Over the holidays I had the opportunity to play Puerto Rico for the first time. I loved the gameplay, and the economic elements. After that, I looked for it in digital version and found San Juan. A card game based on the Puerto Rico board game. The elements are very similar and fun to play.

The game is complex, and takes a lot of planning and some luck to win, but it is a lot of fun. The digital version takes between 20-30 minutes to complete.

Here is the strategy.

1. Build something good on your first or second turn: (don’t waste the first build)
2. Build either a Library, or a Smithy as soon as possible
3. Take the Councilor role in early turns to get a Guild Hall
4. After building the Library and/or Smithy, take the build action often, and if not, take the Prospector
5. Always build something when possible in later turns, focusing on Production Buildings
6. Play the Guild Hall in one of the 8-10 spots
7. End the game quickly after that

 

Build something good on your first turn:

In the first round, everyone starts out with some cards, so you may be tempted to build something when the build role is drawn. If you don’t have something good, just wait until the next round. At that point, the other players won’t be able to build anything, and it gives you a few more cards to get something good. I like to play the Library, Smithy, a Coffee Roaster, or a Silver Smelter.

Build the Library and/or Smithy

You want to give yourself an advantage that will last throughout the game. This strategy focusses on winning big with the Guild Hall, so the inexpensive Smithy will help you get production cards out, or the more expensive Library will always give you an advantage on your turn. If you can get both of them out early, it is even better.

Get and keep the Guild Hall

The Guild Hall is the linchpin to this strategy. You can win without it, but it will be very difficult. This card is very powerful, so the other players will also be looking to grab it. Give yourself an advantage by taking the Councilor card. This will get you through a lot of cards very quickly to get what you want, especially if you already played the library.

Once you have the Guild Hall, don’t play it yet. You need to get cards out that will help you throughout the game, not just at the end.

I like to hold onto the Guild Hall until your 8^th slot, or as soon after that as you can play it.

Build Often

When you have the chance, take the build role. If you have the Library and/or Smithy out, you can very cheaply play production cards. This will further increase your chance for cards, and give you tons of points. If you can’t Build, take the Prospector role. With the Library, the prospector gives you two free cards and doesn’t help anyone else out.

In addition to taking the build card, it is helpful to have some cheap cards in your hand to build anytime someone takes the build card. This is a tricky part of the game to balance, but if you don’t build every time you have an option to build, you can end up with tons of open spaces at the end of the game, I like the indigo cards because they are free to build with the Smithy, and are worth 3 points with the Guild hall.

End Game

If you are building as much as possible, you will end the game at 12 buildings and will have filled the most of your spaces with production cards, thus gaining tons of points

This strategy requires a few key cards, and you won’t always get them. You can adapt the strategy as needed, but if you don’t get the Guild Hall, you may be better off building victory point cards towards the end.

Below is a picture of an almost perfect game that I had. This won’t always happen, but I have been able to get pretty close a few times. Just play it the best you can with what you have.

 

Good luck! And let me know how it goes.

Here is some more background on San Juan from BoardGameGeek:

”

San Juan is a card game based on Puerto Rico. The deck of 110 cards consists of production buildings (indigo, sugar, tobacco, coffee, and silver) and “violet” buildings that grant special powers or extra victory points. Cards from the hand can be either built or used as money to build something else; cards from the deck are used to represent goods produced by the production buildings, in which case they are left face-down. A seven-card hand limit is enforced once per round.

In each round (or governorship), each player in turn selects from one of the available roles, triggering an event that usually affects all players, such as producing goods or constructing buildings. The person who picks the role gets a privilege, such as producing more goods or building more cheaply.

Though similar in concept to Puerto Rico, the game has many different mechanisms. In particular, the game includes no colonists and no shipping of goods; goods production and trading are normally limited to one card per phase, and trades cannot be blocked. Victory points are gained exclusively by building, and the game ends as soon as one player has put up twelve buildings.”

 

Here is the strategy.

