1. Regarding Dominion, going from building complex engines to Big Money with some variations was an eye opener for me. Focusing on something reliable which can then be improved upon, instead of something grand which might work at some future point, since I can't predict when the game ends. I still remember some games were I managed to draw almost my entire deck each round, only to draw 7 coppers with 1 buy anyway :D
2. I'm reminded of a piece of advice when when teaching others how to play a boardgame: that is start with the win condition before the rules, instead of the other way around. That way, you give everyone an opportunity to thing about how each rule actually helps them win.
Dominion is my favorite game because building your engine is fun even when you're losing (possibly from building your engine for too long). IIRC, the Prosperity expansion lengthens gameplay so that you can still get a satisfying amount of engine building before attempting to fight bias and start your endgame earlier.
Prosperity did it the most, but approximately *every* expansion made engine-building (even sloppy engine-building)more viable of a strategy, and Big Money less so.
A design mistake imo, I think there was a lot of strategic elegance in original Dominion between reading the board correctly and gauging engine vs Big Money boards.
I would not say this is a mistake. As a game designer, it is your job to incentivize players to do fun things. This is because players will to some extent do whatever the game endourages them to do, but they won't neccesarrily enjoy it.
Thinking about big money vs engines is interesting and elegant but its not fun. Big money is in fact rather boring to execute for most types of players.
What's fun is building engines, you can tell because players do it even when it is not the optimal strategy.
The desginers of dominion correctly realized that engine building is more fun and shifted the incentives to match. This is good game design.
Yeah that's fair! As a writer, I like games where the central tensions of a game/most interesting strategic elements are a) hard to understand at first but b) once you understand it, it's possible to convey an elegant summary of it in one sentence to a paragraph to newbies.
In comparison, I like games less where learning how to win relies on a ton of minutiae and game-specific details. Teaching those games feels less pleasant.
But this is probably a very idiosyncratic preference. Most of my friends who like Dominion prefer the more engine-y expansions too!
Yes, I will tell on myself here and say that my favorite games are the ones where winning is all about remembering the exact details and probability distributions of a million different options and mechanics so that you can assemble some crazy-looking, rickety-but-just-possible line of play that a novice wouldn't have even guessed was possible.
Rapidly memorizing minutia and juggling lots of simultaneous details are the things where I most outperform the median human, and the modern Eurogame rewards in ways nothing else really does.
"Beelining towards the win condition" was my initial strategy with dominion, and then my hands were all victory cards and I couldn't do anything every turn and I hated it.
Tried it again two years later and now I love it and have played it most weeks for the last seven years.
I think that “find and play to the central narrative” may be better than this advice for novice gamers (as in novices to games in general, not just the particular game they are playing), for many games with an engine building stage. As you pointed out, it’s hard to outcompete your opponents with that strategy, but it also makes it less likely to fall into the failure mode of “completely and utterly fail to put together the core idea of the game” and never building an engine at all. Experienced gamers have the fundamentals necessary to still do all the obvious stuff while they beeline.
A well-designed game naturally facilitates playing well to a degree. If it’s a game about building a mining empire, trying to live that experience should naturally get you expanding your claims, investing in better drills, and selling your gems. Zero alpha, but you’re doing the thing.
I think your advice dominates for novice gamers still in most games, and even this exception disappears with the more involved alternative: “See the win condition, think about how you get there… As a hint, how do you think the designer wanted you to get there? Does that seem to work, given time? Consider incorporating that, while mostly beelining for points.”
Pedantically, I would argue that Blood on the Clocktower is an example of duel elimination, just with asymmetric criteria for what counts as elimination (good has to kill one specific evil player, while evil has to kill most of the good players). Also "clocktower" is one word.
Twilight Struggle is an interesting example in that you can win via any of victory conditions 1, 2, or 3, and pivot your strategy to whichever victory condition seems most realistic as the game progresses. I can't immediately think of any other games like this.
John Company is an interesting exception-that-proves-the-rule to the beginners' strategy of VP maxing, in that most sources of VPs can be taxed in each subsequent round (and you lose the VPs if you don't have the money to pay the tax), so it's best to save money for a big VP purchase in the endgame if you can time it right.
This article explains exactly why I lost the last game of Splendor to someone who had never played before. I had the more efficient engine and the most cards, and even the most noble bonuses, while the winner just had the sequence of highest scoring cards she needed to win.
This is an excellent essay! And very true in my observations from card games to competitive pokemon to chess.
I will add that win conditions can often be more dynamic and complicated in that you need to think about which conditions will lead you to achieve the stated winning goals. They are also always the foundation of an ideal reasoning process.
