experts and masters tell me about the games you mastered

[Andrei3009]

OK, I will say a few words, although it's not that clear what OP is looking for.

In Century: Spice Road, I am a master and Arena champion of all 14 seasons so far, with 10000+ games played on this site (and several thousand on other sites and many hundreds OTB). The game itself is an abstract optimization game; it's an engine builder, with an initial draft phase (when you build your engine) and then a main phase where you have to run your engine (so it's also a racing game). The main phase is less interactive (although there is still some interaction), but the draft is heavy with interaction and long-term consequences to each decision. Most players learn to play the main phase first, that is, if given a hand of cards, they can run it close to optimal. The draft is harder though, and that's what distinguishes strong players, experts and masters.

During the draft, beginners will usually prioritize production cards over trade cards, even though a strong combo of trade cards will beat any production card-based engine. 300+ rated players have a better idea about what the goal of the draft is (balancing building a strong hand while also controlling the opponent's hand at the same time), with a varying level of accuracy and consistency during execution. Against a master opponent, one mistake during the draft can be enough to lose, so consistently making good moves is imporant, and that's what distinguishes strong players, experts and masters.

Apart from Century: Spice Road, I also like Azul and Splendor. I am a veteran in both games (I would guess 400-ish rating, although I haven't played enough games on BGA to get there yet), with some ideas about what should be done during the game, but I never got really deep into them. It would be nice to master those games as well, but never invested the time it takes to get there (so far).

I've never heard of this game, but winning 14 consecutive arena seasons is just incredible, especially when the game is quite popular.

[MarkSteere]

In relation to abstract games...

I've always had trouble with the notion of "mastering" a game, starting when I long ago heard the expression, "Minute to learn, lifetime to master," in reference to Go. (Incidentally, Go is a long way from "minute to learn." I still don't understand it.)

According to ChatGPT...

"To master a board game is to internalize its strategic structure so thoroughly that you can play near-optimally, adapt to novelty, and consistently outclass less-skilled opponents."

That seems reasonable, but is that really desirable? Do you really want to compete "near optimally?" At that point it's largely memorization. Turn order advantage is momentous. "Mastering" a game sounds more like wringing out a game.

Ideally, a game should be scalable, so you have the option of switching up to a larger board and staying ahead of overwhelming turn order advantage, although this is not guaranteed to work. In the case of Go, Black's advantage comes from sente, which would probably not be mitigated much, if at all, on a board larger than the already huge size 19. But increasing board size make sense in Hex and many other games.

[saixd]

In relation to abstract games...

I've always had trouble with the notion of "mastering" a game, starting when I long ago heard the expression, "Minute to learn, lifetime to master," in reference to Go. (Incidentally, Go is a long way from "minute to learn." I still don't understand it.)

According to ChatGPT...

"To master a board game is to internalize its strategic structure so thoroughly that you can play near-optimally, adapt to novelty, and consistently outclass less-skilled opponents."

That seems reasonable, but is that really desirable? Do you really want to compete "near optimally?" At that point it's largely memorization. Turn order advantage is momentous. "Mastering" a game sounds more like wringing out a game.

Ideally, a game should be scalable, so you have the option of switching up to a larger board and staying ahead of overwhelming turn order advantage, although this is not guaranteed to work. In the case of Go, Black's advantage comes from sente, which would probably not be mitigated much, if at all, on a board larger than the already huge size 19. But increasing board size make sense in Hex and many other games.

there is a joy and satisfaction to getting good at something and if you like a game enough to play it a lot, attempting to get good at it so you can win more and enjoy it more is a reasonable choice, in board games mastery has lot to do with memorization but the skill to recognize a situation and apply the things you remember at the right time and order and recognize the nuances of the situation that require adjustments makes it more interesting.
mastering games is not for everyone I do have some regrets playing so much tm as I could have played many more other games but I did have fun it did activate my brain so it's fine, but for other people becoming the best they can be at what they like is the greatest thing ever

[Romain672]

I usually play coop games, but I'm usually first in Legendary inventors. Others possible top 1 either play 3+ players games or have stopped playing.