 

This is my all-time favorite two-player game. The complexities of strategy along with the simplicity of play make it accessible but extremely satisfying.

My brother and I had been playing this game one night many years ago. It was the day before he left on a two-year mission for our church. He ended up sneaking in a win at the last part of the game. At that point, it was pretty late, so we went to bed. I kept playing the game over and over in my mind, and an hour or two later, I went to his room and tried to get him to play one more time. He refused flat out!

This gave me the opportunity to think about how to beat him for two years. When he did finally return, we had our fated rematch and I came out victorious! My family still reminds me about this every time the game comes out.

The game itself has the fellowship of the ring fighting to get Frodo into Mordor while facing hordes of overpowered servants of the dark lord Sauron. You move pieces around like Stratego on a grid and face off in battles. It is quick to learn, and each game can be completed in 15 minutes.

Strategy

The strategy for LOTR: Confrontation is very complex. There isn’t one great thing to do because once your opponent knows your strategy, it is completely obsolete. Refer to my post on what to do when people know your strategy for tips on other games, but in this game, you can’t have one set strategy. What you can do is know the strengths and weaknesses of each character and take advantage of them as much as possible.

I will lay out the strategies for each character on each side, and then talk about general strategies.

The Fellowship

Unit	Good For/Against	Bad Against
Gandolf	Sarumon Cave Troll Flying Nazgul Black Rider	Orcs (Watch out for Orcs when trying to bring out Gandolf the White)
Boromir	5 point characters	Warg
Legolas	Flying Nazgul	All others
Gimli	Orcs	All others
Aragorn	Sarumon	Level 5 Units
Merry	Witch-King	All others
Pippin	Scouting only	Warg
Sam	Staying with Frodo	With Frodo, no one
Frodo	No One! Run away!	Everyone!

Your goal early on should be to kill as many of Sauron’s minions as possible while preparing a path for Frodo to sneak through.

Gandolf is your main killer. He has an advantage over almost everyone, but don’t get tricked into sacrificing him to the Orcs. Use Pippin to test for weaknesses and attack characters with less than 5 with Gandolf. Eventually, you will end up getting killed by a 5 character, but then prepare to come back as Gandolf the white.

Sauron’s Minions

Unit	Good For/Against	Bad Against
Balrog	Protecting the tunnel All Characters (but Boromir)	Noble Sacrifice Boromir
Shelob	All Characters (but Boromir)	Warg
Witch-King	All Characters (but Boromir and Merry)	All others
Flying Nazgul	Scouting Frodo	Legolas Gandolf Aragorn
Black Rider	Scouting Frodo	Gandolf Aragorn
Saruman	Rushing past Gandolf and killing all weak characters	Gandolf Aragorn
Orcs	Gandolf	Gimli
Warg	Pippin Frodo	All others
Cave Troll	One free kill	Gandolf

Sauron has a distinct military advantage, but the fellowship can whittle away at your army until you can’t stop Frodo. If you can sneak past Gandolf, Saruman can do some excellent damage to the Fellowship. Use your 5 characters and sacrifice yourself to Gandolf. Guard the Gandolf the White space to ensure he doesn’t return.

You want to kill enough characters that you can force Frodo to move towards you. Whenever you attack Frodo, you open yourself up to him sneaking through, so if you can trap his movements and require him to attack you, you can usually win.

 

This is a great game. I suggest you pick up a copy and play often.

 

 

I got a text yesterday to see if I wanted to play a game last night. I was free at 9 PM, and I figured that I would be done by 10:30 or so. This was a gross underestimate. X-wing, it turns out, involves choosing ships, upgrades, and characters before the game even starts. This being my first time, and following my own Strategy For your Strategy blog, I had to read through a huge stack of cards to come up with a strategy as well as learn the rules.

We finally started the game around 10, and it lasted until a little after midnight. It may sound like I didn’t enjoy it, but the funny thing is, I loved all of it! A lot of the fun was figuring out what combination of cards will work together, and then try to implement the strategy while keeping track of what everyone else is trying to do.

