Optimal Strategy

[Salty Paper]

Picture this. You are winning 21-20. However, your opponent has the angelfish, you have the mermaid tornado, and the top card is the 10 treasure chest. You and I know that you are in fact, cooked.

I am trying to improve at the game, and one thing I am noticing is, is pepper control is everything at a high level. I have been thinking about what to do in a situation when the very first pepper card is the angelfish or pink dolphins. I feel like the optimal strategy is to sandbag heavy and let your opponent just win the first round. What are your thoughts? If this happens to you should I just collect colors and try to get like five or six points in the first round? But the problem is is if your opponent realizes what you are doing they could easily rack up a bunch of points and run away with the game.

[Bread4Ducks]

This is why I don't like Extra Pepper, deliberately staying behind to keep an OP event is too powerful and there isn't much you can do to counter it at 2 player other than also try to lose. I wish there was a house rule that said you have to be 10+ points behind the leader to keep an event.

[naomilodder]

Yeah my strategy is to lose the first round if the event card is angelfish or pink dolphins. If I feel my opponent has the same strategy, and it's inevitable I get more points, I try to call stop when I feel the difference isn't too big. In that way they can't get to 40 the next round, but they will surpass me in points, and they will lose this event card quickly.

[Yoghii]

I think extra pepper has added a lot of complexity to the game and it is nearly impossible to create a general optimal strategy. As you mentioned it makes the game more than just trying to outscore your opponent by as much as possible in a certain round, you have to take in consideration what the current event card does, which future event cards could come and how the current score impacts that. Not scoring the maximum is now a bigger part of the game, but I wouldn't necessarily call it tanking. You're still trying to score as many points as possible, just in future rounds instead of this one. The goal is to score more points than your opponent after someone reaches 40 points at the end of a round, it's not just scoring points in a round.

Extra pepper opens up more ways of getting there, do you try to rush to 40 first and hope you outscore your opponent like usual or do you always make sure to stay behind your opponent so you get the event cards? Both are likely bad strategies because the event cards don't always have the same effect on the game.

The event cards also make you play different by default. There's the major things like collector cards going up in value when mermaids don't score or fish being much better when they give you 2 cards, but also smaller more nuanced interactions. For example picking up cards from the discard piles becomes worse when it's the hermit crab event because you want to try to find crabs, and when you get the crabs they let you pick up the card you want anyway. There are tons of interactions like that that you can use to your advantage.

I also think you should play a bit different within rounds. Because you don't know which event card will come next you want to be further ahead than you otherwise would be so you have a decent chance at winning even when the event cards go against you. This often makes it worth it to go for bigger combos or take bigger risks with when to end the round.

In general I'm not sure if it really adds more luck, just a different type of luck. It does add a lot more opportunities to make better plays than your opponent and show your understanding of the game. Maybe extra pepper could be improved in some way. Perhaps only having event cards in the game for 1 round after they come out could make it more balanced, or knowing which event card will be next or even in which order all the cards will come out. This would let you plan a bit more, but would likely create a lot more situations where both players want to be behind in score.

[geodorksupreme]

I've had to change my way of play because of extra pepper. Depending on the card available, angelfish or dolphins with about 15-35 points and your opponent ahead of you in just a few points, you win, game over.

The only strategy by your opponent is to end the round as fast as possible. Because by the time they get 7 points, you'll most likely be at 12-15 points. It's even worse if they're stuck with the card that requires 10 points or requires a last chance.

So if you can maneuver into being a couple of points behind including losing a hand on purpose to get an angelfish, it's pretty much a guaranteed win.

[kostinen]

The game has definitely changed a lot with the new expansion.

Sometimes it seems better not to maximize certain moves, or to deliberately hold back.

Despite my strong skills in the “classic” game (and the Extra Salt expansion), I still haven’t found the right balance. I’ve gone from about a 75% win rate to something around 70%.

While I think I know how to optimize every event (whether the event is on my side or my opponent’s), I’m completely lost about the right tempo (whether to lose on purpose or not, wait or not, stop or last chance). For example, I often feel like the first round is a total headache because you have no idea what might happen next. I rarely know what to do. It’s both very annoying and frustrating not to be able to fully free myself to maximize my points.

However, I enjoy reading the strategic advice in this discussion. I haven’t given up hope of mastering this version as well as the old one. When I look at the stats of the top players, it seems that they’ve improved with this expansion, so it's doable !