Tips daybreak

Game End

To win - Reduce Net Carbon to -1 (this number is located under the world map). Then survive a final crisis round.

Optional: If you have Global or Local "Challenge Cards" Active, their conditions must be met before the game will end.

Understanding Cards

Finding information about a card:

• Clicking on the "?" in the bottom left hand corner of any card will open the website for the game, for the specific card you are curious about. Each page on daybreakgame.org has intricate breakdown of each card, along with real-world applications/explanations. Full list of cards: https://daybreakgame.org/explore-cards
• Hover over a card for a quick explanation. Cards that are "buried/tucked" in a stack can be viewed this way (helpful when you are discarding the top layer of a stack).

Starting cards are based on the country that you play.

Frequency of Use / Keeping Cards Between Rounds

• "Once per turn" effects can be used at the end of a turn AND at the start of the next round.
• You can keep cards in your hand between rounds, which can allow you to gain the effect of a "once per round" card twice before covering it.
• Cards that do not say "once per turn" can either be used multiple times, OR as many times as the card allows for the resources.
• Before ending your turn, ensure that you have used ALL of the effects of your cards! For cards with limited uses, the bottom right-hand side of the card will have a X/X, showing how many card uses / total uses available that round.

Be cautious about keeping cards "for the future" (i.e., beyond the start of the next round). If it can't be activated it will not be helpful and may be more helpful as a tucked card.

Understanding Stacks

There are 5 stacks in a normal game. (There is an "easy" challenge card that allows for a 6th stack).

The top card on each stack is active and it's effects may be utilized. The top card can utilize the symbols of the full stack when activating the card.

• When you place a new card on the top of the stack, the previous card is tucked into the stack and only it's symbols are visible (and usable).
• Don't forget the option to tuck cards from your hand under ("above") your stacks. Playing a card under a stack can provide immediate benefit for the stack. This is not a good strategy if the stack is a "once per round" that you've already collected.
  • Global Projects that indicate a benefit when playing a card with a certain symbol will only trigger when they are played as the top card of the stack.
• If you are planning to cover the top of the stack with another card in hand, play cards onto the top of the stack and try to gain any benefits instead of tucking under immediately.

Plan to dedicate each stack to a separate purpose. i.e. Power Generation, Removing Dirty Energy, Card Draw, etc. Similar types of cards have synergies, so placing the same types of cards on the same stack will help. Spreading cards of different symbols across several stacks can be detrimental for things like "energies - nuclear/wind/power-grid", where more powerful cards will require symbols within your stack to activate.

Depending on your strategy, you may keep the same card on a stack the entire game, i.e., Card Draws that have 2-3 cards drawn per turn, or a card that one that produces one tree per turn.

It is OK to deviate from your original plan. Sometimes it is beneficial to cover cards in a stack to gain the symbols to activate a new card you've received.

Overall Game Strategies

This game is pretty well balanced. You have several different strategies to pursue. Regardless of strategy, use the chat feature to communicate so people are on the same page:

• All players try to reduce emissions as quickly as possibleThis is a "Fast Game" -- If you pursue this strategy, you should try and win in turn 2 or 3. Global Cards - Pick options that don't require tucked cards. Remove 2-3 emissions in round 1. There are "cow" (agriculture) crisis cards, which penalize each player who has cow emissions. In this Strategy stockpiling resilience, combatting/mitigating upcoming crises, oceans / trees generation, and community's in crisis tokens are not a key focus. Communities in Crisis can be thought of as a currency, instead of a goal to keep at 0 across all players. Risks: Each row of communities in crisis(CIC's) diminishes card draw per turn. A lack of resilience can sometimes mean that a crisis round gives enough CIC's to end the game (unlucky!).
• Increase your resilience to be able to take a big hit from the crisis cards, This is a Longer Game method. Have good energy generation (taking care to be nearly always above your energy demand) Take advantage of card draw. As the game advances, you should have more cards in play, which allows for more powerful synergies later on. Even if it seems like you aren't making any progress, the end game should go pretty smoothly Risks: Focusing on mitigating crises instead of reducing emissions can waste cards that could be used.

• Mix of Both Strategies: Most of the time, you will pursue a mix of these two strategies. Ultimately, you need to be able to adapt. It's always good to lower emissions. Drawing more cards gives a better chance of finding useful cards for your situation. Clean Energy R&D (Discard one card to draw 3, keep 1) is useful to see more cards quickly. If there aren't better options for your strategy, pulling from the other strategy can be helpful (e.g., For the fast strategy - getting resilience, planting trees, getting ocean tiles when there isn't a good option to reduce emissions directly). Having one player who goes for a fast game and another one who goes for a slow game will lead to one player getting many drawbacks, and while it's still possible to support them, this is not an ideal situation. At best, you want to reduce emissions to not make the game snowball on you while producing clean energy. Then, increase your resilience to survive the crisis.

