Terra Mystica 101 Strategy with Sarterus

Intro Strategy for Terra Mystica, one of the best games of the last 10 years! Please leave your own tips or even disagree with my tips.

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[Memnaelar]

I think a good point here to jump off on for a future video would be breaking down the main currency of TM (power) and how it translates into coins/workers/priests and the economies that you get off of the Board Actions and the Bonus Tiles. I think a lot of advanced play stems from recognizing how best to invest your resources and understanding the interplay of, and the inherent values in, the various things you can do in TM on your turn is a huge part of that.

[Memnaelar]

Really nice video. I tend to agree with most of the advice that you present in it. I think I might reprioritize your discussion of the Favor tiles and present the two VP tiles ahead of the 2 water/cult track favor, if only because it's rare that I've seen a winner in competitive play who completely skipped taking one or the other of those. In a future video, you might touch on why you might select one over the other, based on your race's preferences and the game-state, but I think that's fine to leave out here.

I think the only point I slightly disagree with is your mention of avoiding the low resource VP bonus tiles when building your engine. As an example, the SH/SA 4 VP, 2 W bonus tile is essentially a 6 PW / C tile. It's better than many of the resource tiles situationally (if you're okay on cash and have a SH or SA, why not take the VPs alongside with an equivalent amount of workers)? I agree the shovel/shipping tiles are strong choices in the early game (as is the 1st round Priest in many cases) but given that close games can be only a handful of points between 1st and last, if you're building a SH / SA first turn anyway, you might well want to grab that bonus tile and score off of it rather than taking a spade that you may not have an immediate use for.

Generally in games where I win, I tend to grab VP tokens wherever I can so long as I'm scoring 4 or 5 points at least off of them and they don't slow my engine. But, that said, TM is great because of its multiple paths to victory. I don't disagree with your general point to go for resources and engines for your narrative early, but I'd just soften the language to avoid the VP bonus tiles. :)

Again, nice work!

(x-posting to what seems to be this video's more permanent home. :))

[iantaylor]

There’s a Brian Rowe who is a famous researcher at U of A. Is that you per chance?

[trenthogan]

There's almost nothing on YouTube about the Fire & Ice expansion... Very surprising.