Guiding Principles

1. Consider the implications for the team.  This is a co-op game, so you don’t get points for having a high card count at the end when one of your teammates runs out of cards.  Keep in mind the effect your plays will have on your teammates.

1. • Ideally, you want to have a set of rows to play into such that any number could be played into some row with a cost of 2 or less. This doesn't really happen, but it is a useful concept to strive for. For example, if the rightmost cards of two playable rows are 3 and 9, then the numbers from 1~5 and 7~11 are playable. In that situation, if you have the opportunity to start a new row, starting it with a number outside those ranges (a 6 or 12) is preferable to starting with a number inside those ranges (although 1, 5, 7, and 11 are also pretty good candidates). There will inevitably be bottlenecks during play; don't fret too much about it, just do what you can to minimize them.  

1. • Pay attention to teammate turns -- sometimes you can get some useful information out of this. E.g. if your teammate discards for several turns before playing, there is a good chance their cards are clustered so that they can play a similar number on their next turn. So you might want to work so assure than row doesn't drift too far from their cluster. Keeping on eye on teammate plays is more important with fewer players.

1. • Bridges can be particularly valuable for opening up the board for your teammates.  But remember that they need to be covered eventually and the cost will be the greater of the two differences, so don’t play a number that’s too far from the left-hand anchor.  Ideally, the right-hand anchor should be something that’s 0-2 away from the left-anchor, 3-4 is also usually OK, but it is pretty hard to justify 5+. If the anchors are the same color, it is easier to cover the bridge.

1. Make the cheapest plays possible – if you can play a zero cost card, this is generally a good idea!  But if you’re going to play on the right-hand side of a bridge or the first tile into a new level, you want to consider how your play fits with the previous guiding principles.

1. • Ideally, low numbers get played on low levels and so on up the pyramid. But you don't need to force it; there are 72 number tiles and 39 places for them in the structure, so don't fret too much if you use all the 1s and 2s for discards. Also, generally, having more playable numbers is more important than squeezing low values into the structure.

1. Discards – in general, you want to discard less useful cards over more useful ones.  All else being equal, discarding low numbers is preferable to high ones and discarding 1s and 12s is preferable to numbers that have more close numbers.  But … what makes a useful card can be different depending on what the board looks like!  So keep in mind cards that might become useful by the time your next turn rolls around.  

1. Peaks – peaks can make good discards, but you’ll lose if all the peaks get discarded.  To be absolutely safe, your team can adopt a strategy of only discarding a peak when you have a duplicate peak.  If your team is 2-4 players, then each player can safely discard one peak before falling back to the only-when-holding-a-duplicate rule (with two players, each could safely discard 2 peaks).  

1. Campfires – are particularly useful in the late game, when you’ve got lots of previously played cards to draw from.  But you probably don’t want to discard 2 to hold a campfire for later if you have a good play you can make with it now.  

1. Tile distribution -- There are two tiles with each number in each of the three colors. Looking over the played tiles can give you an idea of what may be left in the deck (except for other players' discards, which you don't see). This can be helpful when trying to cover a particularly troublesome bridge or deciding whether to use a campfire.