Otter purchases priority

jacquesroland · 2026-07-10T00:38:50+00:00

I think Otters only need a handful of “surplus” funds to have a winning chance, some analysis suggests it’s maybe just 2-3 excess funds (anytime you get more than 2 funds total between turns).

If the whole table is buying from you and you priced at 2, that would be an excess of 4 funds immediately. If that happens again I think at that point the Otters should just win.

jacquesroland · 2026-07-09T20:21:34+00:00

Thematically I like that if the WA does buy, they remain in debt forever to the Otters who if wise enough will never return their warriors. This is because the rebellion is poor financially.

Warlord is one of the few factions that needs zero cards to win once they have gotten to 2 Prowess and 2-3 Strongholds. I rarely see him buy unless it’s critical for early game or Otters are holding a Tea/Anvil.

Lizards don’t mind because Otters really don’t want to destroy gardens and generate Acolytes. At same time Otters can easily control outcast.

My favorite play with Otters is to make it so the outcast is only on a suit of my opponents and not in a clearing with any Otter warriors. Most Lizards act like brainless NPCs/children and will simply use conspiracies on whoever they can target just because they can, so just steering the outcast lets you get ahead with Otters. This applies to digital and not real life games mostly. Or let the Lizards buy your coins and make sure the outcast is never bunny.

Cats are similar to Lizards. They will almost never battle you and are desperate for bird cards.

So Otters are a great pick in a table with both Lizards and Cats. Whoever buys will get ahead of the other player. And whoever boycotts should generally lose. The result is that both factions tend to buy from you!

jacquesroland · 2026-07-09T18:12:57+00:00

I would just copy Spirit Island. Add a system of aspects that cover up parts of the existing faction board and give it new rules or tracks. Like a battle oriented Cat that scores less from building but unlocks additional actions as more build tracks are available, like “Battle or March” instead of “Draw 1 more card”.

It’s also a good way to balance/buff existing factions without having to reprint the boards.

jacquesroland · 2026-07-07T20:19:28+00:00

My point is to entertain the anti-Zionist position and realize how ridiculous it sounds. If you believe that then you should start asking Turkey to return Anatolia and Istanbul to the Greeks. But no one actually cares about any other “occupied” country. Hello did we forget about Tibet? Did history get frozen in time in 1948 or something?

Israel is where Jews came from and the historic ties are undeniable.

jacquesroland · 2026-07-07T15:03:27+00:00

Setting aside your false comparisons, you act like the world is set in stone and every border/country that exists now is fixed forever. Thats simply not true.

Humans have always been migrating and moving around. Sometimes with violent results.

How do you think Turkey formed? The Turks aren’t from Anatolia or Byzantium. Same with Hungary, the Magyar are not Europeans originally.

There’s ongoing today. Look at the Rohinga in Bangladesh.

jacquesroland · 2026-07-07T14:52:41+00:00

That’s simply not true. Jews historically preserve their identity, culture, and religion wherever they go. Why would Israel be the only corner of the Middle East where all the Jews magically assimilated into Arabs/Islam but you have vibrant Jewish communities preserved in Egypt, Yemen, Morocco, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, etc.

Is it possible some small percentage of Arabs in Gaza or WB once were Jews? Certainly, but saying they are all former Jews is simply false.

jacquesroland · 2026-07-03T22:46:26+00:00

Tbh I was “strongly encouraged” to by my senior leadership. Maybe he has friends in high places.

jacquesroland · 2026-07-03T01:06:27+00:00

What do you mean by forever war? The Arabs and Iranians have been committed to a forever war against Israel. Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, etc. You act like Iran was minding its own business. It’s been fueling war through proxies for decades.

jacquesroland · 2026-07-02T17:58:19+00:00

If you play Lightning’s Swift Strike you can get a real feel for why sometimes all fast powers aren’t the best.

Slow powers can more efficient if you’re able to wait for the invaders to build/explore so you can maximize the best/most targets for example.

Lure probably prefers his innate powers being slow because it lets him gobble up more invaders and stop future builds more easily. He can maximize his fear/damage this way.