1. What do you think the best 7 Wonders strategies are? Buying blue cards?
2. Do you think increasing the average value of cards in your Dominion deck is a good interpretation of the central theme of the game? This would explain the importance of cards like the Chapel
I haven't played enough 7 Wonders to know the actual "best" strategies but yeah I think if you take advice from this post literally you should be biased to buying blue cards.
2. Yeah something like that. Or more like the central narrative is about building cool/powerful engines. But Big Money tends to win against complex engines, especially for beginners, especially in the base game (the expansions tend to make engines more powerful)
I appreciate your point about winning not always being the goal. Both Monopoly and Ticket to Ride have fairly well known strategies that usually win, especially against people who haven’t seen them before, but are Not Fun.
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Ming. It’s a card game based on Mah Jong that’s not really very well designed, but it’s kind of a family tradition. It’s a dual mandate game and to make it more fun we usually play with a strong convention not to try to end the round fast.
My trouble is that I can identify the win condition, but I am too thick to work out how to achieve it in most games, or other players get there faster than me. The number of times I've just started building up points when the game ends is too damn high
I'm not sure you're correct about chess. If you're not playing high-ranked tournaments there's a lot to be said for the Capablanca approach of just not making mistakes and waiting for your opponent to make one.
For context, the paragraph on chess goes this way:
“In a two-player perfect information duel elimination game like chess, you should pay approximately equal attention to beelining towards victory (checkmating your opponent) and playing to not lose (avoid being checkmated). In those games specifically, my impression is that most people systematically neglect thinking from their opponent’s perspective, and play too much of what Sarah Paine https://www.gapingvoid.com/are-you-playing-half-court-tennis/ “half-court tennis.”https://substack.com/home/post/p-177862974#footnote-6-177862974“
Some thoughts
1. Regarding Dominion, going from building complex engines to Big Money with some variations was an eye opener for me. Focusing on something reliable which can then be improved upon, instead of something grand which might work at some future point, since I can't predict when the game ends. I still remember some games were I managed to draw almost my entire deck each round, only to draw 7 coppers with 1 buy anyway :D
2. I'm reminded of a piece of advice when when teaching others how to play a boardgame: that is start with the win condition before the rules, instead of the other way around. That way, you give everyone an opportunity to thing about how each rule actually helps them win.
Good post overall
Dominion is my favorite game because building your engine is fun even when you're losing (possibly from building your engine for too long). IIRC, the Prosperity expansion lengthens gameplay so that you can still get a satisfying amount of engine building before attempting to fight bias and start your endgame earlier.
Prosperity did it the most, but approximately *every* expansion made engine-building (even sloppy engine-building)more viable of a strategy, and Big Money less so.
A design mistake imo, I think there was a lot of strategic elegance in original Dominion between reading the board correctly and gauging engine vs Big Money boards.
I would not say this is a mistake. As a game designer, it is your job to incentivize players to do fun things. This is because players will to some extent do whatever the game endourages them to do, but they won't neccesarrily enjoy it.
Thinking about big money vs engines is interesting and elegant but its not fun. Big money is in fact rather boring to execute for most types of players.
What's fun is building engines, you can tell because players do it even when it is not the optimal strategy.
The desginers of dominion correctly realized that engine building is more fun and shifted the incentives to match. This is good game design.
Yeah that's fair! As a writer, I like games where the central tensions of a game/most interesting strategic elements are a) hard to understand at first but b) once you understand it, it's possible to convey an elegant summary of it in one sentence to a paragraph to newbies.
In comparison, I like games less where learning how to win relies on a ton of minutiae and game-specific details. Teaching those games feels less pleasant.
But this is probably a very idiosyncratic preference. Most of my friends who like Dominion prefer the more engine-y expansions too!
Yes, I will tell on myself here and say that my favorite games are the ones where winning is all about remembering the exact details and probability distributions of a million different options and mechanics so that you can assemble some crazy-looking, rickety-but-just-possible line of play that a novice wouldn't have even guessed was possible.
Rapidly memorizing minutia and juggling lots of simultaneous details are the things where I most outperform the median human, and the modern Eurogame rewards in ways nothing else really does.
"Beelining towards the win condition" was my initial strategy with dominion, and then my hands were all victory cards and I couldn't do anything every turn and I hated it.
Tried it again two years later and now I love it and have played it most weeks for the last seven years.
I think that “find and play to the central narrative” may be better than this advice for novice gamers (as in novices to games in general, not just the particular game they are playing), for many games with an engine building stage. As you pointed out, it’s hard to outcompete your opponents with that strategy, but it also makes it less likely to fall into the failure mode of “completely and utterly fail to put together the core idea of the game” and never building an engine at all. Experienced gamers have the fundamentals necessary to still do all the obvious stuff while they beeline.
