We've previously covered the mechanics behind ending the game through expansion and through military conquest but there remains one final way to trigger the end of the game. If either player starts their turn with no fight in progress and has stolen at least 12 points worth of stuff from their opponent the game ends and the highest score wins. But where are these 12 points coming from? Primarily by raiding which is today's topic.
Each time you destroy one of your opponent's cities you get to keep the item destroyed. Each cube you steal is worth 2 points. Each disk you steal is worth 4 points. One of the ways to destroy your opponent's stuff if via military attacks. Win a fight in a location and not only do you get the chance to settle it yourself you also get to keep what your opponent had in that spot. (This means he doesn't get set back in terms of ending the game by playing all his cubes since the lost cube is not returned to his supply.) If you're winning a military game you won't be getting up to 12 points of stolen stuff as you should be able to conquer a capital for the instant win long before you get a chance at 12 points. If you're going to end the game in this manner you'll need to do a lot of your destruction via raiding.
The mechanics of raiding are fairly straightforward. Point to an enemy location which you want to raid and count how many spaces away it is from your closest location. (Raiding can make use of rivers, lakes, wagon trails, and the dotted paths on the map.) If that number is 1 or 2 you need to play a single raiding card. If that number is 3 or more then you need to play an extra card for each space beyond 2.
Your opponent now has two options for a response. He can block the raid or can concede defeat. Blocking a raid is similar to blocking an ambush: just play a card that says it blocks a raid. These will be native americans, rangers, coureurs de bois, and fortification cards. In addition they can play the card corresponding to that location to block the raid as well. Conceding defeat of a location with a cube means you take the cube. Conceding defeat of a location with a disk means you take the disk and he puts a cube down in that location. The disk is worth 4 points instead of 2 which is good for you, but he gets to keep using the associated card going forward which is good for them. You do get 2 actions a turn so it is possible to spend both of them raiding the same place twice. First for the disk and then for the cube! 6 points!
Raiding is a tricky thing to evaluate. It costs a lot of money to pay for all the native american uses you need to beat through anything resembling a competent defense. A meticulous opponent can actually become immune to raids entirely since you can't raid a fortified location and you also can't raid beyond a fortified location. I don't like focusing on the raiding game as I find it bogs your deck down if it fails and it can be too easily countered. That said, sometimes your opponent doesn't position himself to counter it quickly and you can deal a crippling blow to your opponent.
A strategy Andrew came up with for the British is to quickly expand towards Quebec and try to successfully raid it twice. If you manage to do so you turn the Quebec card off which has the only settler icon in the French deck. If you follow that up by buying the two neutral settler cards the game is practically over. The French can't put any disks into play which limits their scoring options. They can't settle any locations with a settler icon on them which further reduces their ways of scoring points. Most importantly they can't settle Pemaquid or Albany which means they can't attack a British capital. Since he told me about it I've managed to pull it off a couple times and my opponents have conceded after a couple turns when they realized they have no chance to win anymore.
Another thing you can try to do is raid away Trois Rivieres. Because of the way connections work down there everything west of Quebec connects through Trois Rivieres so you end up turning off every card in the French deck that branches west. Sometimes this will be half or more of your opponent's deck!
Just like with ambushing the French have a large advantage in the raiding game. Their militia can block raids. They have an empire specific native americans card. They have two priests to the British one indian leader. Another advantage the French have that isn't immediately obvious is they start with more points in play. Raiding, if it works, is one of the fastest ways to end the game and they start in a position that wants an early end to the game. I have been in a position as the British where I could successfully raid a location but would lose the game if I did since I'd trigger end game while having fewer points than my opponent.
I do frequently find myself getting into a raid based endgame as the French. Games I play will often have a long, drawn out siege in one location. We'll both have a very thin deck and my opponent will buy neutral native americans cards to try to stop my ambushes. I'll buy a priest and work to take all his native americans. Eventually the siege will end (typically in a British victory) and my back will be against the wall. The British will have a huge military deck and I'll have a huge native americans deck. So I'll ambush a few times to get him under control and then raid with the rest of them. It seems to work reasonably well. You just have to be very careful to have a huge stockpile of cash leading into that stage of the game. I have lost games where I have no money and a hand full of (now useless) native americans cards.
It's very important to track your opponent's hand and deck contents if you're going to try to pull this off. Wasting time and money on raids when they have the location card in hand for the block is painful. Sometimes tracking their hand can help in that you want to make them block with a location! (If they need that location card to launch a siege on Quebec, for example, and you just want to buy some time!)
Like everything else in the game raiding can be very powerful if your opponent doesn't make the right moves to block it. Raiding might even be the swingiest of all the strategies since it can completely destroy your opponent's ability to play the game if implemented properly but is also the easiest plan to counter. Fortification cards are cheap to buy and relatively cheap to put on the map. It's worth playing around with for sure but personally I've found it's a little too easy to block.
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