Board Game Arena

The "place explorer on an unexplored island" special action and crew reward has synergy with the golden objective that reduces the lagging penalty, allowing one to divert resources from navigation actions which sometimes lack immediate returns. However, the opportunity costs seem too large and the rewards too low for this strategy to be viable in a competitive game. Golden objectives are often gamechanging and crew cards/special actions even more so; it seems wasteful to devote these powerful items to the no ship strat, all for being able to explore the resource-poor third island somewhat faster and somewhat more intensively than normal strategies allow.

Has anyone won or seen someone win with a no/low ship strategy before? How did you/they make it work? I am hoping this strat is not a black hole in an otherwise well-designed game with many paths to victory.

I also thought this, but am no where near able to offer any practical insights.

I would have thought though, you miss out on too much, the beagel rewards and any ship rewards. Is there really enough 'other' stuff to be content with the whole game? If there are any other ship move rewards then you also want to miss those: tents, stamps.

The 'new guy on the island' quite often seems overshadowed by - why don't I just move my ship instead idea.
The objective down to fixed -2 doens't seem that appealing either, especially when you consider that you have to take it instead of taking another reward.

I think it's worthy to note the dude with the "catch-up to the Beagel" ability. This at-least seems to offer a good half-way house to this strategy idea.

I don't think it works out very well in the base game.

Firelands expansion can maybe work if you can abuse the "new dude on an island" thing, simply because there are more islands and tracks to abuse. Haven't tried it though.

If the effect of the special lenses is good, there is no need to explore the third island. For instance, one can directly set up a tent.