Best Local Project Cards to Look for

Draw Energy Specific Cards - Once per turn draw cards from the top of the deck and keep all of a certain symbol. Discard the others. Once per round.

• Energy Infrastructure R+D (Grid & Energy Plug symbols) - Draw 7 - Add all Grid and/or Innovation (orange light bulb) to your hand.
• Nuclear R+D (Nuclear & Energy Plug symbols) - Draw 9 - Add all Nuclear and/or Innovation (orange light bulb) to your hand.
• Solar R+D (Solar & Energy Plug symbols) - Draw 8 - Add all Solar and/or Innovation (orange light bulb) to your hand.
• Wind R+D (Wind & Energy Plug symbols) - Draw 8 - Add all Wind and/or Innovation (orange light bulb) to your hand.
• Geoengineering R+D (Geoengineering Symbol) - Draw 8 - Add all Geoengineering (Wrench) and/or Innovation (orange light bulb) to your hand.

Draw 3 & Keep 1 Cards

• Clean Energy R+D (Innovation & Energy Plug symbols) - Discard 1 card from your hand, draw 3 cards, add 1 to your hand and discard the others. You may take this action once per Innovation (orange lightbulb) tag in this card's stack each round. Good to stack Clean Energy R+D on top of each other (exhaust the first's actions prior to placing additional Clean Energy R+D on top)

Draw Emissions Cards - Once per turn draw cards from the deck based on how many symbols you have, Keep all of a certain symbol. Discard the others. Once per round.

• Emissions R+D (Incentive (Money) symbol) - Draw 2 per Incentive (Money) symbol in this card's stack. Add any cards that reduce Emissions from Dirty Energy or other Emissions sources to your hand. Discard the other cards. Once per round.
• Luxury Consumption Tax (Regulation symbol) - Draw 2 per Regulation (Pink Paper) symbol in this card's stack. Add any cards that reduce Emissions from Dirty Energy or other Emissions sources to your hand. Discard the other cards. Once per round.

Energy Cards that don't require discarding. Typically have several requirements to fulfill.

• Fourth Generation Nuclear (Nuclear & Energy Plug symbols) - Add 2 Clean Energy tokens to your player board for each Nuclear tag in this card's stack. You may take this action once per round. Requires: At least 1 Regulation (pink paper) tag and 1 Innovation tag in this card's stack to take this action.

Many cards can be good in specific situations. For example, some cards can remove some emissions but add more houses. If you have good energy generation, then it has the potential to be a good card, but if you don't have synergy, energy, or the type of emission, then it's bad.

Other cards can make you draw cards; these are all good because they can help you build synergies, and they can be used again next turn; sometimes using one extra card to make that stack go from 3 to 4 cards is really good. They are really good, but I do not consider them to be great.

The great cards are the ones you should be looking for in most games, and nearly all of them work well alone on a stack. Keeping them on their stack the whole game is usually a strong option.

1) Grid (blue): every nation starts with a card that lets you gain one energy per power grid you have. If you don't have a good source of energy, keeping the option of having two power grids to produce 2 energy per card discarded is pretty good. You have some cards that add one power grid while doing something else, and they are nice to transition into cards that require 3 power grids.

2) Energy (green): the worst color in my opinion. There is one good card that lets you remove a building, then a car, then factories, but it requires some social icons (blue/purple). I would recommend you mostly ignore it.

3) Nuclear (blue): most of the nuclear cards are an alternative way to produce energy. Most of them require two nuclear power to be good, so they are more situational. The nuclear project is very expensive for what it does.

4) Wind/Solar (light blue/yellow): the main source of energy. When you begin the game, it's very nice to have a stack to produce at least 3 energy per card discarded, but you don't have to have that to get good energy generation. Cards that produce energy over time are free, so you don't have to discard cards to generate energy.

5) Regulation (pink): best color in my opinion, the pink project is amazing, and the great cards can remove emissions, add resilience, or draw more cards, and they both synergize really well with that color.

Great cards: Green Energy Transition (x2) (-1emission when you produce 2 energy), Luxury Consumption Tax (draw), Circular Economy (-1 emission)

6) Social (blue/purple): the primary focus for social resilience. Outside of that, it has lots of support, which is pretty nice, as many nations start with that symbol. The community cards let you slowly gain the number of infrastructure resilience you want in most games while giving you one energy per turn too.

