Favorite Opening?

[fajizkanil]

5 come to mind for starting a game sensibly:

- 666: The classic. High enough to win the round, but low enough that it doesn't limit your strategies moving forward
- 555: The conservative. You have 4 higher cards, and 4 rounds left, makes sense.
- 777: The aggressive. If you get undercut, someone has used their 7 and that's fine. But often it's just 9 points.
- 600: The defensive. For when your opponents look predictable. Bit wasteful against 777.
- 7xx: The counterattack. Can do x to be any small number you think opponents won't do. Beats out other aggressive openings with decent amount of risk and cost.

Curious if other people have go to openings, or if people just wing it?

[ollyfish2002]

5 come to mind for starting a game sensibly:

- 666: The classic. High enough to win the round, but low enough that it doesn't limit your strategies moving forward
- 555: The conservative. You have 4 higher cards, and 4 rounds left, makes sense.
- 777: The aggressive. If you get undercut, someone has used their 7 and that's fine. But often it's just 9 points.
- 600: The defensive. For when your opponents look predictable. Bit wasteful against 777.
- 7xx: The counterattack. Can do x to be any small number you think opponents won't do. Beats out other aggressive openings with decent amount of risk and cost.

Curious if other people have go to openings, or if people just wing it?

What about 456 ?

[fajizkanil]

Any time someone opens with a number that's 3 different digits, I think I generally have the advantage in the long run. You mention 4-5-6 which obviously trounces a lot of the above mentioned openings, but then what is your followup? You force yourself into really defensive numbers (337?) or really aggressive numbers (888?) and that 6 points you got on turn 1 is hard to materialize into a real lead.

This may well not be the case on the 2nd set tho. Things like 456, 406, 357, etc, all can be really cool if you have a nice lead going into the second set. If you are at a point in the game where if you score your 24 points from your 7, 8, and 9 and make your opponent(s) not have any fun that's more than enough, then go do that.

Against brand new players I do like 777, because two things happen. Either I get 7/9 points for the cost of 1 digit, or they block 7 by spending 3 digits and I can play around their available numbers (which is important because you can't read someone whose playing randomly).

[EdElricson]

I'm voting for 888.
Get the bonus +2: check
Don't get countered: check
Get the 8 points from the card: check


You say that 888 is really aggressive, but I disagree. The aggressive option is to delay the high cards until later rounds with a high risk/high reward instead of playing them early and safely.