Crimea Engineering

Here it is, the Crimea Engineering step by step guide. Same as with the industrial player mat, I tested this in the steam game. Each game ended somewhere between 18-23 turns depending mostly on if I got an easy boost from encounters. Also, there is a little luck with objectives as well, but you are not entirely dependent on that as it is rather easy to get max pop and power. Without further ado, here is my step by step Crimea engineering player mat strategy.

The Setup

• Turn 1 Produce.
• Turn 2 Trade 2 food.
• Turn 3 Move 1 worker to farm from the village territory, and move your character to the farm. Enlist, move enlistment token to gain 2 combat cards.
• Turn 4 Produce
• Turn 5 Move 1 worker to farm from village territory, move your character to the mountain territory and take the encounter. (Here you want to pick anything that gives you metal, wood, popularity, or power. But not at the cost of popularity) Enlist(use CC for the missing food), move build token to gain 2 power.
• Turn 6 Produce
• Turn 7 Move the 2 workers from the village territory to the mountain territory that your character is on. We are rolling with 5 workers in this game. Enlist, move the Deploy token to gain 2 coins.
• Turn 8 produce
• Turn 9 Trade 2 metal, Deploy riverwalk mech on the farm (Use CC to conserve metal)
• Turn 10 Move Character to oil territory just outside base, move the mech from the farm with the 3 workers and food to the same territory. Enlist for 1st star
• Turn 11 Produce, upgrade bolster power to build.
• Turn 12 trade 2 metal, deploy scout mech (Use CC to conserve metal)
• Turn 13 Produce, upgrade trade 2 pop to build
• Turn 14 Trade for 2 metal, deploy speed mech. (Use CC if available to conserve metal, you should have just enough for your last mech later)
• Turn 15 Bolster power, build the monument.(Use cc to instead of wood) You only have 2 options for placement at the moment chose the one that may give you building bonus points from the building tile.

The Finish

• Turn 16 Trade for wood (you can also trade for 2 metal if you fall short for some reason, but you shouldn’t be short), deploy last mech. 2nd star
• Turn 17 Move, the objective of this move is to spread workers for building to gain building tile points, possibly complete an objective, or win an easy combat. You can also take an available encounter. You don’t want to spend a lot of power right here because you want to get the max power star later, but there may be an easy target. Potential 3rd star
• Turn 18 Bolster power, build wherever you have moved a worker for the bonus points. You may get max power here. Possible 4th star
• Turn 19 Move, the same objective as the last move action. Possible 5th star
• Turn 20 At this point you will know what to do. You are either going to already have ended the game because you won some easy combats, completed an easy objective, or got a strong popularity boost from encounters. But basically, at this point, you should be in the max tier of popularity and have a couple of options to end the game.

Tips and Thoughts for Crimea Engineering

One thing I love about this Crimea Engineering strategy is that you don’t need a factory card at all. It’s pretty nice to just ignore it until you feel like taking and holding it. You should always be ending the game in max tier popularity because of the pairing of the monument above build. 2 popularity from buildings is sweet! Not to mention passive popularity from your opponent’s buildings as you will have that enlistment out very early.

You also are pretty much always in a really strong position from a military standpoint because bolster is above build. Also, your resources are well protected by 2 mechs most of the game, and no one likes losing combat cards to your scout mech.

Take a look at your objectives at the beginning of the game. If one is an easy one, go for it. If they both look difficult or would distract from your economy, ignore them and plan to hit max popularity or power instead.

Victory!

Like I said, every game I played using this Crimea Engineering strategy netted me a coin total of 100+. Obviously real players are better and they might punish your worker placement a bit, but a couple of lost territories won’t make a big difference. And there really isn’t much to be done to pester you early on as you will have power, combat cards, and usually 2 mechs on a territory to defend yourself. Try it out next time you play and let me know what you think in the comments below!

If you need some more general guidelines for how to play Crimea, here is a link to my post about that. https://thedailyscythe.com/crimea-strategy/

If you are looking for more of a rush strategy, boardgame geek has some great community discussion about that. https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2258240/crimea-engineering-14-turns

And as always here is a link to Stonemaier Games if you are considering a purchase. I don’t get paid for this, I just love the game and think you will too! https://stonemaiergames.com/games/scythe/