Spielboy Issue 5

Strategies for the Lazy Gamer

Do your homework and you'll become something someday; work hard to make something of yourself. Well, your mamma lied (and not just about where she hid your porn). The truth is that sometimes doing nothing can get you ahead in life (and in a game). Who wants to be Johnny Paycheck workin' for the man? Instead of playing in earnest, you can instead play like a lump of shit. You follow the rules, you smile and nod at appropriate times, you even engage in chit-chat during other player's turns... but you're playing dead.

And sometimes, you might even do well.

The idea that you can do well by not doing is not new. John Webley was well aware of this problem with some games when he wrote a review of Ali Baba in the Summer 1993 issue of Sumo (reprinted on the web at the Game Cabinet). "The major drawback is the old chestnut of negative cash flow. ie, it suffers from the cynical 'if you do nothing at all, you have a good chance of winning' syndrome as most of the players will be losing money throughout the game."

Some games make it possible for you to take the easy way out and still manage a reasonable score. You could sit there, make no decisions, do nothing... and still fare better than other folks. These games often share some similar characteristics, such as:

Auctions — Players set the value of commodities in the game. When one player withdraws from the competition, other players step in to make sure nothing goes too cheaply.

Going negative — Games sometimes involve the possibility of scores going into negative territory... for the suckers that actually try!

Save for a rainy day — Each turn you receive income from the bank.

Vertrags is points — The game currency is also worth victory points, so guard your hoard jealously.

Do nothing — Actions are often optional or variable, so you can decide to do nothing on your turn, defer to another player, or at least take the easy way out. Remember, Sloth is not a real sin.

The following table describes some of the games where doing nothing can get you somewhere.

Game

Description

Dicke Kartoffeln

Slick dicke
The game is about growing potatoes; you can boost potato output through fertilization and other things that hurt the soil.

At the end of the game, there are two winners: the one with the most money and the one with the most environmentally sound fields. Since it can be hard not to degrade your fields if you're at all aggressive in your potato growing, you might easily win the environmental half of the game if you do nothing. There is a similar situation in Industrial Waste, where an industrial accident occurs every once in a while (and at the end of the game). If you don't produce anything, you can't possibly lose anything... but then you almost definitely won't win, either.

Edel, Stein, & Reich

Cash is king.
From the choice of tiles (cash, special action, or gems), always opt for the cash. The first few times you might have to give away some gems to get the cash, but after a while, folks will learn that unless they want to duke it out, they should let you have it.

Downside? Yeah, there's a downside. After taking cash regularly for a while, you might start running out of gems. And without gems, you have no way to bargain for the cash if someone else picks it. But at least you can give your brain a rest.

For Sale

For Suckers
You start the game with 15 coins. All you have to do is repeat the mantra, Bidding is for suckers. In two of the four scoring rounds, you're guaranteed to get at least the 1 and the 2 (in addition to the two zeros), so the minimum score for doing nothing is 18. That's your original 15 bucks, plus 3 contract points.

Logistico

Sell, Mortimer, Sell!
Logistico rewards efficiency, but some players just can't get their heads around the concept of delivering something for less than what it costs to move it. Often, these players will hold onto goods during a turn, costing themselves 2 Logi per turn in storage fees. If you're playing against these Corky's, you just might win.

You start the game with 40 Logi. On turn 1, sell your truck for 3 Logi. You cannot sell your boat this turn because you can only sell one transport per turn. You must move your boat at least one space during this first turn, so that will cost you a Logi. On turn 2, sell your boat for another 3 Logi. You end with 45 Logi and a plane (you cannot sell the plane, but you are also not required to move it). Grab something to eat and play something else while the remaining players fight over your scraps.

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Marco Polo

Get something off your chest
You start the game with 3 chests, which are worth VPs, but can also be used to get yourself out of a back of the pack position. The key here is to not use your chests, despite being tempted. (Who isn't tempted by a big chest?) Some players struggle to stay ahead the whole game, spending chests and exerting alot of effort, just to come up short in the last phase. These are the chuckleheads that you want to play against.

Medici

Ride the slow-boat
Medici is a delicious feast of auctions that rewards careful analysis of values and shrewd bidding. Screw that crap. Never bid on anything and you end the game with the same amount of money you started with: 30. What's more, in the early rounds, it's hard not to score at least a second place finish in at least one commodity — if none of the ships goes light.

To make it look like you're trying, bid low on good lots that you have a chance at. Be careful not to get stuck paying for something, though. That would be unlazy-like.

