Board Game Arena

I thought I would write a little something on improving as a Terra Mystica player as I started playing this game in April 2020 and I have now gotten to a high of 38 on the ladder. While I am not great, I have noticed a few things from starting as terrible and gotten decent. I read a lot of the stuff on BGG (I really should join the site to post, but everybody else says what I am thinking anyway so no need really).

Start of my journey:
I played my first game in April with some friends who had played it once or twice before. I did a little research and wanted to choose halflings and was successful in being able to do so. I somehow won and while really confused I liked the idea of little to no luck but still being a challenging game. I then began my journey on trying to "git gud".

I started playing with other people and trying the arena. First thing I learned is that opening with temples is good and with almost any race you need a temple pretty early. I have gone to round 3 without a temple, but priest are just so useful and versatile that every faction needs them and you should try to get them early as possible. I like a good dwelling rush, but try to get that temple as soon as you can after that. As with anything there are times that this may not be true, but I found that getting a temple early really helped my game more than anything else I did.

So, I got up to around a 200 rating on BGA and felt pretty good about that. Then I found I was having a hard time getting better, what was I missing? Well everything really, so playing on auction for the arena is very hard for people with limited experience. In general with auction you have to decide, before anything happens in the game, what is the best race and assign a number value to that. Without a feel for the game this is very hard, nigh impossible and I ended up going for the races I was most comfortable with and losing due to them not being very good in that setup but me not knowing from that very start. One of the things that I started doing that really helped me was predicting where the dwellings would go for each race. This helped me with the bidding as some of the openings can be pretty difficult and you might need to do something creative with the first dwelling, but that downgraded that race for me.

The third thing that helped me was not just looking at the track, but focusing on the bonus tiles. Sometimes the track will really indicate what you want to be doing but I have found in general the bonus tiles will push me to a certain race that I feel will do the best. What I mean is that in the beginning I did not know how to value the bonus tiles or would ignore them (or have a very limited view) in my selection of a race, now including them in my pre game analysis has helped immensely. For example if there are the SH and TP scoring tiles that indicates Swarmlings will be good. If there is the shipping scoring tile mermaids will like that. I am giving the easiest examples, but knowing that without the spade tile there will be more pressure on the spade power actions and how that will affect the game has been something that has helped me improve.

Most of my improving has been due to getting experience in the game and knowing what will happen in certain match ups. For example, one of the more recent games I had I got Engineers with no color neighbors and I thought I got a great deal on them. But, what I did not count on was it was halflings with round 4 digging. They did a good job of setting up their round and dug a lot of greys that I had planned on getting later. They did not plan on using those but it made my game that much harder. It showed me how much engineers rely on getting native grey hexes. As a poor digging faction it makes them very hard for them if there is a lot of competition. Some competition they can handle but not too much.

The two things I am working on to get in the top tier of Terra Mystica is focusing more on having a plan, such as I want to try to win network and get Air cult, but I am okay with not getting 3 towns. I am ok at doing that in Round 6 but I need to expand on that to earlier and know what I am working for. In that same vein, being able to adjust that plan and not getting tunnel vision on a plan that is no longer optimal due to others actions or unexpected opportunities.
I mostly wanted to write a recap of what I have learned over the last 8 months as most of this is not very actionable, in fact I think if you want a TLDR it would be: How to get better at Terra Mystica? Play more.

While I read a lot of strategy and have watched Zoras' ultimate guides, mostly it comes down to having a feel for what races will do well in certain tracks and match ups and you get that with play. So I will finish with a little observation: On the arena season three I feel like in general Fakirs and Swarmlings are undervalued as well as giants a little and Cultists and Mermaids are over valued. What I mean by this is that in the auction I feel like Fakirs, Swarmlings, and Giants dont get bid down enough, while people pay too much for cultists and mermaids, not that they are picked to play too much.

PS: I often say good luck in the chat before the game, but in Terra Mystica there is little to no luck, so I am really saying I hope your plans go well and you have fun. I always find it odd that many people say gl (including myself) when there isnt really any to speak of. Maybe I should start saying, I hope your predictions of what other people are planning on doing are correct?

Thanks for sharing your sorry so far! You are any effortless writer, nice. My TM has been very similar, time - wise and"training".


I hope your predictions. ....

Thanks much for sharing some thoughts! I can certainly tell you're on the path to thinking like the experts, lots of good insights here. Hope you continue having fun and hopefully we'll get to play some games together soon!

