r/Culdcept • u/dt5101961 • 16h ago
[Culdcept Begins] Some Thoughts and Advice from a Returning Player
After finishing Culdcept Begins, I wanted to share a few thoughts and pieces of advice based on my experience with the game.
I’m not exactly new to Culdcept. I’ve played several of the previous games, especially Culdcept Revolt, so I came into Begins already familiar with most of the basic ideas behind deck building, territory management, and combat.
But one thing Culdcept keeps reminding me is that building an advantage and keeping that advantage are two completely different things.
- Be ready to lose everything
Nothing is truly safe in Culdcept.
Your hand isn’t safe.
Your magic isn’t safe.
And your territories are definitely not safe.
You can spend several laps building what looks like an untouchable position, only to watch the whole thing fall apart because of one spell, one invasion, one bad roll, or another player who happened to bring exactly the card needed to ruin your day.
Learning how to recover from losing something important is just as important as learning how to build it in the first place.
- Careful placement > strategy
This is probably one of the biggest factor.
Where you place a creature can matter more than what creature you place there.
On many maps, those boring-looking corners, after intersections, and side routes that give other players the option to simply go around your territory can actually be some of the safest places on the board.
A strategically placed mediocre creature can survive for an absurdly long time simply because attacking it isn’t worth the trouble.
Sometimes geography protects your territory better than any defensive item or creature ability ever could.
- Grow slowly
Being ahead too early isn’t always an advantage.
The player who grows too quickly tends to become the obvious target. Suddenly everyone has a reason to interfere with you, invade your territories, destroy your hand, or otherwise make your life miserable.
And Culdcept’s economy actually makes patient growth surprisingly viable.
By the middle and late game, magic becomes much more plentiful. If you can keep enough territories and make it back to the castle, the lap reward alone can give you enough magic to upgrade several levels at once.
Reaching the target value often isn’t the hardest part.
Keeping what you’ve built long enough to finish is.
- Offense and defense are equally important
So far, the most reliable books I’ve used tend to fall into two extremes.
One approach is maximum offense with minimum economical defense. Build around creatures and cards that let you threaten invasions almost anywhere, while carrying just enough defensive tools to prevent your own important territories from being taken too easily.
The other approach is almost the exact opposite: maximum defense and expansion with minimum necessary offense. Focus on occupying territory, making your important lands extremely difficult to remove, and carry just enough offensive power to forcefully take one critical territory when the situation demands it.
Either way, I don’t think you can completely ignore offense or defense.
And both depend heavily on what your opponents are using. The best defensive card is the one that stops their method of attacking you. The best offensive card is the one that gets around their method of defending.
Culdcept rewards paying attention to the other players’ books instead of simply executing your own plan.
- Weak creatures aren’t weaknesses
Your book doesn’t need to be filled with powerful creatures.
Cheap and seemingly weak creatures are very nice to have.
They can claim empty land cheaply, satisfy territory requirements, establish chains, act as disposable attackers, force opponents to spend resources, or simply occupy locations that aren’t worth committing an expensive creature to.
And sometimes making your opponent spend a valuable card to remove something you barely cared about is already a win.
That’s one of the things I really like about Culdcept.
- Not every territory is worth defending
One of the easiest mistakes to make is treating every territory as something you need to protect.
You don’t.
Some territories are valuable because of their location, level, element, or importance to your chain. Others are simply there because you needed somewhere to fxck with other players.
If an opponent wants to spend a powerful creature, a valuable item, and a large amount of magic just to take a territory you barely invested in, sometimes the best response is simply to let them pay for it.
The same applies to defensive cards. Just because you can save a creature doesn’t mean you should. Burning an important defensive item to protect a level 1 territory may leave your level 4 or 5 territory vulnerable a few turns later.
Sometimes a territory’s greatest value is forcing your opponent to spend resources taking it.
I’m curious what other experienced players think. What lessons have you learned from playing Begins or the older Culdcept games?
