Chaos Magicians - Introductory Faction Strategy - Terra Mystica

Summary

In the world of Terra Mystica, navigating the Chaos Magicians faction requires understanding their unique strengths and strategies. The key to playing Chaos Magicians successfully lies in leveraging their powerful temples and sanctuaries that offer double favors. Despite their precarious start with only one dwelling, these magicians have the potential to grow powerful by choosing the right spots to settle, wisely selecting favors, and strategically expanding their territory. Players should keep in mind that their ability to play effectively is significantly influenced by neighboring factions, making the Chaos Magicians' game plan uniquely adaptable yet complex.

Highlights

• Chaos Magicians should focus on building temples and sanctuaries as their primary strategy. 🎯🏯
• Starting with just one dwelling, Chaos Magicians have a risky but rewarding growth potential. 🌱
• The strategic choice of settling locations, especially D4, can make or break your game. 🌍
• In face of Nomads or Engineers, adapt your strategy to avoid being bottlenecked. ⚠️
• Playing Chaos Magicians requires adaptability due to their sensitivity to neighboring factions. 🔄

Key Takeaways

• Chaos Magicians thrive on temples and sanctuaries due to double favors. 🕌✨
• Starting with one dwelling is risky but rewarding once you expand. 🚀
• Avoid relying too much on the stronghold; temples and sanctuaries are key. 🚫🏰
• Choosing the right starting location, like D4, is crucial. 🎯
• Playing without color neighbors enhances their network strength. 🌀

Overview

Chaos Magicians in Terra Mystica offer a thrilling gameplay experience rooted in strategic planning and adaptability. The primary strategy revolves around maximizing the benefits from temples and sanctuaries, each granting two favors. This unique advantage allows players to tailor their approach based on the available cults and economic needs, forging a path to success through smart favor selection and cunning expansion moves.

Starting with a mere one dwelling forces players into a high-risk, high-reward scenario. The key initial moves involve expanding carefully but efficiently from the starting hex, usually D4, while avoiding over-reliance on the stronghold. This approach ensures a competitive edge, balancing economic stability with aggressive territory acquisition to outmaneuver opponents.

However, the presence of troublesome factions like Nomads and Engineers can greatly influence the Chaos Magicians' strategies. Avoiding direct competition and choosing the right opponents is critical, as it affects expansion potential and cult competition. With mindful planning and awareness of these dynamics, Chaos Magicians can assert dominance on the board, capitalizing on their powerful early-game moves and versatility.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 10:00: Chaos Magicians Overview The chapter titled 'Chaos Magicians Overview' begins with a focus on the important aspects of Chaos Magic (CM), hinting at a positive perspective. The chapter explores what makes CM significant and possibly delves into its core principles or the unique characteristics that distinguish it from other forms of magic or spiritual practices. However, the transcript of the chapter is incomplete, therefore specific details and insights regarding CM are not entirely revealed in this summary.
• 10:00 - 20:00: Starting Strategies The chapter 'Starting Strategies' emphasizes the strategic importance of obtaining favors when building temples or sanctuaries in the game. Although this advantage might initially appear minor, it is actually quite powerful due to the high return on investment these structures provide. Additionally, the strategy of starting with only one dwelling is highlighted. This approach is described as risky but implies significant strategic decisions to maximize the potential benefits of temples and sanctuaries.
• 20:00 - 30:00: Expansion and Networking This chapter delves into the initial challenges and potentials of expansion and networking. It discusses how start-ups might face unstable initial phases but can eventually gain significant power if they continue to move forward strategically. Emphasis is placed on the importance of making smart decisions early on, particularly regarding resources like the stronghold, which new players often underestimate. Despite appearing adequate, the stronghold is outshined by other structures like the temple and sanctuary, which provide considerable benefits by offering two favors each. The chapter urges players to consider these dynamics to exploit opportunities effectively and enhance their strategic position.