I started in the promotional event when the game was new, and the top (3?) in elo was gaining for life all the games from the editor after I think 2 weeks (games were 4 or 5 players only).
The game was totally where I'm really good: simple rules, and need to anticipate what others will do.
I was first with a good margin, and I decided to play one last game and then stop playing, hoping the elo was enough (that was what I planned, I don't know if I would have resist playing until the end). But I lost that game.
Then I played more, lost more, and since I was missing one good part of the strategy, I never recover.

And then 2 and 3 players opened, and I still play that game, I find out what I was missing (=taking cards at age 2 was a good option).
Like Lord of Xidit, I only like those game when I play with 3 others experts or masters. If you add one weak player, that player could play randomly, and give the win easily to one player by doing an extremely bad move for themselves and another player. And for me that's extremely not fun.

But after the game lose in popularity, I played 2 players game a lot more, and the game is drastiquely different. You can fully play against the opponent, and the value of many things change considerably.

At the same time, I wrote a strategy guide in french and english: https://en.doc.boardgamearena.com/Tips_inventors .

I still enjoy playing that game, I like doing weird strategy which are not bad (like using a token as an useless 1 place to finish an invention alone, which make me lose priority on age 1, but have more cube played over time)(or the opposite: take lots of cards, and leave the opponent with many useless token, and try to survive age 3 by getting 1 majority out of 4).
While the game is still interesting, it's not that deep compared to game I played more like the crew or hanabi, but the learning curve was extremely good for me.

Now for your questions I haven't answered yet:
- the meta don't change much: some pretty advanced tech when you finish an invention alone I still do them from time to time.
- about noobs in 2 players, the game is vastly different: I usually manage to find a way to finish an invention alone in age 1 or 2, which give me a +3point advantage but should make me behind in rewards. I then play less risky, take one or two cards which give me twice -1 point, and work from there, usually it's a free win unless the opponent is good, or I am extremely unlucky. I shouldn't be able to finish an invention alone

I still find it weird that this game managed to make me be top 1, while many others non coop games I finish by fastly not playing them anymore.
I fully goes into coop since I feel like strategy discussions are much more welcome there.

[Romain672]

I still want to talk more about coops game.

The crew is pretty deep: it's a trick tacking game so you have all the strategy of those games.
It's a cooperative game where a specific player need to win the '4 of spades' and another one the 'jack of heart'. Each player can communicate one of their color (per example, that '3 of club' is my lowest club).

You need to:
- know what's the overall plan of everyone seem to be
- know what you should lead (which can have massive implications later on)
- know what you should play (with yellow 2, yellow 4, and yellow 8, the instinctive play after yellow 9 has been played is to discard yellow 8, but the play which give you the most options later on is yellow 4, that way you can win the second trick with yellow 8, and play yellow a third time which let most players be able to trump or to discard their card of their choice)(with yellow 2 and yellow 6 it's yellow 6 first: highest second to last)
- know what you should discard: keeping the third or forth card of a color let you lead with it and let everyone trump or discard what they want. But that give you less liberty on which color you can play. If one player need a yellow trick and you discard your yellow, that can be game losing
- know what you should comm: there is some conventions there, but myself which have much more comms available than most players still have some gray area where what I need with that comm need to be deduced from the timing of my comm or from what I lead/played/discarded earlier
- know when you should comm: more the game advance, and less comm done are valuable. They are more and more to react with what is going on, or to try to help for the last task remaining
- know/understand some exceptions: there is many cases where someone has a pretty weird thing happening, and you need to find ways to help them

I wrote a guide too on it, much longer: https://en.doc.boardgamearena.com/Tips_thecrew
I still after some years do some strategy posts destined to the community: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=44577 . The meta doesn't change, but I'm convinced that there is still a lot of improvements to be done.

What keep me hooked is the simplicity of the game, the community from years ago which was answering to my strategies posts on a group, and was discussing of the strategy in some spots.

.