(not very good 200-300 ELO player here) One of the things you mentioned was that you realized power of an early temple. To be honest I still don't get why it is so important and maybe you can shed some light on it for me. From my perspective main purpose of getting early temple is getting Earth1 as it is often quite contested ans is really valuable. It is also good since slapping a priest on a 3-space on some important cult may be quite beneficial. However there are many factions that should open with stronghold (Nomads, Swarmlings, Auren, Giants and possibly Alchemists and Witches). What is your take on early temples for these factions? Should they go out of their way to get early temple or should they basically almost always stick to their SH openings?

SH openings are still viable on some factions and you can sometimes do them, but temple openings are the default. Partially it is securing earth 1 favor (although you can do quite well with economic favors like earth 2, fire 1, and air 2 and so not every game should you be rushing for earth 1 either). But part of the power of the temple is that priest production--it's very helpful to contest some cults, not just for the end game vp, but because that is an important source of income as well. If you can turn a priest in to a cult spade, that is a very nice path to something valuable. The overall combination of economy and scoring possibilities really helps make temple openings strong. The other benefit to opening with a temple is that you often can build 1-2 dwellings along with a temple in the first round which helps out ones income quite a bit. Stronghold openings have a harder time getting dwellings out along with them due to the higher worker cost, and so then your worker economy is slowed down (and having strong worker income early is key to doing well).

Interestingly enough, of all the factions you listed, only Swarmlings I think must open with their SH (and even then they can open with SH and then build a TE which is a pretty fine opening for them). Giants usually should open with their SH, but nerdcube and a few others have been showing you can sometimes open with a TE on them as well. All the other factions you listed--Auren, Nomads, Witches, Alchemists have options, and in general I would prefer open with a Temple for all of them. I'll occasionally go for a SH opening on them, but I think it's usually weaker. Alchemists really need the priest income as well as earth 1 favor as they have a strong economy with their faction ability, but no way to score vp. Auren also really like the priest income (a priest is essentially 2-3 steps on a cult, but again the TE is cheaper than the SH) and so I usually like to open TE and get like a R3 SH on Auren is a bit stronger. Witches and Nomads can be played quite successfully without ever building their SH, although they also can have good games with opening with it. They're very interesting to play since you have a lot of flexibility about when, if ever, to build their SH.

Thanks for posting, really enjoyed reading this! I think your story is very relatable for a lot of people - for me personally I definitely relate to the difficulties of the auction early on in particular, and I think it's still very challenging even as you get better. I agree that a key for getting better is playing a lot, and particularly playing with all of the factions in as many different situations as possible. Every game of TM is different and as a result I think there is something that can be learned from each one.

I've also found that improved understanding of the economy of TM and the balance between economy and scoring is really key for further progression as a player - like knowing when it's worth sacrificing economy for scoring and vice versa. Also in-game awareness and long-term planning, like for example looking at the situation throughout the game and from that information deciding which methods you should focus more on scoring with (eg. network, cults, bonuses, etc), and I think this naturally gets better as you play in more different situations as mentioned above.

Thanks for posting this CH.
I think I've played few games with you, and I know that you're a strong player , so knowing how you improve in the game is really interesting. Even though it's not a strategy / guide post, I think there are insightful advices in your story.

PS: I often say good luck in the chat before the game, but in Terra Mystica there is little to no luck, so I am really saying I hope your plans go well and you have fun. I always find it odd that many people say gl (including myself) when there isnt really any to speak of. Maybe I should start saying, I hope your predictions of what other people are planning on doing are correct?

LOL, agree. I think the luck is aspect is: if you play with someone new in the game which make their moves can be unpredictable, you hope that their unpredictable moves might benefit you rather than hurting you

[/quote]
LOL, agree. I think the luck is aspect is: if you play with someone new in the game which make their moves can be unpredictable, you hope that their unpredictable moves might benefit you rather than hurting you
[/quote]

I totally agree with this, and I dont mean this derogatorily toward newer players. I went back and watched some of my games when I was starting out and saw that I made moves that were head scratching. There was a game that I played with Ranior in the arena that I ended up with fakirs and I think he was darklings and I ended up jumping very early from g4 to h7 while he was on g5. I am sure it made great sense to me at the time, but I never really did anything after that with that space, although I do think I used the jump to g7, but how would he predict that? If he had known I was going to do something weird like that he may have started a different spot. I think he ended up doing ok after I did that to him, but he had to be thinking "what did I do to CHTennis that made him hate me."

Ok found the game https://boardgamearena.com/archive/repl ... s=86844443;
Ranior came in second to Simonbe this game.
And I believe he would have won if I had not played so oddly, but again it was one of my first time playing fakirs and I did not know what I was doing. Sorry Ranior and your welcome Simonbe.

So I have to remember when I have a new player that does odd moves that hurt my game plan that it is just my karma coming back at me and it will work out in the end. (It will still be frustrating though)

So Terramystical luck is found.
It is karma