Chaos Magicians - Introductory Faction Strategy - Terra Mystica Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 [Music] so the most important thing to note uh uh about CM on the positive side is that
• 00:30 - 01:00 they get two favors whenever they do a temple or Sanctuary that might sound like a small thing it's super super interesting and you know is actually really really powerful so they get amazing return on doing temples and on doing sanctuaries the other really really critical thing about them is they get only one dwelling to start uh at the beginning of the game so that means that it's like very sort of risky you know
• 01:00 - 01:30 their start is often a little precarious their expansion is a little precarious but if they can get going they can be really powerful um so we'll unpack that a little bit the uh stronghold um new players mostly ignore the stronghold you you you shouldn't um build it too much it kind of looks like it's okay and it it's not a horrendous building the real problem is that the temple and um Sanctuary are just so so good because they give two favors each that and um
• 01:30 - 02:00 and that the stronghold is sort of at the opportunity C cost of that this um this special action that you get means if you take that you get to do two actions in a row so it's kind of sounds fun but um mostly you should try particularly early on you should try playing um chaos magicians without the stronghold by far the most common starting place for cm is D4 um this just you know is a really
• 02:00 - 02:30 nice spot you know E6 D5 C3 you know there tends to be a lot of upgrading around D4 and it's sort of in the middle of the map and particularly the key being can they get E7 if they can get E7 and then E8 that like D4 is like no-brainer generally D4 should be your default um starting spot and then from there you're sort of trying to get to A6 maybe dig D3 um but really cutting through here is is the
• 02:30 - 03:00 key um the other spot that I like the second most common spot that I would consider is D7 D7 especially if you're going to see black on E10 and green on E9 sometimes you can get um a lot of power around one from D7 you have uh D6 on one ship maybe you can start on temp shipping I've done this where you start on temporary shipping and you actually are digging C5 and B5 build b b or excuse me B6 build B6 and D6 and even leave C5 and a12 empty and Temple and
• 03:00 - 03:30 then you can build these ones round two that's something you can do with um ECM but definitely in general D4 is going to be your most likely um starting spot most of the time you'll be on that hex okay so temples are amazing for chaos magicians so we definitely want to be doing at least a temple in round one so we we will have six workers there goes four of our workers to make sure
• 03:30 - 04:00 we're templ so that's two for the Trading Post two for the temple we're going to grab two favors and in general the the most standard um favors to choose between for year two are Earth One fire one Earth 2 Air 2 those are like the standard um favors and then um I'll come back to that decision and then ideally like let's say you're a you know on dig scroll then um that's a great first
• 04:00 - 04:30 scroll if you can for example get that gray in the middle of the board that's next to your starting hex if you can dig scroll that and then in a real dream world maybe you're even taking the single dig power action and getting also the E8 yellow so you're opening temple two new dwellings that's that's a very very dreamy um round one for chaos um but even if you're just getting one of these you know single dig or dig scroll with a temple and that's a that's a
• 04:30 - 05:00 really solid first round um and if you're doing that you might consider you know fire one and Air 2 since you're getting kind of some worker production going but in general in thinking about the decision between these favors I would focus on and and this is I'd say this is one of the most fun things about chaos is like this mix and match of like each time you Temple or Sanctuary like which two favors am I going to try to grab and how do I use those to get cult rewards Etc and how do I use those to
• 05:00 - 05:30 rebalance my economy um and that's sort of really fun so all of these are are totally reasonable picks and part of it is that I'd say in sort of vanilla um chaos magicians play is if you're going to do this Temple dwellings opening you're looking to do the sanctuary in round two or round three or a second temple in round two or round three and probably grabbing the other two favors listed here that you haven't grabbed yet
• 05:30 - 06:00 and so in some of it is like okay which of these two am I going to take in round one and which two am I going to take in round two right is like is a common way of thinking about chaos magicians now part of what makes uh okay okay so that the other like really common good opening is sanctuary opening on the one hand it's weird right because you're starting on one spot and so you're going to go through round one and not put any new dwellings down feels pretty bizarre on the other hand you you can grab your nice collector set of four
• 06:00 - 06:30 favors in round one have kind of a little bit of everything a scoring tool coin income power income now worker income or at least you have base one worker and and and so now you have Earth two and that keeps you going and so that's kind of like a little bit of everything and it's just kind of pretty strong right and so as long as you can open sanctuary and then expand in round two this is like a really really nice way to start the other thing that's kind of cool about this is if you're taking four