A well-designed game naturally facilitates playing well to a degree. If it’s a game about building a mining empire, trying to live that experience should naturally get you expanding your claims, investing in better drills, and selling your gems. Zero alpha, but you’re doing the thing.
I think your advice dominates for novice gamers still in most games, and even this exception disappears with the more involved alternative: “See the win condition, think about how you get there… As a hint, how do you think the designer wanted you to get there? Does that seem to work, given time? Consider incorporating that, while mostly beelining for points.”
Just beat my family at splendor and ticket to ride using this advice 🙏 merry christmas
Congrats! I'm glad it was helpful. Merry Christmas to you as well!
this is actually my dream essay i can’t believe it
If you ever use this advice in real games, I'd love to learn how it went! :D
i have a friendsgiving coming up where we will definitely be playing board games, so i will report back 🫡
Reminds me of Big Money in Dominion. Boring, but frustratingly hard to beat.
Yep! I really like that strategic dynamic to Dominion myself, but I know many other people dislike it.
Great post. I am going to try this logic in Azul and will get back to you in results
Pedantically, I would argue that Blood on the Clocktower is an example of duel elimination, just with asymmetric criteria for what counts as elimination (good has to kill one specific evil player, while evil has to kill most of the good players). Also "clocktower" is one word.
Twilight Struggle is an interesting example in that you can win via any of victory conditions 1, 2, or 3, and pivot your strategy to whichever victory condition seems most realistic as the game progresses. I can't immediately think of any other games like this.
John Company is an interesting exception-that-proves-the-rule to the beginners' strategy of VP maxing, in that most sources of VPs can be taxed in each subsequent round (and you lose the VPs if you don't have the money to pay the tax), so it's best to save money for a big VP purchase in the endgame if you can time it right.
Thanks! Fixed the "Clocktower" spelling.
I haven't heard of John Company before, would be keen to try it out!
This article explains exactly why I lost the last game of Splendor to someone who had never played before. I had the more efficient engine and the most cards, and even the most noble bonuses, while the winner just had the sequence of highest scoring cards she needed to win.
LOL, love the endorsement!
This is an excellent essay! And very true in my observations from card games to competitive pokemon to chess.
I will add that win conditions can often be more dynamic and complicated in that you need to think about which conditions will lead you to achieve the stated winning goals. They are also always the foundation of an ideal reasoning process.
1. What do you think the best 7 Wonders strategies are? Buying blue cards?
2. Do you think increasing the average value of cards in your Dominion deck is a good interpretation of the central theme of the game? This would explain the importance of cards like the Chapel
I haven't played enough 7 Wonders to know the actual "best" strategies but yeah I think if you take advice from this post literally you should be biased to buying blue cards.
2. Yeah something like that. Or more like the central narrative is about building cool/powerful engines. But Big Money tends to win against complex engines, especially for beginners, especially in the base game (the expansions tend to make engines more powerful)
I appreciate your point about winning not always being the goal. Both Monopoly and Ticket to Ride have fairly well known strategies that usually win, especially against people who haven’t seen them before, but are Not Fun.
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Ming. It’s a card game based on Mah Jong that’s not really very well designed, but it’s kind of a family tradition. It’s a dual mandate game and to make it more fun we usually play with a strong convention not to try to end the round fast.
My trouble is that I can identify the win condition, but I am too thick to work out how to achieve it in most games, or other players get there faster than me. The number of times I've just started building up points when the game ends is too damn high
For players in your shoes, I recommend the "beelining" strategy where you just go for victory points as soon as possible.
https://inchpin.substack.com/i/177862974/beelining-towards-the-win-condition
It's almost certainly not the *best* strategy, but it's "good enough" for most games.
The real winning is having fun! 😁
I'm not sure you're correct about chess. If you're not playing high-ranked tournaments there's a lot to be said for the Capablanca approach of just not making mistakes and waiting for your opponent to make one.
I’m curious why you think this contradicts my advice?
For context, the paragraph on chess goes this way:
“In a two-player perfect information duel elimination game like chess, you should pay approximately equal attention to beelining towards victory (checkmating your opponent) and playing to not lose (avoid being checkmated). In those games specifically, my impression is that most people systematically neglect thinking from their opponent’s perspective, and play too much of what Sarah Paine https://www.gapingvoid.com/are-you-playing-half-court-tennis/ “half-court tennis.”https://substack.com/home/post/p-177862974#footnote-6-177862974“