Another strategy question

[FrankJones]

Greetings,

So, I just played my first rated game. The map was caves.

I badly botched my opening hand, throwing away two very strong animals (A rhino and an elephant) on a map where one of the main features is to save an animal card while getting income from it. Whoops. That's pretty bad.

I misread my conservation project and thought I could use it round 1, so I kept a useless card by mistake. Probably a dumb idea to do a release project round 1 anyway, since I would then have zero income. Or, minimal income, whatever the starting income is.

Anyhow, a weird sequence happened later.

I was planning to play my eagle and chain it into a 5-CP continent diversity project, swiping it, which would be a 4 CP swing, since my opponent was imminently claiming that same 5-CP spot.

Through random luck, the break put out the long-billed vulture. I wasn't planning on playing a second animal, because I didn't have one. But after building the aviary, I still had the money for both, so I did it. Huge play, went from 40 points to 73, gained 2 reputation, gained cable car from the display, and scavenged .... the Rhino I discarded from my opening hand.

This left me with a dollar, the Rhino, cable car, and an unimportant sponsor (side entrance).

WHOOPS. BAM, Japanese Macaque. Brutal.

I knew he had drawn it, but it was a long time ago and several opportunities to play it in a rough spot had already passed, so I figured maybe it had been discarded.

I lost the Rhino and Side entrance. Better than losing Cable car, but still brutal.

So, I'm assuming good players do not set themself up to be brutally pilfered like that. I did not need to play both animals to swipe the project at 5 CP. I should have just played the eagle and saved the money for the impending pilfer, right? A 20 MC swing (minus 10 and plus 10 for opponent) would still be rough at that point, the round had just started and break was at 0/9, but better than losing the two cards I had just drawn from my action. Playing the Vulture to save the Eagle for my final turn would not have worked; I needed the Americas icon from the eagle to swipe the project.

Then I'm wondering what my next action should have been.

I have 1 dollar, break is at 0, I need money so it's difficult for me to play a sponsor (My only card in hand is the cable car), and though I had a good lead, my opponent had cash, and now had my Rhino (and could fairly quickly chain the Rhino into the herbivores base project). My stored card is a useless Europe release project.

So, I'm wondering what my next few plays should have been. We were at 24 turns (somewhat efficient, I guess, except I had no obvious way to make any big scoring plays, so I'm unsure how many more turns would have been required.)

I had already supported all 3 base projects and none were above the board. I did not have association upgraded, so despite having 3 workers, there was no useful way that I could see to gain points from association actions.

Move 276 if anyone wants to help out a noob.

https://boardgamearena.com/archive/repl ... 1&goto=276

That link seems to not work, so,

https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=915731822

[yazavats]

Caves is a tricky map, perhaps the trickiest of all. Having projects is important, since there's little benefit from grabbing multiple partner zoos and unis. Rhino is good to keep and store for that reason, but its value depreciates when both species and habitats are already base projects. Still ok to keep since you can store it for later, you don't know what tags you might end up accumulating. Herbis usually ends up being an option, with the rhino being a tag itself and flocking being a thing. I wouldn't say discarding the elephant was a mistake without it being project relevant when there are other things to keep and store. It's a point bomb for later in the game, but you can't store everything first round. Keeping a speculative release project is good on any map if you don't have better cards, especially on caves with projects being extra important. So not a mistake to keep that and store for later. (E.g if you had kept it, it would've been good for releasing the eagle). Don't be afraid of early big releases either, especially if there's a big tempo reward on 5 CP. A round one big release puts you in a money deficit but you can alleviate that by upgrading sponsors and breaking (people used to take 5 income first bonus with it but I feel like that fell out of the meta a bit).

Forgetting or overlooking the Japanese macaque happens even to the experienced. It's a slap on the forehead moment when it happens. Yeah, when you've got an appeal and CP lead, and the oppo has a three size touching water (and an asia tag or a way to ignore it), you ought to be on the lookout for an imminent double pilfer, especially if the macaque was public info. Considering the quality of your hand, I think it would've been better to suffer the economic damage there. But you were so far ahead that even with the gifted rhino they couldn't have caught up.

You had snapping and two size as ongoing rewards when they didn't and they had no empty enclosures besides aquarium, and you were 40ish points ahead. As for a way to bring it in, I guess I would've broken 7, build a five size over card draw and x token, touching both rock and water + pavilion so we get closer to map fill (shame we can't set it up this move with build 7). And then break with cards if they don't do cards themselves.

[FrankJones]

Thanks for the analysis. I was intending something similar to that. Break for as much cash as possible, save pace for a large enclosure, and see what I can snap or draw after the break. Cable car to possibly get close to 100 before my final move, or ideally maybe a better scoring sponsor since I had already played most of the rock icons I would be playing by that point. And cable car might have crowded my board too much for a large enclosure, I forget.

Ending that round fast and not getting distracted by my extra workers. One good animal and a project would get me to nearly 100. Unfortunate I did not have association upgraded, but I did end up making use of the build upgrade (A very rare upgrade for me). It was nice to have for a change rather than having to work around it and not being able to build the aviary. Given what you said about the base conservation projects on the board, I think I would have liked to store the elephant.

I'll keep in mind what you said about an early release project (especially if it's a 5-CP). I just need to pay attention and check that I can actually use it. I can't imagine keeping the Americas release with no Americas animal in my hand or in the display made much sense.

[azcats2002]

Yeah, i agree with the other guy. It used to be popular to select the 5 coin ….but now i see most people use the 2 space and then upgrade sponsor and try to break for money.

[FrankJones]

Quite interesting how things shift over time. I rarely take the 5-coin; my first two are almost always the 2-size and the snap, and by the time I do my 3rd project the 5-coin is usually not as good as one of the Yellow ones.

[azcats2002]

Yeah…last year you would always see people take the worker first.

Unless they released the animal, then the 5 coin.

Now i never see either taken first by non-beginners.

I wonder if other games have such a shift.