Arthur B.
United States
Ohio
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I received Terra Nova as a gift for attending the 3rd anniversary celebration for BOGA, a local gaming group. This report is on my second play of the game, a two player session with my girlfriend, Dee. I took yellow, while Dee was red.
I had only a vague strategy for the initial placement of my settlers; I thought that by placing them in a loose ring around the center of the board, I would have maximum flexibility for taking control of territories. However, watching how Dee was concentrating her settlers made me a little nervous, so I made sure to put a couple of my pieces in the corners near where she was building up her forces.
My initial plan was to seal off and capture the desert in the southeast, making sure that it contained only the desert terrain to build up an insurmountable lead. While I was spending turn after turn carefully establishing my borders, Dee took a more modest approach and walled off a small forest territory in the northeast virtually unopposed, scoring a quick 15 points. This left her in a position to claim even more territory, and I knew that if I didn’t put my desert plan on the back burner and engage, I would soon be left behind.
So, I began to maneuver my settlers in an attempt to hinder her mobility and block off the ideal placement of border stones, especially in the eastern half of the board, where she had a good head start. I made such a nuisance of myself, she abandoned her efforts in that half of the board to create a territory in the woods to the northwest. I meddled a little in the placement of her borders to keep her attention focused there, buy my real objective was in claiming the vast grasslands in the northeast. I had three settlers in the area working to extend the border while covering any other terrain types. I was then able to move the third settler out of the territory and use him to seal it from the outside, which allowed me to claim the entire territory with only two settler’s against Dee’s one. I had finally taken the lead!
As the game was went on, we wrangled a little in the east, but the territories were either low scoring or shared. I finally claimed the desert after Dee abandoned the area, but I wasn’t paying close enough attention when I sealed it off, because while counting up the hexes, I noticed that my border enclosed three types of terrain, not two, cutting its value in half. Dee made a strong push to acquire the southwestern swamplands, and I was in a poor position to contest her. However, she paid dearly for her territory, as I was able to trap two more of her settler’s against the border they helped to create, taking them off the map while only giving her four additional points.
I was left with an overwhelming majority in settlers, and wanted to end the game quickly, before Dee could regroup. The remaining area contained four types of terrain, one too many to form a territory, however, there were only a three hexes of mountains. While Dee tried to create a new territory for her remaining settlers, I moved to cover up the last of the mountain hexes, creating a vast three-terrain territory in which I had the majority, sealing my victory.
After action report: Since I have only played this game a couple of times, I can’t claim to be any sort of expert, but I have observed that it is to your advantage to eliminate as many of your opponents settler’s from the board as possible, even if you have to help them score to do it. Making them overpay for their points leaves you at a distinct advantage as the game goes on. I am very interested in playing with more than two players, I can imagine that it would greatly change the dynamics of the game to have to maneuver against more than one opponent.
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Jason Novak
United States
Cleveland
Ohio
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Nice report! Also, I got it for free at Underhill's, too!
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