Seasons - Tips & Strategies

At the start of the game, you and your opponents will select nine cards, three for each year that you play, and add those cards to your hand once you reach the appropriate year. Depending on the cards that you draft, you can try to form an end strategy or set things up to help make things easier down the line. Ideally, when I draft cards, I tend to look for cards that have a powerful effect for the end of the game, and starter cards to ramp up summoning ability or energy reserves. Cards that can boost summoning ability should go in year one, as well as cards that have a prolonged effect over time. Cards that have progressive effects (like the card that gives you prestige/crystal points based off of how many magical items you have in play) should be placed in year 3 where they can do the most good. Cards that can help energy reserves do the best in year 1 or 2, respectively.

It might sound obvious but be prepared to what cards your opponents may play.

Was there a Sylla going around? Have a low value card (Olof’s Statue etc) to play out first so you won’t have to sacrifice that Hand of Fortune to it.

Titus around? Don’t overextend on transmuting and gain too many crystals. Even better is having an Eolis Cube to play when you reach 20 to force the sacrifice of titus.

Several small details like this could be enough to pull out a win in Seasons.

Text
“Move the season token forward or back 1 to 3 spaces.”

Strategy
This card is great for the last year. Not only can you end the game quickly, but you ruin the chances for other players to transmute. Especially, if they were planning on transmuting on the season before you changed it.

The best time to use this card is during the Summer to Fall because by the end of round you are going to have to move the token anyway. Which will completely skip the Fall season. Make sure to move it 3 spaces, you don’t want to give any chance for your opponents to retaliate.

Pros
+ Cheap summoning cost and easy 8 prestige points
+ Force opponents to transmute out of season
+ If your last, you can prevent opponents from summoning cards, forcing them to hold more cards by the end of the game.
+ Great for stalling to help you catch up on prestige points

Cons
– Moving 1 or 2 spaces doesn’t benefit as much as moving 3 spaces.

Combo
Amsug Longneck allows all players to return one magic item back into their hand. Summoning Amsug Longneck right after summoning Temporal Boots will give you another chance of using the boots to skip possibly two seasons!

-Enjoy Yourselves!

Text
In order for your opponents to summon a power card, they must give you 1 crystal first.

Strategy
This card is a great to use in the first year. If possible, the first turn! If Arcano Leech is summoned in the first turn your opponents will be in a rut and not only do they have to worry about expanding their summoning gauge they have to worry about gaining crystals so they can summon. This will greatly slow down their gameplay since everyone will start out with zero crystals. They can’t pay, they can’t summon.

“I have to earn crystals before summoning?!”

To summon Arcano in the first turn, don’t look for the stars when dice drafting. Look for the crystals! There are about a 1/3 chance that a di will have crystals. If crystals don’t appear during a dice draft, you can always transmute. It is easy to summon in a 2 player game since it’s only 2 crystals. In a 3 player game, it is doable but it may take a little longer with it costing 5 crystals. In a 4 player game, it’s rough. You are going to have to start transmuting early to get him out in the first year.

Pros
+ Slow opponent’s gameplay
+ No upkeep or management needed
+ Earn free crystals
+ No energy needed to summon

Cons
– Lose effectiveness in late gameplay
– Lose effectiveness against opponents who earn great amount of crystals per turn
– Harder to summon in larger groups

Combos
Cards that take crystals from opponents go great with Arcano Leech because it will put them back in the same “I have to earn crystals before summoning?!” rut. Those cards will also help control late gameplay. Some card examples include Figrim the Avaricious, Titus Deepgaze, Kairn the Destroyer, Theiving Fairies, and Sid Nightshade. I personally, prefer Figrim (steal crystal from opponents in change of season), Kairn (each opponents lose 4 crystals), and Thieving Fairies (steal crystal for each opponent activation) to the others because their effect is continuous.

-Enjoy Yourselves!

There is a Cursed Tome power card that is available to use in the game. The Cursed Tome card applies a negative 10 prestige point value towards the end of the game, which might seem to be undesirable. However, the tradeoff for casting this power card (which costs 1 water energy to do) is that you gain ten crystals, get two energies of your choice, and increase your summoning level by one.

If you can get the Cursed Tome into your set of power cards, you can get a huge jump on your opponent if you put the card in the first year hand. Since you only need one water to cast the tome, and water is the most plentiful in winter (the starting season), be on the lookout for a die that has both water and a star to increase the summoning gauge if you can manage it. You can cast the Cursed Tome immediately in that case, increase your summoning gauge, and use the two energy to likely case another power card, or use the crystals that you gained to cast a power card requiring crystal sacrifice to cast. This boost can make the difference early on, where stars for summoning are at a premium.

