becomes much more difficult to draw the dice you want to actually draw (spells, creatures and so forth). If you Cull, however, its a lot like you training your body for an Olympic event – making it leaner and tougher. Good things to Cull would be the Quiddity dice you start with and the brown dice (forget their name at the moment), but also even Corrupted Quiddity when you have the chance.

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6
Tinkerer
Strategist
Amateur Advisor
30 of 32 gamers found this helpful
“More cards for More players”

Our house rule is that we always play to 20 points, but we add an extra creature and spell card into play for each extra player beyond 2.

So 2 players is the standard 7 creatures, 3 spells.
3 players gets 8 creatures, 4 spells.
and 4 players gets 9 creatures, 5 spells.

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7
Master Grader
Novice Reviewer
Amateur Advisor
I'm Completely Obsessed
29 of 31 gamers found this helpful
“Save Them Spells”

Don’t forget about the spells in this game. Some can be saved until later when you can use them at an opportune time. This not only gives you extra options but also gets a dice out of your back, giving you more opportunities to roll the creatures that give you glory points so you can win.

Save the spells in your ready area until they will best help you.

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9
Miniature Painter
Rosetta Stone
Advanced Reviewer
BoardGaming.com Beta 1.0 Tester
29 of 31 gamers found this helpful
“Buy Defenders of the Pale when you have the chance”

I do not recommend this strategy simply to win the game at all costs, mostly because I do not like strategies that ignore everything else on the board in favor of one thing, but the simple fact of the matter is that if one person picks up 4 or 5 of the Defenders of the Pale when they are in the game, it will be nearly impossible to stop them from winning as those buggers are really hard kill.

I in fact encourage my opponents to purchase them when given the opportunity. The faster they are bought up, the sooner I can focus on purchasing spells and other creatures without worrying about one of my opponents running the table with that one creature. I really don’t want to win this game because I bought everything of one creature either.

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7
Paladin
Herald
Advanced Reviewer
BoardGaming.com Bronze Supporter
38 of 41 gamers found this helpful
“Cull wisely!”

As you acquire new, stronger dice to your collection, you should get rid of some of the weaker dice. This process is called “Culling” in the game rules.

Basically, you should cull as often as you can. Remember that culling happen after scoring creatures, and you can cull a creature that just scored. Remember also that assistants are creatures, so they allow you to cull after they score. The only rare exception when you should not cull is obvious: if you have no weak dice in your used area, don’t cull strong ones just to do it.

Don’t make a common mistake of culling basic quiddity dice every time you are to get rid of a die. You may well “quiddity screw” yourself, having no energy to summon rolled creatures.

It turns out to be a good strategy to cull alternately assistant dice and basic quiddity ones. Assistants’ ability to re-roll may look tempting, but it triggers rarely and thinning out your collection works better in most cases.

For longer 3-4 player games (especially if you set the glory points target higher than standard) you may even cull weaker creatures you acquired at the beginning of the game to make your stronger guys appear more frequently.

And the bottom line: don’t even think of culling portals. Every portal makes your collection effectively thinner by 1/3 dice, so culling it in fact counterproductive.

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5
Critic - Level 2
Gamer - Level 5
34 of 37 gamers found this helpful
“Cull....and cull often”

GET RID OF YOUR DICE! If you delay too long at the beginning and don’t cull your dice, you’ll start rolling only small creatures and/or not having the quiddity to bring out your big guns and you will die a slooooooow and painful death. Some of my best games have been ones where I replenish my bag every other turn….though once I did get a bit excessive with the culling and only had 7 dice in my bag…that didn’t end as well.

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9
USA
I play blue
Paladin
Master Grader
31 of 34 gamers found this helpful
“More Dice Equals More Wins”

Buying the highest price dice you can afford is rarely the wrong strategy in Quarriors, however you do want to watch out for some exceptions. Any dice that allows you to draw extra dice from the bag or sends dice immediately to your Ready area should be targeted for early purchases. Hand extension is crucial for deck construction games and it is no different for this great dice construction game. The more dice you are rolling or have access to each turn the more times you will win. Relatedly, that is why the Portal is always a good purchase option as are some of the spells.

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7
Master Grader
Novice Reviewer
Amateur Advisor
I'm Completely Obsessed
28 of 31 gamers found this helpful
“Don't cover your cards with dice”

A lot of people put the dice directly on top of the creature and spell cards in the wild. I did it as well at first. But there is a much better way. Line up the dice down along the left side beside the cards. This keeps them neatly organized and doesn’t hide the cards allowing everyone to read them easily.

I saw someone do this in a review video and it disappointed me that I didn’t realize this as obvious from the beginning.

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5
Viscount / Viscountess
Novice Reviewer
Junior
BoardGaming.com Beta 1.0 Tester
30 of 34 gamers found this helpful
“It's over? But I didn't get to do anything!”

One of the problems we’ve run across with this game is that if one person is on a roll (pun intended 😉 ), then the game can be over rather quickly and you didn’t even get to use half your dice. We’ve tried a couple of different things to help with this.

Extending the Game: This one’s easy. Instead of winning when a certain number of points is reached, make it only when 4 (or more) of the decks are gone. This can give people a chance to catch up from behind, or finally get to roll that dragon dice.

Shopping Spree!: We house ruled that if you roll only Quiddity and no creatures, you get to buy two dice. A lot more fun, but not suggested for 4 players, the dice dissapear far too quickly.

An Extra Spell: We tried adding a 4th spell to the set up and really like that extra option. Mostly we just like playing with the dice 🙂

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7
Paladin
Herald
Advanced Reviewer
BoardGaming.com Bronze Supporter
30 of 34 gamers found this helpful
“Quarriors for five”

If you want to play Quarriors for five players you need the Rise of the Demons expansion. To setup the Wilds you put there four basic cards, four spell cards (instead of three) and seven creature cards as normal. Among the spells you should find the one with the lowest cost. If two ore more are tied, choose one of them randomly.