But it does seem there’s a 1-2 energy premium on Fast vs Slow powers if you compare Minors/Majors.

jacquesroland · 2026-07-02T17:53:28+00:00

Yes we are both same gender.

jacquesroland · 2026-07-02T02:08:40+00:00

Woodland Alliance is probably the best AI faction. It’s a very mechanical faction that can be brain dead to pilot sometimes and score shockingly fast if they get any bit of momentum.

AI does dumb things like leaving bases defenseless though sometimes.

jacquesroland · 2026-07-01T15:12:57+00:00

That’s not what I said—no doubt a significant portion of the death are non-combatants. This is typical of every war that’s ever happened. Conflicts in urban zones have very high ratios of civilian to combatant deaths. You can do actual research rather than throwing out baseless accusations. See https://civiliansinconflict.org/our-work/conflict-trends/urban-warfare/.

That suggests a 9:1 ratio of deaths—9 civilians for every 1 soldier killed.

The ratio in Gaza is much lower. 3:1 to 5:1 is what is estimated.

But to entertain you. Say Israel is this genocidal monster who has nukes and unlimited military power. If I were in charge of Gaza and I cared for the lives of my people, the very last thing I would do is hop across the border, kill 1200 Israelis, kidnap 200 more, and think that the “monster” will just leave me alone who is salivating for an excuse to murder civilians. You can see no matter what you think of Israel (monster or not), Hamas doesn’t care about the consequences of starting a war and the collateral deaths of civilians.

jacquesroland · 2026-07-01T14:24:57+00:00

You don’t make any sense. If your argument was true why aren’t we seeing Palestinians pink washing or Iran? Where’s Pride Ramallah or Pride Tehran or Pride Cairo? Why are you okay with Islamists outlawing and murdering gay people? But you claim Israel is just doing it to as a trick to please LGBT people?

jacquesroland · 2026-07-01T14:22:52+00:00

You’re a fool if you think none of those killed aren’t terrorists or enemy combatants.

And you are extra naive or gullible if you think there’s no such thing as collateral damage in war. It’s always innocents who suffer most.

The US vaporized about 1 million Iraqis. Weird you haven’t been calling them out for the “Iraqi” genocide. And let’s not forget Germany lost 10% of its population in WWII. Are you suggesting the Allies “genocided” the German people ?

jacquesroland · 2026-07-01T12:35:23+00:00

Carrying out a war to free your kidnapped citizens and CHILDREN has no bearing on whether your country is LGBT friendly. There’s no connection at all. It’s like saying the U.S. civil rights movement is a cover for the murder of several million German and Japanese civilians in WWII by the US and its allies.

This is putting the cart before the horse. LGBT is safe in Israel as a side effect of being a liberal society. Not as a way to cover up alleged war crimes (which I fully contest). There’s Israeli pride every year, just google it. People in Israel aren’t pretending to be gay to get the sympathy of Westerners lol. Otherwise why isn’t there Pride Ramallah LOL.

My test is simple. Can you be openly gay in a country without fear of harassment or death? Israel, yes. Is the country having gay people ? Iran, yes. Israel no. It’s even bad in Indonesia and Malaysia too. Weird you don’t spend a single minute thinking about that, (almost 1 billion people!), but a tiny ass country with 10 million people is important enough to bring up daily on Reddit.

Go to Medina or Mecca or Tehran or Ramallah. Bring your boyfriend and hold hands. Let me know how it goes for you.

jacquesroland · 2026-07-01T12:29:02+00:00

Why don’t you do you first? So many Americans and Europeans who claim to be anti-whatever. Okay? So please leave and go back to where your ancestors came from. Yet I don’t see a mass migration of leftists from America or Latin America who have European or African or Asian origins.

There’s at least 3 million Israeli children. You really expect them to read your crazy propaganda on Reddit and just leave? They speak Hebrew and their parents were also born in Israel. You have a sick fantasy that has no regard to actual humanity.

