Tips bandido

1. Bandido is a cooperative game which allows players to collaborate to close all the exits on the board by placement of tiles which match and close those exits.
2. Collaboration in this game doesn’t imply that players should communicate their moves. That type of collaboration is cheating and not meant for this game - it makes winning too easy.
3. There may not be a good way to prevent cheating, but cheating is cheating so avoid it unless in ‘training’ mode. That said, new players will obviously benefit from disclosing their tiles in practice sessions with friends, and this ‘practice’ makes it easier to ‘intuit’, or guess a collaborator’s likely moves even without knowing their hand. Collaboration is best served when opponents are better able to guess, or ‘intuit’ their opponents moves without talking them through or otherwise disclosing their hand to your collaborators.
4. Intuition will be difficult and is probably not available for you to rely on in this game. There are few chances to rely on anything but chance, so throw caution to the wind and have fun even if you don’t win.
5. It gets harder to win as the game progresses because open exits easily accumulate on opposite ends of the board. Resist the temptation to throw in the towel once the exits start to accumulate, you may get lucky.
6. At the beginning of your turn, select each of your tiles to see where they might fit on the board. Remember to attempt to rotate each tile to select the most advantageous orientation. This ‘dry-run’ may indicate problems that prevent subsequent tiles being well placed. Be careful not to ‘double-click’ the tile before you’ve selected otherwise the double-clicked tile is placed and the other player’s turn begins.
7. Try to end each turn adding fewer exits (open ends) than you close.
8. If you need to play a tile that adds exits, try to arrange the new tile so that following tile(s) played will close more exits than they add.

1. Try to align open ends in a parallel or perpendicular grouping which can then be closed with the appropriate tile.

1. Alignment of two adjacent parallel exits allows you to exploit the u-shaped tile, or other tiles which have two parallel (adjacent) exits.

1. Aligning other tiles with adjacent exits aligned perpendicularly allows many opportunities to match tiles and close exits.

1. Be careful of the constraints that begin to develop as you add tiles to a confined area. You’ll lose the game if you can’t close an exit in a confined area. These constraints develop quickly once you begin to get boxed-in. Avoid adding tiles within a confined area if possible, beware of this trap.

1. Try to avoid pointing new open ends away from confined space so you’re less likely to encountered constraints with tiles that follow.