# What are your board game strategies? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 16, 2003, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-board-game-strategies/195496 "2003-08-16T00:03:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2003, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-board-game-strategies/195496/41 "2003-08-19T03:19:25Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Podkayne \* > \*\*If I may offer some advice, your strategy is too static. Focus on brick and wood in the early game, with an eye to swarming onto rock and wheat hexes as the game progress. Use roads to block people from taking your rock and wheat spaces if you can (easier in a 3-player game than in a crowded 4-player game.) Nab brick and/or wood harbors, also, and those brick and wood hexes will pay off the whole game. > > Do not worry about sheep. Exception: If you can get a monopoly on sheep, DO IT. People will trade ridiculous things for sheep if they’re desperate. > > Everyone likes sheep. Sheep say baa.\*\* Well obviously, the only constant as far as placements are concerned is that you want the resources that nobody else has. It’s my general experience that newbies tend to focus too heavily on brick and wood because they believe that fast expansion is a must. If I had to choose between building a new settlement early and building a city early, I would choose the city. My reasoning is that if a number that your city is on get rolled heavily while everybody else has only settlements, your sheer advantage in terms of cards quickly becomes overwhelming, and you can either use ports or trade two-to-one to get whatever resource you don’t have. There are exceptions of course. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-board-game-strategies/195496.md?page=2)