Each player gets:
– 6 Basic Quiddity dice (put two remaining ones on their card)
– 3 Assistant dice (put three remaining ones on their card)
– 2 Corrupted Quiddity dice (there are no remaining ones, their card starts empty)
– 1 dice of the selected lowest cost spell (no dice remaining, their card starts empty)

The game progresses as it does for 4 players. In order to win a player needs to get 11 (not 12) glory points. The game ends also if five (not four) creature cards are empty at any instant.

Edit: Gosh, it should be a “Rule”, not a “Strategy” but it cannot be changed now…

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7
I play black
Paladin
Knight-errant
BoardGaming.com Gold Supporter
27 of 31 gamers found this helpful
“Some helpful tips:”

Portals are your Friends: As important as it is to have portals, it’s just as important, or moreso, to not let anyone else get too many of them. They are helpful to have a couple of, but if a player gets more than a couple, they can build dangerous chains, where each die is used multiple times, and players can get their whole bag out in some turns.

Remember: This is a fast game, and will be over soon. Don’t get too upset if it goes badly for you due to bad rolls. The next play will probably go better (Like Dominion, but moreso).

Player Area help: Design a mat for players to use as a game aid, or download one from BGG (such as: quarriors player mat)

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5
Miniature Painter
Baron / Baroness
Eminent Domain Fan
Master Grader
32 of 37 gamers found this helpful
“Let me see that!”

I have found that using a “lazy Susan” in the middle of the table to hold all of the ‘wilds’ cards and dice is a great help. Everyone can just turn it when it is their turn to buy, rather than having to read upside down. Just make sure that you don’t turn it too fast!

These can be found online, Wal-Mart, and even made pretty simply.

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7
Paladin
Herald
Advanced Reviewer
BoardGaming.com Bronze Supporter
26 of 30 gamers found this helpful
“Pick appropriate creatures”

When you are to capture a new die your decission is sometimes obvious: if you have only 2Q there’s only one critter to buy: the Scavenging Goblin; if you have 8-9Q you should most probably get a dragon if it is available.

In the mid-range you should take into account several factors like:

– How many players are there in the game? (For example Mighty Primordial Ooze works best in a 4-player game while Strong Witching Hag in a 2-player one).

– What creature and spell cards are selected for the current game? (Some of them form nice combos.)

– What dice have been taken so far by you and your opponents? (Look for synergies and counterstrategies.)

By the way there are two creatures that are always a good pick. There may be better picks in a given moment but those two are never bad:

* Ghostly Spirit. (It costs only 3Q and it allows you to cull regardless whether it scores or it’s going to be destroyed.)

* Mighty Defender of the Pale. (Rather expensive – 6Q – but he scores for 3, has a decent defense value and makes all opponents’ critters more expensive.)

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5
The Big Cheese 2012
Went to Gen Con 2012
21 of 24 gamers found this helpful
“Buy Portals Early and Cull Assistants and Quidity”

I use this stragegy about half the time that I am playing and it seems to work out very well. I don’t worry about getting creatures into my ready area early in the game as much as I do about my structuring my dice pool.

Grab up as many of the portals as you can as well as any spells or creatures that let you draw extra dice from your bag. When you do start scoring (and culling) get rid of one assistant first and then a Quidity next. I alternate back and forth until all of my assistants are gone. Pick up a few defenders of the pale along the way and you can cycle through some pretty mean mid-game pulls while keeping your opponents creature light. The portals will help you draw into your creatures faster and having less assistants and quidity will increase your chances of drawing something useful every turn.

Most opponents will go for early scoring, but without the portals they can’t get those creatures out every other turn. Of course, you need to watch what creature and spell dice are available because there are a few that will shut down this strategy.

Don’t worry about running out of dice that you can get quidity from. The game will be long over before you can cull that many dice.

Good Gaming!

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8
Gamer - Level 8
Expert Recruiter
Count / Countess
BoardGaming.com Beta 1.0 Tester
30 of 35 gamers found this helpful
“Play longer!”

Quarriors is a nice little game and I like the play of it a lot. My biggest issue was that it always seemed over before you could actually do anything. Granted, speedy play is nice, but when end conditions make it seem that you weren’t able to execute anything neat, then it needs to be reviewed. What my wife and I have done is that we have started always playing to 20 points, no matter how many players are in the game. A four players game should end at 12 points, but I’ve seen several tiimes players not scoring at all. It really seems like a more satisfying experience to play a little bit longer.

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7
Paladin
Herald
Advanced Reviewer
BoardGaming.com Bronze Supporter
30 of 35 gamers found this helpful
“Official variants”

Here are two game variants proposed by the game developers along with my comments:

1) During Phase 4 of your turn, you may capture up to two dice (instead of only one).

UT’s comment: I don’t recommend it. It makes a few “you may get another die this turn” worthless. Moreover when there is a good and cheap creature to buy a possibility of buying two at once unbalances the game especially for 3-4 players.

2) When you score a die, you can only cull the die that scored and you can only score the glory for that die if you cull it.

UT’s comment: It makes the gameplay really different. I’m not sure – better or worse, but different. Worth trying.

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7
USA
Book Lover
Novice Reviewer
Cooperative Game Explorer
40 of 47 gamers found this helpful
“Our favorite way to play...”

My wife and I play this game a lot. Our favorite way to play is with a slight variation on the advanced culling rule. When a creature lives to the beginning of your turn you can cull THAT creature for glory or you can cull a die from your used pool. (We also use the two purchase rule.)

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