Building - Initial Exposure:
Building has a number of intricacies, and mostly comes down to a tradeoff between the immediate cost of placing a block against the expected discount in points accrued over the course of the game. Lets start with the former. The immediate cost of placing a block largely comes down to where the chieftain currently is on the board. If he is likely to visit incriminating squares soon then this cost will be high. If you can move him on your turn such that it is impossible for him to give you points in the next turn cycle, this cost may be lower or zero. To an extent this also depends on your next piece, in as much as being able to block a particularly egregious brick on your next turn (before a visit from the chieftain) may make it the optimal long term play.Building - Long Term Exposure:
Moving on to the expected discount over the course of a game, this metric asks the question of how many points you expect to expose each time the chieftain visits over the duration of the game. By way of an example, consider the first block placed at the start of the game. While the initial cost is high (see above), it is almost certain that the block placed next turn by your opponent will cover up one or more of its faces. In fact, by the time you get to place your next coloured block it may be completely hidden from the prying eyes of the chieftain. This is what makes a first turn play in the centre better than a similar one at the edge of the board. It also takes into account the remaining duration of the game. The first block on level one receives more weighting here than the first block placed on level three by virtue of the fact that the game only has a few turns left (compounded by the final check by the chieftain). The increase in points awarded as the pueblo gets taller has the nice effect of making later turns important (because they matter more than early ones) without making the first levels feel pointless.
Block Placement Order:
The way that the blocks are available to place has a few interesting properties. Initially, new players tend to fall into the trap of placing beige blocks first, in the belief that covering up exposed block faces sooner will benefit them. Then comes the realisation after their first game that this strategy falls down when they come to the final turn of the game and there are no good placement spots left. Now they do not have an opportunity to correct this inevitable bad placement and the game punishes this by having the chieftain make his final circuit. The next time they play they exclusively use their coloured blocks first, which is *almost* always correct. One fact that players often tend to realise after a few times playing the game is that being the first player to place on a new level is advantageous. For the price of a few points while your block is exposed, everyone else has to place around you and cover up the block you placed. What doesn't click is the connection between this and block placement order. Maybe it *is* optimal to place a common block this turn so that next turn, when the current level is all filled out, one can place the first block on the next level. It may well feel sub-par but the last places on levels one and two are often at the edges, which can never be covered up, as opposed to those at the beginning of a new level.
The Chieftain:
Oft mentioned in the above paragraphs, the chieftain is one of the more interesting game mechanics. I say he - it feels odd to have a gendered blob of molded plastic - but that is how the instruction manual refers to him/it/*whatever*. Anyway, by making it the players choice how far to advance him it introduces a whole extra game theory aspect to the turn cycle. The "If I move him here then the next player moves him there because they are trying to beat another opponent" lines are interesting and introduce a nice element of unknowable information which keeps the game fresh after a few plays. What really makes the chieftain stand out, however, is the fact that he is an amazing catch up mechanic. Think about it - by letting players choose who to screw over, the player in the lead will almost certainly accrue more points than if the chieftain had been moved by a die roll. That said, he doesn't actually impact the game in a meaningful way (the difference he makes is rarely enough to swing a victory), but he is a very visible way for players to feel like they can even the score.Put another way, the chieftain bunches up the players such that the scores appear closer than they are before the final pass is taken into account. Each player, regardless of their skill feels like they can win at this point, which is an amazing achievement on the part of the designers. The finals scores will still reflect the skill of the players, and everyone is happy. All in all this is an excellent game, and I hope this short analysis begins to cover some of the deeper strategies that emerge during play.