Great cards: Systemic Risk Planning (+2resilience), Community Solar & Community Wind (3: +1energy & +1resilience)

7) Ecology (green): the primary focus for environmental resilience. Many cards can produce one tree per turn, which are really good alone on a stack. Contrary to many other colors, it has some ability to reduce emissions that don't make other cards less impactful. I really advise you to build one green stack if you can.

Great cards: Tree Farms & Indigenous People's Tenure & Wetland Restoration (+1/2 trees/seas), Forest Restoration & Peatland Rewetting & Mangrove Restoration (+1tree/sea), Pollution Reduction & Wilderness Protection (resilience), Soil Education (draw)

8) Infrastructure (brown): the primary focus for infrastructure resilience. They never shine, but they let you increase some resilience and remove emissions.

Great cards: Distributed Energy Storage (resilience)

9) Incentive (gray): USA starts with a stack that can draw cards depending on your coin, which isn't bad to play around. Outside of that, many cards are pretty cheap and require 2 to 3 gold. So it's not usually something you play around, but in the right circumstance, it can be pretty good.

10) Innovation (orange): the orange stack focuses on two different things: managing the crisis and getting to see new cards. I would not advise that beginners use it, but as you became better at the game, having a stack that lets you see 6 or 9 extra cards every turn to find what you need is really powerful. The crisis ones aren't that good in my opinion.

Great cards: Clean Energy R+D (x5) (dig / need experience)

11) Geoengeering (white): Stratospheric Sulfur is amazing, but it shines mainly in turns 2 & 3: if you manage to reduce the maximum damage of crisis between 0 and 1, having extra crises is not a big deal. Cloud Brightening is nice on a stack by itself. Ocean Fertilization requires ecological resilience or a stack of clouds. But overall, it's pretty good. I advise you to get used to other stuff first though.

Great cards: Stratospheric Sulfur (x2) (reduce damage / need experience), Geoengeering R+D (draw)

Crises

While most crises are similar, here are some crises to look out for:

• Crises where you can discard cards from the play area can be HELPFUL if you buried a card to use another card's effects.

• Deforestation (Also this card) There is a crisis that penalizes players that have one or more "cows" (agriculture) per player. Consider removing cows for this reason when removing emissions! - Remove 1 Tree for each player who has Agriculture Emission tokens.
• Late Game: A crises that removes one social resilience for every 2 CIC's you have
• Crises that that removes two dirty energy and triggers again the malus of CIC on energy (so if you are at -2 energy, and it triggers on you, you first gain 2 CIC, and then gain up to 4 CIC, which is a lot).

Example Hand / Round

When looking at my hand, I would use any card that gives me at least 0.6 points:

- +1 point per energy produced I need (0.5 point if you lack one energy OR if you lack two and don't have the most dirty energy)

- +0.5 per resilience you gain below what you will need next turn (less if you don't have much time left, or more if you don't produce much carbon per turn)

- +1 point per net carbon removed (i.e.: minus emissions, tree, sea, and (1 energy produced and 1 green dirty energy removed)

- global projects

- same number of points for what you would gain next turn

- +0.5 per extra draw next turn

- for experienced players +0.5 for each choice between 3 cards next turn (note that doing that can make you gain 1 point this turn thanks to the new card and 0.5 next turn)

If I don't have any of those, I would ask for help, look at global projects, or find creative ways to make it work (like using two cards to remove one factory every turn. That gives 1+0.5 points with my ranking, so +0.75 per card). And if I still find nothing useful, I will keep my cards, hoping for a better turn later. Having more cards gives more possibilities too, so it's very unlikely that you won't be able to do anything next turn. It could happen if you go for energy (because you don't have a power grid or you covered your first stack, which I would only do for a good reason i.e. it gives you at least +1.5 points for one card or a secondary way to produce energy).

Don't hesitate to keep some cards at the end of the turn. It's not ideal, but you may have more options to use them on your next turn, as you draw 5 extra cards each turn.

Having -1 energy isn't a big deal. I personally prefer early on to have -1 energy (so +1 star) but -1 emission if I'm sure I will be able to produce energy in my second turn.

You sometimes have the option to go for a big reduction in energy to be at exactly -1 emission and end the game at the end of the turn.

If reducing your carbon by 1 or 2 would make you not reach the next threshold, it's usually really good to try to do so. It's similar to making all players gain +1 on all resilience for the turn. For that reason, you should try to produce at least -1 emission during the first turn.

If you only gain 1 house per turn, you shouldn't try to force trying to get energy. In the worst case scenario, you should gain 1 star at the end of the second turn and 2 more at the end of the third one, which is totally manageable. You have lots of other cards that let you produce energy or remove houses. If you are playing USA or have a way to give a card that could produce energy, it's usually better to give it to someone else who gains +2 or +3 houses each turn.