And then we got Hanabi.
Hanabi is still magical for me. I would said that the complexity of Hanabi is just slightly higher than chess, but the strategy is more deep than chess, but for specifics reasons.
In Hanabi you need to play cards in order: red 1, then red 2, until red 5. But you don't know your own cards: all others players know it and need to give you hints on your cards for you to play them or discard them.
- Hanabi at baseline is give two clues to a red 3: that card is red, that card is a 3. And that card is known to be red 3. It's inneficient and bad.
- then you learn that the timing is extremely important: if someone tell you that you got a red card, and if red 2 is played, it's likely that they have done this to tell you that this card is important. It could be red 5 because it's critical (but then giving 5 remove ambiguity), or it could be red 3 and that mean it's playable. But already there is some exceptions and you could play differently than that.
- then you have all the logic part. If someone give you that red clue to a card which was just drawn, that's normal. If it's on a card you have in hand since 5 turns that's weird. If red 2 was played one turn ago, that's because your red 3 wasn't playable before. Else you should be trying to find another reason (like clue count was low and there was other priority), or you could be more careful about assuming it's red 3. The conventions though usually not take into accout that ambiguity.
- most conventions sets agree on discarding the oldest card in hand first because others players got more time to clue it if it was useful.

And then if you add conventions, so to let players agree on specific moves before the game, that open a whole new world:
- you can finesse people: by saying a person two players after you this red card is playable (and it's a red 4) while only red 3 is playable, that's weird from your next player's pov (remember they see that red 4 like you see other's player hand and not your hand): that mean that red 3 is playable somewhere, and often it's in their hand. In most conventions sets, if that player don't have a red card known or a 3 known, that mean that their newest card drawn is the red 3. And so from one clue you get 2 cards played.
- but now you can go futher: that player now play that newest card: that's not a red 3 but a playable yellow 2. They were 'bluffed'. But now the person who received the initial red clue on red 4 known that yellow 2 got played for no reason... An can deduce they got not red 3 but red 4. So you get 2 cards known from 1 clue again.

- Now, we could add more weird move to make you play your slot 2 conventionnally, or slot 3, or slot 4.
- we can add lots of logical things which require an higher level of trust (oh you discard a good green 3 and the team didn't cared? Look like you got the other copy of green 3, if that's finesse, since green 3 can't be your newest card since you draw it after you discarded green 3 you play your oldest card instead as an 'elimination finesse' ).
- what if now we clue trash cards? We then need things which not only tell them that their card is trash, but have others upsides too
- what if we clue non playable important cards much more early than we should?
- what if we do a complicated clue while a simpler clue was available?
- and so on.

And then... Another dimension appear. What if you change all of that. What if instead of discard your oldest card by default, you discard your newest card? That would change the whole dynamic: you clue someone only when their newest card is useful (else you don't clue them and they will discard their newest and useless card).
What if you add variants to the game which only give you 0.5 clue back instead of 1 clue back per discard: you then need to take massive risks to have any chance to win, and have even sharper conventions which sacrifice even more simplicity/synchronisation for more efficiency.
What if you change the meaning of clue by a mathematical one: red mean you play your first card, yellow your second card.
What if your clue will give an action to do for two others players? That action could be mathematical, or could say per example that the two players will do the same actions but decaled by one card to the left.
What if you let AI play that game? They will develop their own strategy, and that can be extremely hard to follow.

What if Hanabi was just a society. You define rules for everyone to follow. And either you got a perfect society everyone follow them, and you try to improve them. Or you got an imperfect one, and you will have some chaos added to those rules, and you need to adapt those rules to make the chaos have a lesser impact?

So yeah... Even if I play a lot less Hanabi than before, Hanabi got me hooked for how deep it is, and how much differently you can play.

[RazorOz]

OK, I will say a few words, although it's not that clear what OP is looking for.

In Century: Spice Road, I am a master and Arena champion of all 14 seasons so far, with 10000+ games played on this site (with several thousand more on other sites and many hundred OTB). The game itself is an abstract optimization game; it's an engine builder, with an initial draft phase (when you build your engine) and then a main phase where you have to run your engine (so it's also a racing game). The main phase is less interactive (although there is still some interaction), but the draft is heavy with interaction and long-term consequences to each decision. Most players learn to play the main phase first, that is, if given a hand of cards, most 400-500+ rated players can run it close to optimal. The draft is harder though, and that's what distinguishes strong players, experts and masters.

During the draft, beginners will usually prioritize production cards over trade cards, even though a strong combo of trade cards will beat any production card-based engine. 300+ rated players have a better idea about what the goal of the draft is (balancing building a strong hand while also controlling the opponent's hand at the same time), with a varying level of accuracy and consistency during execution. Against a master opponent, one mistake during the draft can be enough to lose, so consistently making good moves is important.

