Katimavik Bay Domaine Strategy Guide

Preface

This Strategy Guide assumes that you know the basic rules of domaine. Go through the tutorial first before reading on.

Focus is mainly on the 3 person game since this is the most fun and what is played in tournaments. Special notes for the 2 and 4 player versions will be added at the end.

Overview

Phases of the game

A domaine game can be broken into 4 phases:

  1. Placement
  2. Opening: getting your first domaine
  3. Middle: getting more domaines
  4. End: scratching out the last few points.

Strategy

2 Basic strategies after getting your initial gold generating domaine:

  1. Make a first domaine quickly that has or can be expanded to include at least 2-3 different mines. This will give you 2-3 gold per turn. THEN

## STRATEGY 1: Make a bigger domaine to score tons of points while preventing your opponent from doing same.OR
## STRATEGY 2: expand a smaller domain. Often you do this when STRATEGY 1 doesn't work.

Once the initial domaines are created, you prevent your opponent from making a big domaine by enclosing his cities and knights.

Golden Rule: In a 3 person game try to stay out of the way and let the other 2 engage in a knight battle

Keep track of your gold and how much you make each turn. If you have an alliance card and may need to play it next turn, so if your revenue is 3 you mus make sure you always have 2 gold at the end of your urn so that you will always have the 5 gold required to play it.

General comments on selecting, discarding and selling cards. cards

here are a few general rules on cards I try to follow

  • Never sell a single knight (2 gold), always pick up a discarded one (also true for double knights). Knights are key and these are the cheapest knights you're going to get.
  • Always choose a double yellow knight over a traitor (purple card). 2 knights will improve your knight strength by 2 against both opponents, a purple take knight only improves your strength by 2 against the opponent it is played on. Another advantage is that it can make your city much bigger and harder to cut off.. EXCEPTION: you have nowhere to place the second knight.
  • it is often useful to keep and sometimes even hoard blue alliance cards.
  • 3 fence cards are great to sell at the beginning to build up gold. If you don't pick them up from the discard pile to do this, your opponent will.
  • Remember to look at cost per fence: 1fence/1 gold , 2 fence/3gold, 3 fence/6 gold. You pay a premium for more fences. If you are short cash, sell the 3 fence and use 3 2 fences (9 gold) rather than 2x3fences (12 gold).
  • expansions for 3 are cheap, 4 is ok. 5 is expensive .. and 8 !

Card distribution

THe 60 action cards are organized in 4 decks of 15 according to the following distribution … to be filled in

Card Number Cost Deck 1 Deck 2 Deck 3 Deck 4
Fence 1 2 1 3 2 0 0
Fence 2 2 1 3 2 0 0
Fence 3 2 1 3 2 0 0
Knight 1 2 1 3 2 0 0
Expand 2 1 3 2 0 0
Knight Expand 2 1 3 2 0 0
Knight fence 2 2 1 3 2 0 0
Knight 2 2 1 3 2 0 0
Knight 2 2 1 3 2 0 0
Alliance 2 1 3 2 0 0

Placement

You must place 4 city /knight combos during placement. One key rules is that cities must be AT LEAST 6 spaces apart. If you place your first city in the middle, you will have to play the other 3 along the edges. This is one reason the corner is preferred for the first 1-2 cities.

Generally you place the first one o r2 cities close to a corner with different mines to that you can quickly make a domaine. and expand if required. Try to place as far away from the corner as you can without leaving space for someone to go behind you: corners with forests sometime allow this. Remember that it costs an extra gold to put a knight in a forest. Ideally expand in the fields.

You place the next two as much in the open as you can, away from cities and mines. the idea is that you want to make it difficult for your opponent to surround it and cities and mines are natural enclosures. Count how many fences would be required to prevent you from adding a knight. The ideal is to be completely open and require 6 fences.

One strategy is to place to block an opponent (i.e. in general closer to the middle), in effect cutting his city off from a large area.

Opening

In general, the first priority in the opening is to create a gold generating domain. Try to avoid fighting over the same corner with someone in a 3 person game. It usually leads to a knight battle and you both losing.

I prefer selling first if i have 3 fences to make enough cash to finish of the domain, often with 2 fences.

If your opponent tries to build too big an initial domain, it may be worthwhile cutting him down in size by completing a (much smaller) domain for him.

Start thinking about what your 2nd domain will look like.

Against a strong opponent you may need to either add a knight to prevent being closed in or closing in a strategic opponent's city BEFORE he can add a knight to protect it. All this before completing your first domain. This is particularly true if 1 or 2 fences will cut him off from an area.

You have to make sure that at least one city/knight combo remains open, i.e. you can add knights to it.

If all you cities are enclosed quickly, you will probably lose. Conversely if you manage to enclose all your opponents cities quickly you will probably win.

When creating your first domain, it often makes sense to create a small 3x2 or 3x3 domain with 1 mine in it and then expand to include 1-2 other mines.

Remember that a square is the most efficient way to enclose a lot of are: 3x4 =12 square with 7 fences, 5x2 = 10 square with 7 fences.

In a 3 person strategy it is often effective to be on the side slightly away from the corner, particularly if you have lots of different mines nearby.. If your opponent build a domain in the corner, or even better in both corners on either side of you , you can build a wall from one corner domaine to the other to take the whole side. Make sure you add a knight or 2 to be able to defend it. Try to let your opponents build the common wallls.

It is often useful to place on the side beside your corner domain. You can then expand your corner domain yo make one side of the wall for your second domain.

Middle:

This is complex, it's hard to give general guidelines. Again, try to avoid the first battle and let the other 2 fight it out.

Look for areas where your city/knights are alone, see how many walls you need to make a second domaine.

Playing purple take knight cards is death: a wealth destructor. Far better to cut short with an alliance and move on. If you each play 1 you've spent 14 gold for nothing. The third player is laughing all the way to his first place finish.

My primary rule to get a scone domaine is:

Don't build walls around your city, build walls around your opponent's cities.

The first place to put a wall is places where an opponent can expand his city. Ideally your opponent would wind up with 4 2 square cities and have to expand to make any points. It is usually pointless to put a wall between an opponent's city and a mine until you are going to close.

You have to balance in this phase blocking the opponents attempt to create a large domain with your own.Saving money for double knights can be critical for this.

When closing off your big domain, a great strategy is to leave your own domains last to separate. This forces your opponents to close off 2 cities to prevent you from getting a big domain.

In general it is much harder to get a big domain when playing 3 because he other 2 can cooperate to close off your city. You have to be more subtle and let other people do most of the work and you take advantage to finish closing at the end.

End

Remember that the person with the most gold gets 5 points at the end and the person with the second largest amount 3 points. Sell cards that will not generate any points.

Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License