by stevelabny
Fried Egg wrote:
stevelabny wrote:
Yes it takes an extra action and maybe flexibility alone isn't worth the extra action, but the second benefit is that you are finishing dark green areas and working towards the bonus tiles. A lot of castle areas are singles, so filling them early can be worth 6, 8 or even 10 points.
Does that mean you would say that Castles are weaker on the starter board where they are all clumped together into one zone (besides the starting place)? Chances are that you won't be able to complete until 3rd phase and possibly later if other players are competing for them.
Yes and no. They probably are less valuable on board 1 compared to other boards...BUT.. compared to the other spots on board 1, they're still really good. If you start in the center of board one, there's only 2 single tile areas but they're far enough apart that its hard to finish both early. Starting in the clump of 3 instead gives you worse start position at the possible benefit of an extra 10 points for closing the single tile castle. The first board is almost all 3-tile areas with two 5-tile areas. There is simply NOT a lot of area-closing points on the first board at all. I think the best bet on board 1 is to fill in as many spots as possible and score big on knowledge tiles. This still makes the flexibility and "extra action" of the castles pretty strong.