Reply: The Castles of Burgundy:: Strategy:: Re: Starting player too strong?

by carnalito

Thunkd wrote:

Pick up a boat. Wait until the last turn of the round before you play it. You'll be start player in the next round and get first pick of all the juicy stuff that just came out. It's hard for her to stop this. If she plays one boat, you'll still be able to play your boat on the last round and end up on top of her. In order for her to avoid it, she'll have to play two boats.

In the next round you can fight over boats. There are only so many that come out in a round. If you grab at least one, then she is in a tough spot. Does she take the lead early, in which case you can wait until the last turn and get choice pick in the next round... or does she leave you as start player the entire round?

If you can grab all the boats in a round, you're golden. You completely control start player. You can probably play enough to make it difficult for her to grab it back next round.

Ignoring the boats altogether seems like a foolhardy plan.

Instead of saying "Start player is too strong" it might be more appropriate to say "Misplaying boats is not strong".

davypi wrote:

2) If its really that important to you to retake start player, again it seems really easy to take advantage of your play style. Since neither of you are even picking up boats, on the fifth turn of a round, use your two dice to pick up and play a boat. This makes you start player. On the first turn of the following round, again pick up and play a boat. This puts you two steps ahead on the turn order track and other player doesn't have an option to acquire two boats to catch up.

Reading this makes me think we're playing the game wrong.
We were under the impressions that playing a boat makes you go away from being thestarting player, not the other way around?

What you are saying is this; playing boats makes you closer to being starting player not further from?