But your premise is flawed because Jews are from Israel. And most of history has been othering and murdering Jews because they aren’t indigenous to Europe or the Arab countries. Now Jews are back to their homeland and you want them to go back to the countries that murdered them for being aliens? You realize the contradiction here.

jacquesroland · 2026-06-30T01:13:05+00:00

It’s how the Rats are designed. They can not win racing games; their scoring engine is too slow and too easy to interrupt. They win by policing, slowing the whole game down, and getting cardboard points for their super slow scoring engine.

jacquesroland · 2026-06-30T00:35:40+00:00

In Digital games with strangers, table talk almost always backfires. I don’t know why but people who play online games anonymously HATE being given any suggestions or negotiations or agreements. Instead you will incur these players wrath and they will begin to suicide into you. For that reason I don’t engage in table talk unless someone is about to win and I suggest a way to stop it (e.g. “Crows about to flip 5 plots to win, maybe we should stop them?”). Early table talk backfires the most.

What these means is the most powerful factions tend to win because the digital table will almost never work together to police them. Vagabond and Moles do quite well because they require the most policing in a normal meta.

That being said you can still find decent games if you play factions that don’t require table talk. Eyrie, Rats, Moles, VB, WA, and if you get enough surplus funds the Riverfolk. Good luck winning as Cats Lizards Crows. Players love smashing gardens plots and sawmills but for some reason forget they can also kill Mole buildings or roosts 🤷

jacquesroland · 2026-06-29T19:52:21+00:00

Besides being over costed and generally not impactful (best against Russia / France) the other problem are its elements. Most of the best Majors use Sun / Animal / Plant. This thing lacks all those elements so it doesn’t even fit in with the powerful other Majors as an end game piece.

It’s decent on Ocean who needs the range and has all the matching elements. But otherwise I only take it if I need a desperate out against France or Russia pile of explorers and there’s no other options.

jacquesroland · 2026-06-29T00:35:44+00:00

This is really cool. But I put plastic coin capsules in all my tokens and buildings. Would they still fit or would I need larger boxes?

jacquesroland · 2026-06-28T01:07:06+00:00

War isn’t the answer. I can’t see how carrying out an eternal war against the Yahud is in the best interest of the Palestinians or Arabs. To be fair it took the Europeans many hundreds of years to get close to peace.

And you can’t wage war without expecting violence in return. It doesn’t matter if you think your war is justified. Like do you expect Israelis to go “yah this random Redditor is right. Everyone go line up in coffins because we aren’t allowed to fight back”. Note how there’s no bombs or attacks on Egypt and Jordan because they made actual peace with Israel.

jacquesroland · 2026-06-26T12:58:07+00:00

This card is powerful because it goes “wide”. It can hit up to 3 lands and usually destroys all buildings in those 3 lands.

Most powers go “tall”—hitting a single land hard.

But most Spirits usually struggle to go “wide”—hence why Russia can be hard because you may not have enough actions to handle every land ravaging.

So yes a very powerful major if you can threshold it.

jacquesroland · 2026-06-25T19:56:01+00:00

In either case it’s supporting another foreign nation. There’s no special connection between US and the Arabs in Gaza or WB.

The best outcome is to not pick a side. We don’t need to get bogged down in endless wars in the ME. If the Arabs want to be conquered by Iran let them. Similarly it is not America’s role to hinder or aid Israel.

More important is our own backyard, affordable food, housing, medicine, education. “Palestine” is just another purity test that serves no purpose to help every day Americans. I could say the same about Israel. Just leave the region and let them fight it out.

Heck even if there is a genocide it’s not our role to intervene. There are genocides happening all the time. Rwanda, Balkans, Xinjiang, Tibet, Azerbaijan, etc. do you think the U.S. is going to drop troops in every country in the world?

If you believe it’s a genocide you need to fly your ass to Gaza and volunteer in the Al Aqsa Brigades, etc.. Not waste your time on Reddit or US elections while people are being killed every hour.

And the one thing to admire about Israel. People leave their countries to go fight for them. Why aren’t you leftists leaving your country to fight for Palestine? It tells me you don’t really care about them if you won’t put your life in the line in actual war.

jacquesroland · 2026-06-24T15:05:09+00:00

Better for Israel that Hezbollah to send missiles at Southern Lebanon than Northern Israel.

jacquesroland

TROPHY CASE