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Whether you’re already part of a regular board game night or want to start having one with your friends as a way to vary your hangout activities, board games are more about having a fun activity and enjoying all the benefits of social interaction – like improving communication skills, laughing and de-stressing.
However, board games work best when players try their best to win. So after you’ve gone to your favourite board game store in Toronto to pick out a game you know your friends will love, follow these tips to help you get better at winning!
Watching Other Players
One of the best ways to learn is simply to watch other players both when you’re playing and when you’ve been eliminated (or are just observing).
Look for the best/winning players and take note of the actions they take, what they do with their resources and how their score changes during the game. There are often several ways to win a game, and some players like to score a consistent number of points every turn, while others build up an engine that scores nothing or very little to start, which suddenly starts scoring massive point totals in later rounds towards the end of a game.
Finally, don’t forget to discuss the game when it’s over. Ask other players about their strategies throughout the game and how they thought they won.
Picking the Right Strategy for the Game at Hand
With different styles of gameplay also come different strategies. If you’re playing a board game for the first time, your first few moves are about figuring out how to play the game and learning which moves you can and can’t make, and after a few rounds, you start to learn which moves are better than others until you discover the optimal moves you need to make to win the game.
The winning strategy reveals itself eventually, depending on your opponents, but many games have a distinct method for winning.
For example, many board games require players to save up resources, invest them and/or make purchases from round to round. However, some reward players who invest as many of their resources as possible and patiently wait until the endgame for them to pay off; others are best played by saving resources until the right moment when you can make that one big purchase that wins you the game and some require you to make numerous purchases that must fit together for you to win. There are also many games that require you to change your strategy during the game. You may have the best strategy at first, but then things change, or other players’ actions make your strategy no longer effective. The trick is knowing if you should change strategies or stay on course until it finally pays off in the end. Some games force you to change strategies because they are more tactical in nature, and having a specific game plan won’t work.