• 06:30 - 07:00 favors all in round one um and this is this is kind of the case if you're going to Sanctuary round two also when you're picking which other two you might want to take is you can also consider water two you could replace any of those four sort of standard chaos magicians favors with a water two that might you know like one example is if it's Earth if its Earth digs round one will chaos start with two steps on none on Earth but if you're taking Earth two Earth one then
• 07:00 - 07:30 taking a water two favor along with those you can put that step round one on earth and be at the fourth step right so you can kind of see like sometimes mixing water two into your favorite choices makes a lot of sense because it can combine with the other ones you're taking to help you reach certain key thresholds um on the Cults it also lets you just um you know commit to being a bit more culty in that game in general so that's how I would think about chaos
• 07:30 - 08:00 so to open Sanctuary you know of course you'd love to be on the big building scroll because you just need two more workers to open Sanctuary um and a couple coins so being on that scroll is great because you'd score with it and it gives you the workers but you can also take the worker power action over here and open Sanctuary that way and I you know hopefully get the coins action as well um but also chaos magicians are happy to start on a priest for example and put that to cult and use those those called steps in combinations with the
• 08:00 - 08:30 favors they're taking um to reach key thresholds right so they have some different options double Dig's tricky for them to use because they're only on one spot and so usually they're not a double digging faction and it's really about okay getting things going grabbing favors and cool combinations for you know cult rewards and and scoring potential and then uh you know getting those four favors in some combination between rounds one and two sometimes three and then getting those dwellings out
• 08:30 - 09:00 so one of the things that makes um chaos magicians kind of interesting to play is we said you know usually you're on this D4 hex well because they only start on one place there's a little bit of like there's this uh sort of uh frantic feeling of playing chaos magicians which is if I don't if I don't spread out from here am I going to get royally like screwed or super stuck in one spot so you have this like feeling of like is this going to work out is this going to
• 09:00 - 09:30 work out and so the trick is that you need to think about grabbing those four favors as fast as possible but then also getting dwellings out as quickly as possible and so those are basically the two things you want to be thinking about in the first three rounds so whe maybe you Sanctuary on D4 like we said or you're going to single dig or dig scroll E7 round one and Temple on D4 but either way you're probably going to then Sanctuary do a second temple to get the
• 09:30 - 10:00 other two favors and or you're G to grab E8 as quickly as possible and so that you can ship to D6 and ship to D7 once you get here with favors if you can get to this position with the four favors in hand from two temples or from a sanctuary you're golden like this is now basically guaranteed to be a good chaos magicians game um the issue is and and so you know if dwell in scoring is round two trying
• 10:00 - 10:30 to hit that sequence in round two is totally good or you can sanctuary and do that in round three now sometimes you're not going to be able to do this right sometimes if if E7 is for example occupied with a starting placement from Gray the key then is getting to two shipping as quickly as possible getting to A6 and then being able to dig B4 you see this B4 hex here is really really valuable for red when gray is in because if you can get that it opens up A9 it also now lets you cuz we said you're on
• 10:30 - 11:00 two ship get to D6 and potentially then up to a12 gray will probably take D7 before you can get there but you can pressure it but you can just see how much that opens up space um the other thing on two ship is digging D3 and then getting to E3 um and now you know there's a little bit of action maybe you're digging G1 to get to I5 three ship later digging this you know heading into the corner Etc to get get to i1 but you can see that
• 11:00 - 11:30 that's about getting dwellings out right cuz you have to get your worker production going but a a a fair amount of this does not lend itself to towning right like a lot of it is we're scattering dwellings across the board with our ship increases and I do think that's right so you should think about them as you can play the Cults a little bit at the beginning you're taking four favors maybe putting a priest or two to the Cults in either round one or two but then you really like more important already potentially in round two is how
• 11:30 - 12:00 am I getting my ship up to get these dwellings out right so you kind of want to think about cha chaos magicians as playing Cults at the beginning of the game and at the end of the game but not really in the middle um at the end of the game they can do temples and grab like two of those three-step favors and race up the Cults um particularly on fire and water but in the mid game we want to think okay where can we town and so you know the this middle three that we keep talking about is an obvious spot for um
• 12:00 - 12:30 doing a doing a town um or maybe our Sanctuary we're going to like bridge to C2 and we town that way either with E7 or like sometimes they end up having to do something like this um the other common sort of town spot is to do something in the west here right so we said you can get to D3 E3 pretty easily and then you know either E2 or F2 are double digs and this is a single dig and so that's kind of a round six sort of
