The Builders – Element of the Week #9

[danisthirty]

As we know, the best way to glom on to someone's city (or to any feature) is to place a tile and a follower so that it only requires only one more tile to connect to the feature. But sometimes there is no possible way to place a tile (any tile) to be within one tile of joining the city (i.e. there are not enough surrounding tiles). The most satisfying way to use the builder for me is to place a tile that both adds to the city (giving me a second turn) and opens up the opportunity to place a tile within one tile of the city, then to use my second turn to place that tile in a glom-on position and add another follower.

I had a game with Rosco and quevy last night. The turning point in the game was when quevy took a very valuable city in which all three of us had previously placed two knights and our builders. He did exactly what jungleboy describes above as there were no ways to get anything else in to the city so he created one with his first tile (whilst extending the city so as to generate a bonus turn) and was fortunate enough to get a tile that he could lay adjacent to it on his bonus turn. Obviously Rosco and I did everything we could to stop him, but the tiles were on his side and he had joined his third knight and closed the city within a few turns.

Annoyingly enough, I could still have won despite the points he won for the city and the multitude of trade goods it contained. I couldn't contend with him having won the King tile though as this won him an extra 22 points on top of everything else and I finished 20 points behind. Well played quevy! 

[jungleboy]

Nice work quevy! 

[Rosco]

Still bitter emoji code35]

[danisthirty]

Still bitter emoji code35]

Ha ha ha! 

[Christopher]

Builders! Fantastic! It's all about roads, for me. Whenever I stick a builder on a city, he ends up being wasted because it gets harder and harder to keep adding to it, so I end up closing it and he just comes back. Stick him on a road, on the other hand, and you can just keep building and building. There are more roads than cities, so most tile draws will have some road on them. It's also more likely that the tile you draw will fit on a road than a city, and because of the nature of roads you can build away from everything else making it even easier. Doing this gets you an extra tile most turns! The second tile can be added to whichever feature you're working on, and the first tile (that triggered the builder turn) adds to the road. When you get bored, close the road and scoop up all the points it's earned!