Modern Art

What am I bid?
Modern Art is another auction game whose currency also acts as victory points. You start the game with $100. Just don't bid. Simple! Of course, you will still sell paintings (but the true lazy gamer would try to find a way out of that, too, by perhaps playing "doublers"). You really don't have the time or patience to run an auction, do you? By not bidding on anything, you guarantee yourself a minimum of $100 at the end of the game, plus some free time to twurk some shawties.

Palmyra

Buy low, sell high
You start with $50 and three amphora (one in each color) in the first round. Sell them and then go do something interesting. On each turn, you can sell up to two amphora in two different colors, so by the second turn, you will have sold all your amphora. Now sit back and play nothing but taxation and negative cards to try and drive down the final scoring.

In a 4-player game, the 12 is the first available spot to sell in each color. By selling all three amphora for a total of 36, plus your starting 50, you can earn a potential score of 86 by doing nothing but pickin' and flickin'.

Santiago

Tally me banana
You start the game with $10. Each turn, you get income of $3. Let's say you also "pass" every chance you get, so you are more often than not the foreman (not always since someone can pass before you). Being foreman might get you an average of, say, $2 per turn. By the end of 10 turns, you have:

$10 + ($3 * 10) + ($2 * 10) = $60

While it's not exactly F-U money, $60 is a reasonable total in a five player game. Also, you might get a farmer or two on the board if only tiles with two farmers come up at some point (if you pass during bidding, you place one less farmer on your tile). At the end of game, this will earn you a couple extra ducats. Unfortunately, this requires you to lift your lazy ass arm up and move a tile, so try and avoid this situation whenever possible.

However, by passing to get the foreman each turn, you are then the last person eligible to be the foreman on the next turn. But if we reduce your hypothetical foreman income to an average of $1 per turn, your final score will still be $50. Not terrible for a total slob like you!

Spielboy recommends that you attempt this strategy only in a five-player game; you want there to be as much fighting over the placement of the canal as possible (which translates into higher bribes).

Taj Mahal

Pull out early
Wussy fold on every turn. When you wussy fold, you get first choice of the cards that are available, so be sure to choose white cards as often as possible. You also get a free face-down card. At the end of the game, each player earns 1 point for each card in their longest suit, plus 1 point for each white card. There are 21 cards in each suit and 12 regular white cards plus 4 special white cards, so the actual maximum scoring using this method is 21 + 12 + 4 = 37. But the only way to get the special white cards is to play and win visits, so the real maximum is 33.

After playing 30 games against the computer, the editor's actual average point score was 26.4.

Don't forget that toward the end of the game, you can start divesting yourself of your shorter suits, which might get you some points and block other players.

Tonga Bonga

Tonga yawn-ga
You start the game with 20 gold to make your early offers. Instead of trying to gain favorable rolls, offer up a single gold for first and second place each round, regardless of the game situation (too bad you can't offer zero). But remember, other players must give you at least 1 gold per die per turn, so you're guaranteed to get 2 gold income per turn at least, which offsets your payouts.

This will lead to poor board position as you will get only the worst movement dice, but who cares? You might get sympathy dice. When folks notice your back-of-the-pack position, they will likely give you good movement numbers even if you offer less gold so that they can attack the leaders (those hard-workin' fools!). Unfortunately, this can then trigger a new chain reaction in which all players offer very little money so your savings will be diminished relative to other players.

Traumfabrik

Vertrags is points
You start the game with 10 or 12 contracts, depending on the number of players. Each time someone wins a bid, their contracts are split evenly among the other players. Contract hoarding will get you a theoretical maximum of 49 points (in a 5-player game) or 47 (in a 4-player game) because there will almost always be one less contract than the number of players left over in the middle.

If on every turn in a 4 player game, the person with the most contracts bids all their contracts, two contracts will end up in the middle of the board, which means your maximum score is 46 (in 13 turns). If the same thing happens in a 5-player game, you end up with 47 contracts with three in the middle (in 23 turns). But this is a purely theoretical approach.

Remember that you will get at least eight tiles to make movies (one tile at each of the parties) which might lead to a movie or two being completed. Hell, depending on the way the actor tiles fall, you might even have good picks at the first party or two. And if you can achieve contract hoarding Nirvana, which is to have all contracts but one less than the number of players, and you bid first, you can win the remaining auctions because zero is a valid bid. If noone else has any contracts they cannot overbid you.

There is a small downside to playing the lazy gamer strategy. By withdrawing from the game around you, you're letting the other players gain points with fewer resources than if they had stayed in. So, while you may guarantee an absolute score by doing nothing, you likely won't have increased your relative score all that much. And another thing, it just might make people not want to play with you anymore. But who gives a damn, they like games you don't.