• 12:30 - 13:00 town that can emerge for chaos magicians and the other one is then sometimes around D7 you can do something with a bridge one way or another where you know sometimes you can do a town up here but um but keep in mind towning is not a strength of chaos magicians there'll be lots of games where you actually just have one town for example um so yeah I think that's the mostly how I would think about about chaos magician sort of like game plans playing out over time um
• 13:00 - 13:30 you can be a bit n pressure Network a bit if you're able to get your dwellings out sufficiently or you can be more culty I would say in general it's easier right to just you know as long as you're getting enough dwellings out that you have worker production it's a little easier to to fight the cult hard but every once in a while they can be pretty expansive too chaos are medium strength in general um but they're very high VAR you know if they have no color neighbor I'd pretty
• 13:30 - 14:00 firmly put them up on the strong side and if they are color sandwiched they're borderline unplayable so that's also a note never put chaos magicians into a game where like there's Nomads and Engineers it's just like it's not going to be fun so one color neighbor they can live with hopefully it's not Nomads um but then you know if no color neighbor all of a sudden they could actually you know get network points maybe still win Cults so they're pretty wide range for them I would say but really fun to
• 14:00 - 14:30 play so um in terms of factors in the setup that will affect uh their strength a lot like one big one is Nomads are like a big big bad guy to chaos magicians because they're your color neighbor and they start on three spots you're only starting on one so if you want to be on D4 as chaos now you know let's say Nomads are on D3 they're
• 14:30 - 15:00 probably on F3 and then they're either on E8 or B4 both of those clog up your space so if Gray's on E7 you know Nomads might be on B4 or um if they're on E8 maybe they get E7 you know chaos will get E7 but Nomads might still uh you know beat you to B4 so chaos against Nomads is really really tricky and you just have to figure out
• 15:00 - 15:30 okay do I play off to a side you know I'm probably going to play really really small footprint um the other thing is Engineers are unfortunate because they'll start E7 um and then they also the the other thing that I really don't like about engineers is they sometimes will take D6 before you can get there and if Gray's in the game you really need to get A6 right you need to be able to get over here so that you can expand more if gray is taking D6 from the East
• 15:30 - 16:00 um before you can get there that like really curbs your expansion now you're really just stuck on the western part of the map dwarves don't threaten D6 as much because yeah they're blocking E7 but their dwarves are going to focus on going south and connecting there um um fakir are also not nearly as bad for chaos as Nomads they only start on two spots and uh you know they have a harder time like you know beating you to
• 16:00 - 16:30 B4 um you know if if they start on E8 or something in in Flight dig D6 to be4 that could be problematic for you but mostly um fikir it takes them a while to get to two range and so you can beat them to a couple key hexes that that keeps you going so um that said chaos magicians are more sensitive like particularly their Network aspirations if they have no color neighbor can definitely be a network faction if they have any color
• 16:30 - 17:00 neighbor they probably won't be a network faction and so that really is a I think they're like when they have no color neighbor it's a really really big swing for them more than it is for um other factions in terms of Scrolls they really want to see big building in the game because they want to go Sanctuary early maybe even round one they really want ship scoring because we want to increase our shipping and they they kind of produce power and coins a little bit better than some of the other fact actions so those are two that you really
• 17:00 - 17:30 um want to see in the game they can be a bit flexible but you know in terms of uh in terms of just in general their strength I think that's what what you're probably looking for um also I ideally there aren't any other um cult factions in the game so let's say no Orin swarmlings or cultist if that's the case then sometimes chaos magicians can do a late swoop on the Cults so invest a little bit early maybe two two key town
• 17:30 - 18:00 in the mid game maybe not and then just focus on expansion and then do temples late for like three steps or a water or two or something that can be kind of nice so they're like a they're they they definitely can be culty um sometimes so that's something to look for if you have very low cult competition that can be nice for chaos when you're ready to get funky with chaos you can try being digging CM so try to get your worker crank worker production cranked up you get a lot of
• 18:00 - 18:30 access to coins um and then end up digging out towns or hitting a dig scoring round hard you could also try doing a dwelling rush off of the temp ship scroll either getting double dig that way or grabbing priest and single dig um that's good fun too pretty rarely will you get a chance to do that but um you know it's definitely a funky thing to to look out for have fun come [Music]
• 18:30 - 19:00 do say come do nothing