Yesterday we played a four-players-game and I‘ve seen one of the nastiest combinations that could be considered.

The Uthuk-player started with Red Scorpion and the lost city tactic card (in fact, he had two of them, but that doesn‘t matter for this thread).

Using Red Scorpions special ability to move up to four areas, he could have immediately built a stronghold in front of an other player‘s home realm. (Moreover, if he had used the strategize-order in spring to move Red Scorpion one space, he would have been able to build that stronghold even IN another player‘s home realm.)

The Uthuks player considered to do so for a minute, but then he decided otherwise and played a more defensive strategy. However, I think he could have taken out a player who had a bad start (especially as he had some other really nasty tactic cards: One gave him one chaos lord for free, the last one was „summon lightning“ – pretty perfect to establish and to defend a stronghold on enemy territory.).

I think this starting combination „Red Scorpion with lost city“ is devastating. All you have to do is to look out which player has the worst start – and then you capitalize from his weak starting position and take him out. If you garrison his most-needed area (the one with the best resources) with your free stronghold, immediately recruiting troups there and using all the nasty tactic cards you have, this won‘t be too hard.

In all games I‘ve played yet, the Uthuks first turns set the course the entire game would take FOR ALL fractions. This does not mean the Uthuks did win, but in all games I‘ve seen they had such a powerful start (because of their tactic cards) that dominated the direction the entire game did take. In fact, the other players always did just react (directly or indirectly) on the Uthuks initial advance for the first few years.

I‘ve read some threads on BGG that considered the Uthuks to be an ill-concepted fraction who‘s best side is their dominance in big-army end-game battles, but I think that‘s not true. My experiences say that the Uthuk‘s favor is to have a powerful game start and to take a key-role in the early part of the game.

Remember, of course, that you cannot build strongholds in another players starting territoryyou can only hold the area with units.

And I would caution against playing around too much with the text options when postingmakes it hard to read, and even harder to use the "Quote" function on the board.

bcwMD said:

That's not correct. Of course it is possible to build a stronghold in another players home realm, it's even in the FAQ:

“Players always control areas in their home realm unless enemy units or an enemy stronghold is present.”

But having read the tactic cards wording again, I recognized that it is not possible to play the "lost city" in an enemies home realm as this card can only be triggered in uncontrolled areas. But building such a stronghold right in front of such a homerealm at the start of the game should be nasty enough.