Cyril Demaegd: Strategic Advice for Assyria

Editor’s note: Ystari Games’ Cyril Demaegd offers advice on the company’s Spiel 09 release, Emanuele Ornella’s Assyria. If you’ve yet to play the game, you can download the rules in three languages – – which will make the following article far more comprehensible!]

Assyria is a subtle game. Even if it’s smooth and easy to understand, it requires a lot of tactical and strategic subtlety, and you’ll frequently have to deal with crucial choices to develop your tribe. By overcoming these difficulties, you’ll be able to compete for first place, and it is the goal of this article to help you choose wisely what to do when you play your first game...and subsequent ones!

As a complement to this article, you’ll find pieces of player-made advice on the net; I particularly recommend Thomas Cauet’s ”A la carte” – here are the Assyria-specific links – as Thomas helped us test the game in the first place.

Turn order: The first choice you’ll have to make in the game pertains to the turn order; to master Assyria, you must be able to juggle skillfully with it. Indeed, opting for first place allows you to position yourself on the board before your opponents and seize the areas which are essential to your strategy. However, if you play first, you generally have access to fewer goods and so, clinging to the first place is a bad idea as your huts are going to be disappearing massively from the board. The last places shouldn’t be neglected either because they allow you to “catch your breath” by yielding more goods. What is more, being the last player in the last turn of a reign allows you to control Assur and score points while spending fewer camels.

Goods: Obviously, goods are essential to your survival. Even if the object of the game isn’t to own as many huts as possible on the board, the worst mistake is to lack foresight! Good players will be able to keep cards between one turn and the next to ensure the tribe’s subsistence. For this you must remember that you choose the order in which you spend your cards; consequently you can play a joker or a plow earlier in the turn to “salvage” double or triple goods. What is more, redundant cards are powerful since they allow you to ensure some huts will survive for two turns. Finally, don’t forget to save a few camels to buy the goods that remain after the harvest or to buy your plow back if you feel the next turn is going to be tricky. The surplus of goods will be particularly useful for those who will play in first place.

Expansion: The expansion phase of the turn is essential to the development of play on the field, especially after a flood since that is the moment when you’ll have to redeploy your huts. Expansion 4 on the first turn allows you to place lots of huts on the board, but also to make the most of the nomadic aspect of the game. Thus you can place a hut knowing perfectly well that it won’t survive but that it will grant you access to an important hexagon (for instance, the second river). Conversely, expansion 2 is penalizing for players who haven’t settled much on the board as they’ll have to curb their ambitions for the turn. So, you must anticipate when these cards are going to come into play since in any game, all the cards but one come into play at some point or another and their distribution is known.

Huts: In Assyria huts, unlike ziggurats, are tactical elements, so your goal isn’t to have as many huts as possible on the board on a permanent basis but to make the good ones last by playing Food cards properly. To use your huts well, you must determine what your priorities are – which huts can be “sacrificed”, which huts must last – in order to obtain a good balance between your victory points and your camels.

Wells: Wells are an “easy” access to victory points in the short term. At the beginning of the game, they make for a lightning fast start, but there’s a cost: Wells hamper the development of ziggurats (which can’t be built on wetland) and are very expensive. (You need three different Food cards to feed the huts that allow you to place a well.) If you take advantage of the arrangement of the board, you can build wells massively over several turns (or even in one turn). For instance, by ensuring that two of the three huts that allowed the construction of a well survive, you have a firm basis to place a second well on a position mirroring the first. Once again, this tactic is fruitful as far as points are concerned, but it’s expensive in terms of goods and it makes the placing of ziggurats more difficult.

Camels: Camels are the currency of the game since Assyrians had no monetary system. They are the driving force behind every strategy. At each turn, we advise you to place at least one hut on a river (3 camels) or you’ll helplessly watch other players develop. Of course you can keep camels from one turn to the next, for instance if you want to make sure that you have six camels available to build a ziggurat. Camels are used for everything; having a good stock allows players to reshape their strategies according to the circumstances of the turn.

Flood: Floods are turning points in the game, and players who don’t apprehend these turning points properly will fall behind in their development. Given that huts placed on the rivers are removed each time a flood occurs, players will redeploy in the next turn if they have enough goods to meet requirements. The turns preceding the floods must be played with caution. Being left with no goods at the end of these turns is risky.

The favor of the gods: The favor of the gods is a particularly profitable source of points. For instance, a single camel yields one to four points according to the number of ziggurats you’ve built (counting incomplete ones). Plus, with a second camel, you double this total of points! Of course, the next step (x3) is more expensive, but you have two to three turns (depending on the reign) to reach it. Finally, for the last step (x4), you must spend seven camels. You can’t reach it in less than three turns (since you can’t advance by more than three steps per turn), so you need to anticipate and spend camels at each turn of the reign to reach 16 points at most (4 ziggurats x4). Interesting indeed!

Assur: Like the favor of the gods, Assur offers a substantial number of points which differs from one player to another. Between direct gains and bonuses granted by the various dignitaries, the extra points may be vital (especially for players who have few ziggurats). However, the points gained in Assur are but a strategic supplement; monopolizing the first places won’t yield enough points to win the game. Why? Assur is very expensive, and the points it grants are insufficient on their own. So don’t run out of camels to buy yourself a place that is insecure. Try to control Assur, either through an aggressive placing strategy at the beginning of a reign to dishearten your opponents or by playing with the turn order at the end of a reign.

Dignitaries: Apart from the points offered by the expansion, Assur also grants interesting bonuses through its dignitaries. So, the higher dignitary is a formidable source of points; thanks to him, you’ll not only secure a good place in the race for majority, but you’ll gain a maximum of eight bonus points if you manage to seize all the spaces. (Doing so, however, will cost you eight camels.) This dignitary is interesting for players who have few ziggurats and who will naturally be looking for supplements of points at the end of the game. The other two dignitaries offer a particularly interesting “return on investment.” The middle dignitary allows the player to get his Plow card back at the end of a flood, which means saving two camels while preparing the next reign. (However, if you keep your Plow before the flood occurs, you won’t take advantage of this bonus.) The last dignitary yields a little camel per hut which will help you to start the next reign on the right foot.

Strategies: The strategy of the game wholly depends on the number of ziggurats built by the players during the game. Winning the game without building a single ziggurat apart from the one you get at the start of the game is extremely difficult. So I advise you to build at least one ziggurat as soon as possible in order to make the most of the income it yields at each turn. Strategies with two, three or four ziggurats are all possible but must be carried out differently: a player with two ziggurats must find extra points in Assur or through wells, whereas a player with four ziggurats will be more interested in gaining the favor of the gods. Owning three ziggurats is obviously a mixed option.

However, you should never take anything for granted in this game, and it would be a mistake to think you’re safe because you follow a given configuration. Never hesitate to question your strategy following the other players’ decisions and you’ll be playing to win. Have fun!

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