Apart from Century: Spice Road, I also like Azul and Splendor. I am a veteran in both games (I would guess 400-ish rating, although I haven't played enough games on BGA to get there yet), with some ideas about what should be done during the game, but I never got really deep into them. It would be nice to master those games as well, but never invested the time it takes to get there (so far).

One thing I've never understood is how you're so much better than everyone else at Century, like the gap between #1 and #2 is monstrous and having played it to a reasonable standard (though not in a long time) I don't know how you do it. Particularly because in my experience what ends up happening is the #1 is the most watched player for people to learn the game, thus people will be learning from you.

[h_illes]

One thing I've never understood is how you're so much better than everyone else at Century, like the gap between #1 and #2 is monstrous and having played it to a reasonable standard (though not in a long time) I don't know how you do it. Particularly because in my experience what ends up happening is the #1 is the most watched player for people to learn the game, thus people will be learning from you.

Thank you! A major factor is that the game is well-balanced and surprisingly deep. It has significant depth even beyond 500 rating or so. That makes it possible to go high.

As to why others have not come too close, I'm not sure, but it's probably down to several factors. Maybe the Arena format magnifies small differences in skill near the top. Maybe I have fine-tuned my gameplay better than everyone else. Maybe my brain is wired just a little bit better for this game. (Although I think the vast majority of skill required for this game can be learned.)

I will also note that even for a strong player, just watching master(s) play might not be that helpful, as they might not recognize subtle but important choices.

[h_illes]

The main thing I enjoy is understanding game positions quickly. I see structure where a novice does not. And this feeling has not faded in the last few years.

[Meeplelowda]

This discussion has convinced me to give "Century: Spice Road" a try.

[FrankJones]

I too am curious about the game now that I see one player who is so absurdly better than anyone else at the game.

To answer the OP's question for my personal games:

1) Pente. I have played for a long time and spent countless hours studying. I have approached Pente in a manner similar to the way expert players approach Chess or Go. I am undefeated except for one friendly mode game in which I was playing with game parameters I would never play in a rated game. It is not a question of "if" I will reach 700-master level, but when.

2) Connect6: I am not "master" level here at BGA (This is a game which is nearly impossible to do so because of the small number of expert-rated players). Given enough time, I might be able to. I have not yet been defeated on this site.

3) Earth. Not yet master level, though I am confident I can get there. I have ascended to 2nd position in Arena and 6th overall Elo in far fewer games than anyone in the top 10. I study the game a lot. This is the rare thematic strategy game that has "clicked" for me in a way that seems to lead to surprising victories even when I feel as though the game is not going well. I've also spent a lot of time discussing and analyzing the game with a very strong player after taking a couple of serious beatings by said player. I tend to be chatty in the -in-game chat, which is a good way to make acquaintances with strong players (or just players in general; there are several players on BGA with whom I discuss non-game topics and consider to be friends, to whatever extent we can be friends with people we haven't met in real life.)

4) Patchwork: I am not master-level yet, but I believe I may be able to get there based on my current W-L record and Elo after a small number of games. After losing my first game, I studied some strategy threads and was able to apply the information to go on an 18-game win streak.

Other games in which I am at or near expert level:
Terraforming Mars (currently below 500 after a few tough losses by was as high as 535: Countless hours playing and studying the game.
Wingspan: Hovering around 500 but have not quite cracked it yet. I have played the game countess times and studied it a lot.
Aquatica: This game has a limited player pool, making 500 Elo nearly impossible, but I fluctuate between 3rd and 7th overall, and as far as I'm concerned, I'm as good as anyone on the site and probably better. Lots of game plays and lots of studying and analysis.

So, for me, it comes down to hard work, dedication, and studying and analysis. If someone wants to be expert or master level at any game, the tools are available. Strategy threads, strategy videos, and most important, game replays with open profiles so that we can view games played by the very best players. I spent a lot of time reviewing my own games and analyzing the end-game stats. Stats that ironically were called trivial and implied to be worthless by a player whose gaming resume doesn't really justify such remarks. (Not in this thread, and I will not discuss that further or reference that thread because sometimes the site moderators have a twitchy moderation button.)