Tile whispering

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Decar
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Tile whispering

Post by Decar »

Very early on in a recent game on BoardGameArena I encountered the following defensive move:

Image

It's the Red player's turn. They have the following tile to play:
FFRR -

I think a novice player would probably work on their cloister, or perhaps claim one of those roads to bag a quick 4 points.

Unbeknownst to the Red player, the Green player has following tile:
FRFR -
This could easily restrict the Red city's options if it is played in the grey square parallel to the city.

It's a good attack too, because If the Red player did does play it, with a road edge pointing towards the city, there would only be 2 tiles left that see that city complete:
CRRF - (one of them has already been played).

From Green's perspective, there are a number of tiles that could launch this attack:
8 x 6 x 3 x
3 x 2 x 2 x
That's a total of 24 tiles that can launch an attack!

This is the move that Green decides to play the following scuppering Red's plans:

Image

At the time I thought the Red player was almost able to see the tile I had in my hand!

Because Red played this move, to mount the same attack Green would need one of the following tiles:
  • 6 x FFRR
  • 2 x FFFR
Those are much better odds!

I found it interesting that Red played one space to the right too.
This leaves 2 open edges for a tile to be placed instead of just 1 free edge, and a risk of a trap.

Comparing the 2 options, these are the tiles can be be played now:
If the tile was
played to left:

Sometimes it can seem like your opponent is whispering to their tiles, always drawing the one they need or placing it to ruin your plans, but when you look at the numbers, sometimes it's just about keeping your options open.


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wallaceprime
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Joined: Thu Apr 15, 2021 7:58 pm
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Re: Tile whispering

Post by wallaceprime »

Interesting. Before seeing this defence I would probably have added to the top left road and claimed it to require just one more bend to get 4 points and a meeple back. However, I now see the potential4 points from the road as possibly less appealing than protecting an 8+ point city and getting a meeple back to fight again. I guess I'd need to try it a few times before I'm completely convinced of its efficacy.
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