In X-wing, you play the side of the Empire, the Rebellion, or the Scum (bounty hunters, etc). You choose ships and go through phases of movement and attacking. The ships move in the way regular ships should move, and if you don’t plan your flight path, you could find yourself crashing into an asteroid.

It has been awhile that I have had a hard time sleeping because my brain was trying to figure out the strategy for a game, but last night, I couldn’t stop. I love this game.

My only issue is the length of play. Now that I know the rules, I think it could be completed in an hour and a half with 20 minutes of prep, but this isn’t going to work for some people.

You can even modify the game to play with kids by removing the upgrade cards. It is fun to play and will teach them spatial reasoning skills and some planning and strategy. Additionally, the sweet space ships make the game awesome to play.

 

Splendor was the 2014 Golden Geek game of the year. It is very polished, easy to learn, and fun to play.

The strategy is relatively simple, but the execution is difficult. Summary below.

1. Reserve the cards you want early on
2. Take 3 chips in early turns
3. Reserve cards that cost all of the same color
4. Choose two colors that you will own, and buy them up
5. Choose two nobles that have overlapping requirements and target them early in the game
6. Calculate what it will take to win, and win quickly.

First Turn Reservation

In the first turn, look at the playing field and decide what your longer term strategy is. You don’t want to waste chips on expensive cards early on, but you still want to target cards that fit into your final strategy.

Reserve cards in your first or second turn to give yourself the best chance early on.

The idea here is to optimize each of your turns. Some cards are just easier to get, and you want to remove those from other player’s grasps, and place it into yours.

Maximize Chip Draws

You often want to draw 3 chips. It is ok if it takes an extra turn to get something you need if you can get more chips to help you later. The caveat to this is when you are targeting high-value cards. You may want to take two chips to get you closer to your goal.

Early in the game, everything moves a little slowly. Your whole goal is to prepare yourself for the later parts of the game. Gather as many cards as you can by using them to buy other cards. Points still matter, but getting cheaper cards earlier will help you down the line.

The cards that can be purchased with all the same color are a great bet in getting to 15 points. I like to take the 5 point 7/3 cost cards in the color I’m targeting. Additionally, I may even choose to target those colors on purpose. Reserve these cards early, and almost always draw a chip in those colors. Eventually, you’ll buy them and have a significant advantage.

Optimize Purchases

Initially, look at the lay of the land. Are there a lot of cards that need the green gems? Go for green! Collect cards that will give you the most buying power. The playing field will guide you in the choices.

It is very valuable to own 4 or 5 of the same color. This allows you to snatch up cards that are out of reach for the other players. (One defense against this strategy is to just reserve the cards that you know they are looking at, even if you don’t plan to purchase them. Reserving cards you don’t need works better in a two player game. With more players, you won’t have turns to spare.)

Also be aware of scarce resources. If a lot of cards need green, but there aren’t any green out there, snatch any up quickly that come into play.

Target Nobles

An easy way to get the points you need to win is to capture a few nobles. Once again, look at what is available on the field, and look for synergies among nobles. Does one noble need 4 whites and 4 reds and another noble need 3 whites, 3 reds, and 3 browns? Go for the whites and reds, but if it is difficult to get them because of the playing field, consider going for a different noble.

Advanced players walk a line between getting high point cards and capturing nobles. It is ideal if the high cards you are capturing line up with your noble acquisition strategy, but you just have to do whatever it takes to get to 15 points. I have often had to change my strategy late in the game because a color I want is inaccessible. That is OK.

All along the way, keep track of your points and keep an eye on the field. Figure out what cards on the field it will take to win the game. The game moves slowly at first, but then the end will sneak up on you quickly, so make sure you are the one determining the end game.

 

That’s it! I love Splendor because of the ease of play, but there is an art in knowing when to make your move.

What strategies have worked well for you?