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Tips abyss

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Revision as of 20:51, 10 May 2022 by Fletcheese (talk | contribs) (Abyss Strategy Tips)
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Abyss is a resource management game and success comes down to properly managing these resources which include:

  • Cards in hand
    • More higher numbered cards of different colors = more lords you can buy
    • Card color flexibility is especially important when the court refreshes - you want to maximize your chances of taking advantage of the new lord pool
    • Explored 4 and 5 cost cards should almost always be purchased while 2 and 1 almost never. 3s are a toss-up depending on how many pearls each player has and how useful it is building toward the current lords in court
    • When spending cards, try to use either all high or all low number cards. Using one high number card with low numbered cards means a missed opportunity to affiliate extra points
    • Saving high numbered cards to auto-affiliate at the end of the game is perfectly viable
  • Cards in council
    • The council is perhaps the most novel aspect of Abyss and by extension the hardest to build intuition on
    • When cards are already in council exploring becomes a worse option as you risk a council stack becoming a more appealing option for your opponent's next turn
    • Choosing to take council cards rather than explore has many important implications:
      • Your opponent does not have the opportunity to buy a card - you can lock down a lord purchase by getting the final cards from council
      • Barring lord powers, you can only gain pearls by exploring. This can lead to a give and take where players alternate who is exploring
      • Generally speaking it is better to not be the one exploring because it gives the opponent first dibs at every card
  • Pearls
    • Pearls are not worth any points so as the game goes on they should be used more and more liberally
    • When your opponent has no pearls, exploring becomes much more appealing
    • Do not underestimate the value in spending pearls for buying lords. Purchasing a mono-color lord with pearls and a 4 or 5 card is very appealing as you can then affiliate that card
    • Spending a pearl to add a lord to court is very rarely a good decision but can come up
  • Lords
    • Active (key) lord powers can drastically warp the progression of a game. An exhaustive list is outside the scope of this guide
    • Some lord powers with others in interesting ways. Learning all the interactions can only come from playing games
    • Do not forget that getting a third key disables all of your keyed lords
  • Points
    • Like many similar games, the only resource that matters at the end is points
    • Points come from:
      • Lords
        • Key lords are generally better early, point lords are better late. Though it's important to consider that not all lords are created equal
      • Locations
        • Depending on early key lord hits, it may be beneficial to delay your first location as much as possible. This has the added benefit of making a location choice working with as much information as possible
        • Generally speaking if none of the already revealed locations are worth more than about 10 points, you should reveal 4 locations. The added options for you far outweigh those for your opponent as you're often looking for the same locations anyway
      • Affiliated Allies
        • You should be looking to score around 20 points off affiliated allies. Plan your card and lord purchases well to affiliate high value allies
      • Monster Tokens
        • Do not underestimate Monster Tokens. In general whenever the monster track is at 2, you should fight it and take 2 tokens. Expected point value 6 is much better than a card