A Few Acres of Snow: Ambushing

As discussed last time a very strong strategy in A Few Acres of Snow is to focus on military power and just conquer the other player's capital. The British have an advantage because their available cards simply have more strength combined than the French cards. Given infinite money and time for both sides the British will just win any military fight. Those may seem like extreme givens but the way the game plays out they're actually pretty reasonable. In a straight military fight it takes pretty much the same amount of time and resources to defend as it does to attack and the British can manipulate the game state such that they can get a powerful money engine going quickly. The French can try to compete by making money and buying military too but they're guaranteed to lose that fight since they have no way to get an edge and their available cards are just worse. They can try to compete by ignoring military and trying to expand but if you don't try to defend you lose every fight the turn they announce it and there's no way I can see to expand in time. There is one other option to combat military power: ambushing.

The mechanics behind ambushing are really quite simple. As one of your actions you can play a card that says it can ambush (like the Native Americans card above), pay the cost to play it (1 buck), and announce an ambush. Your opponent then has three possible responses:

1. They can reveal a card which is vulnerable to ambush (indicated by the Indian head shown on the regular infantry card on the right) and return it to their supply. They can buy the card back later if they have the money and want to spend and action but for the time being they lose access to that card. Any card in their hand or reserve can be hit.
2. They can reveal their entire hand and reserve to prove that they don't have any ambushable cards at the moment. You don't get a refund of your card, buck, or action. They're just wasted. On the plus side you do get to know he precise contents of their hand.
3. They can play a card which blocks ambushes. You'll note the Native Americans card above also says it can block ambushes. Note there is no cost to do so. They don't have to pay a dollar. They don't lose an action on their next turn. The only potential cost is they'll only have 4 cards in their hand for their next turn.

This seems like it could be pretty powerful, right? The only to fight a deck full of ambushing cards would seem to be a deck full of blocking cards? Well, not quite. It turns out there are another class of cards which help out and there are some negative side effects to the whole ambushing game.

First of all, what is the other way to fight ambushes? Priest for the French and Indian Leader for the British. The two are functionally equivalent. You play one as an action and then if your opponent has one of the green Native American cards in their hand they have to give it to you. Otherwise they have to show you their hand. Both can be useful things to have happen especially since there is no monetary cost to playing the Priest. They can also be used in raids which will be covered in the next post. 

What about negative side effects? Well, they clog up your deck is the biggest problem. The British deck functions best when it can draw a full merchant action every turn which uses up 3 of its 5 card hand. The French deck earns most of its money from the trader action which is best with a full 5 card hand of optimal cards. Every ambush card you draw reduces the chance of having an optimal money action which sets you further and further behind your opponent. Especially when you consider that the ambushes rarely even get you ahead in the first place...

What do I mean by that? Well, assume an optimal British engine. They make 6 bucks with their first action each turn. Their second action is to either buy a regular infantry for 7 or to play it into the active combat. Pretend you're the French and have unlimited access to ambushing cards. You spend an action and a buck to kill off their infantry every time they buy one. It took 1.14 actions to make the money and 1 action to buy the card so they're losing 2.14 actions when you hit an ambush successfully. Assuming you're making 5 dollars per action that's only costing you 1.2 actions which is a pretty good gain. Keep this up long enough and you'll have enough spare actions to actually win the game some other way. But now give the British a single blocking card. Now it costs you 2 actions and 2 dollars to kill their infantry. That's 2.4 actions which means you're actually losing ground! There is one ambush card which is free to play so you can get that down to 2.2 but it's still not helping your cause at all. Ambushing against a properly set up engine doesn't help. You can ambush after they win a fight, though, which can help.

How do the different sides approach ambushing? Well, this is one area of the game where the French have a huge advantage. They have a blue Native American card which means that it can't be hit by the Indian Leader and that they have access to one more ambusher total. The French have access to 2 Priests compared to the 1 Indian Leader the British have. The French Militia cards actually block ambushes and raids while the British Militia are vulnerable to ambush. Beyond that they each have access to the 5 neutral Native Americans and they each have an ambusher that is free. (Rangers and Coureurs de Bois.)

Ambushing is a great way for a wise French player to abuse the mistake a British player makes but I have yet to find a way for ambushing to actually beat a top notch British plan. It can slow them down a little for sure, and I definitely need more experimentation to see if I can find a way to use that extra time to end the game as the French, but as it stands right now it doesn't seem good enough. The constant drain on gold by ambushing over and over just seems to be too much of a cost. 

Ambushing does also give hand information and someone who properly tracks the contents of the opponent deck and hand will make better use of it than someone who doesn't pay attention. I keep playing against opponents who buy an Indian Leader when I don't have any neutral Native Americans, for example. Or people who ambush when I don't own a vulnerable card in my deck. Maybe they're doing it to gain the information themselves? More likely they're just making a mistake.