I’ve never seen anyone doing 80+, the only person claiming to easily do a 90 on bgg turned out to be mistaken or smth, I don’t remember. 60-80 is more than doable. The main idea is: 1) gardeners earlier, 2) courtiers combined with samurai later 3) you need to put out at least 12 meeples, meaning that every 3 turns you put at least 4. If you don’t - dig for combos and never go for 2 “empty” turns. It’s fine to spend a turn on resources if you really get a lot of them, but then you need to place 2 meeples each turn. You should always take a starting lantern card with additional decree card and then go for lantern and always search for powerful combos. Never accumulate money, they mean nothing. Never take a well explicitly, only from the cards you activate. Almost never use 1 iron samurai space, it doesn’t initiate a combo. 5 iron samurai are the best, tbh. And me personally I never care about moving the courtiers up or gaining influence, that doesn’t really matter, though I might be wrong. Some posters on bgg advice to keep your starting personal pad card as long as possible, what means neglecting moving the courtiers from the gate, I’m not sure if that’s viable, though starting personal pad cards are really good. Good luck in searching for combos, I would be glad to see deep strategy dive from you.
Wow, you've put a lot of thought here! 80 does seem like a tough score to get to, but I'm hopeful that I'll have a really excellent play one day. I'll try to get 12 meeples out next time. I think I only got 9-10 last game. It's a tough puzzle, for sure.
Thanks! Still getting my RU-vid legs under me, but I do enjoy it and hope that my structure is at least a little different from the other wonderful creators out there. Thanks for watching!
