Tips elongo

Completing land enclosures:

When claiming a parcel of land, try to place your warrior or boy on the central portion of the shield rather than either of the two sides. That is because the sides of the shields often end up in bomas, and then you will be forced to take your warrior or boy back

Only one boy or warrior can be on one land parcel. Stealing the other player’s parcels of land is not that hard, just claim a parcel of the same colour that can be joined to the other player’s parcel with one further shield to make a large parcel. Both men (yours and your opponents) will be taken off and that now gives you the chance to claim the larger parcel.

If your opponent has claimed a large land parcel then it is sometimes possible to block it from ever being completed by laying one or more shields that mean the opponent cannot lay a shield to enclose it. It takes practice to spot these opportunities, but they are easier to see when there is an area of play where the shields can be laid in an area that looks concave.

Count the number of shields that you have to lay to enclose a land parcel that you control. Try to make sure that the total is no more than three or preferably less.

If you lay a shield but decide that was not quite what you want to achieve, it is easy to press on any shield of the same shape (i.e. wide or narrow) in your stock to see if that produces a better result rather than immediately remove the shield and start again. If none of the combinations produce what you want, then you can remove it and try something else.

Try to make sure green and yellow land enclosures completed early in the game have at least 4 animals in them. You have only 7 boys and 28 animals to place. Do the math!

Bear in mind that there are fewer red patches than green or yellow and only 4 warriors to claim them, and that the warriors can also build bomas. Hence a warrior guarding an enclosure of 3 or fewer zebu created early in the game is not likely to be efficient.

Having said that, it is probably worthwhile trying to construct a red land enclosure with space for at least 5 zebu as relying on warriors to build only bomas is unlikely to allow you to place all 14 of your zebu given that most games are complete in two rounds. If you completed eight 3-animal bomas in those two rounds, that is only 24 animals placed out of 42.

Be very careful when building larger land parcels, as they can become quite hard to complete, and they can easily be stolen or blocked. A large land parcel is one that already has space for 6 animals.

Sometimes it helps to place one of your own shields to extend your opponent’s land parcel, if it means that the opponent needs to place more shields to enclose it than they did before you laid the shield.

Bomas:

It is very easy to complete bomas, normally with two shields, but sometimes with one. Good play suggests that you should aim to complete at least three bomas per round.

For obvious reasons, it is invariably better to complete a boma that will shelter 5 animals that one that shelters 4, and better one that shelters 4 than one that shelters 3.

Keep an eye on the animals that you still need to place when completing bomas, as they are very handy if you have say, just one or two left to place, as you can normally make sure the colour of the land patches in the boma correspond exactly to the correct number of animals you still need to place

If you have no warriors left in a round, you can still complete the boma shape to stop your opponent completing it on their next turn.

Keep an eye out for super-bomas. These are bomas that surround other bomas. Completing one usually gives you a chance to lay up to 10 animals or more.

You can easily frustrate an opponent’s chances to complete them by laying a shield that makes such shapes harder to achieve (need more shields to complete).

If you spot a super-boma opportunity take it! Invariably, it is a game-winning move.

It is possible to create mega-bomas that surround super-bomas and although these are rare it is worth keeping an eye out for the opportunities.

If you can see it takes three shields to create the super-boma, then make sure you do not lay a shield or two shields as this will allow the opponent to complete it on their next turn. Better to wait to see if the opponent lays a shield in the area as then you can pounce on the opportunity.