Here’s some basic card combos & strategies for Seasons. There’s other combos too, but these are some of the more obvious ones. Helpful for beginners!

Beggar’s Horn + Glutton Cauldron
Beggar’s Horn works well with other cards too such as Kairn the Destroyer, but I think the best combo is with Glutton Cauldron. Play it early.

Temporal Boots + Amsug Longneck
Using your boots twice by Amsug in the last year is very powerful – especially if your opponent(s) doesn’t know you have Boots/Amsug.

Olaf’s Blessed Statue + Amsug Longneck
In addition to Boots, this is also a good combo with Amsug if you can manage to pay the Statue’s cost twice.

Dragon Skull + Cursed Treatise of Arus
Dragon Skull – or “the cannon” as I like to call it – is made for destroying cards which have a negative (or a zero) crystal value on them. Works well with Soul of Onys too.

Potion of Dreams + Runic Cube of Eolis
The best combo with Potion of Dreams is with the Cube, imho.

Ragfield’s Helm + Card draw (e.g. Amulet of Fire, Divine Chalice)
Naturally you want to make sure that the Helm’s ability resolves at the end, so draw plenty of cards!

Sealed Chest of Urm + Necrotic Kriss
The Chest works well alone, if you can dodge familiars during the the game, but sometimes you’re stuck with familiars. Kriss makes sure that you end up with magic items only, and is a great card by itself.

Ever since I discovered this game at Boardgamearena this has probably been my most played game and based on my experiences there are a few cards I really want to see in my opening 9. Quite obvious card drawing and energy producing cards are the cards I’m most looking for at the start.

Necrotic Kriss

Every experienced Seasons player will be happy to see this one and personally there is no card I’d rather have. Hands down the best card in the game but you will probably need to play a few games to see the power of Kriss. Having the ability to turn every familiar into 4 energy is incredible strong, and I will always pick this first, even without any familiars in my opening hand. It really is that strong.

Crystal Orb

Card drawing is always nice, so how about repeated card drawing? Can’ get any better than that although the energy requirement is quite stiff and you are limited to 15 cards. Still, getting to spin out a couple of lanterns or cubes will often be plenty enough to win and if you can match this with Kriss that will almost always result in a game win.

Thieving Fairies

Fairies is one of the most hated cards in the game and will shut down several cards by itself as any activation will result in a 3 point swing if you’re unfortunate to have crystals yourself. Still, if I could pick between Orb & Kriss vs Fairies I’d go with the first. Two Fairies on the other hand…

Hand of Fortune

While not technically a energy producer Hand allows you to cheat one energy of the cost of cards which makes it surprisingly a lot easier to play cards. The cards I most often realize how good it is are those that cost 2 energies as you’re shaving 50% of the cost.

Wondrous Chest

This is a bit of sleeper and like Kriss takes a few games to see its power, but Chest will often net you close to 50 points in a game when played correctly. Energy producing cards or Hand will also be great in combination. Hand will of course let you play Chalice etc without sacrificing 3 points that turn.

Temporal Boots

Looks quite innocent, but… I’d probably pick every card on this list ahead of boots and maybe even a couple of others like Vase and Chalice in some circumstances but the power in Boots is your opponent not knowing you have it. With the boots you can position yourself to end the game a turn ahead of them scoring lots of points. The combination with Amsug is obvious and twice at BGA I’ve managed to get both Boots and both Amsugs ending the game from the second year.

The most annoying part of Seasons is the tiny scoreboard with the cubes that barely fit over a number, not to mention when two or more have an equal total of points.

I recommend using poker chips (with values) instead to keep track of points scored during the game. This also makes it easier to keep track of all the point moving a lot of familiars are responsible for.

Glass beads or something similar will also do the job for you.

In a typical game of Seasons, players will be working to increase their crystal reserves and energy reserves while playing power cards at the first opportunity. Normally this is a simple affair, but the Familiar power cards offer opportunities to mess with your opponents by stealing crystals from their stockpile or by copying or altering energy reserves of opponents. While these cards can be useful to the one who plays the familiar, it introduces an adversarial aspect to a game that (to me) feels much more comfortable without it. In addition, there is a lot of what I like to call “bookkeeping” – a lot of the familiar cards will require you and your opponents to manage crystal counts almost every turn of play. This can slow the game down somewhat, and sometimes leaves players trying to remember if a particular effect was used in a given round.

I find that if you take the familiars out of the power cards, turns will flow a little faster and offer the game a little more of a relaxed mentality. However, if you use this mode, be sure to also take out the Necrotic Kris and Idol of the Familiar power cards as well, as these rely on familiars for their abilities to be relevant.

Remove this card from the game.