Tips & Strategy

Practical priorities for planning tableau cards, Unrest and endgame scoring in Zhanguo.

At the table

• Pick a scoring plan early. Your Alchemist card count multiplies your ship’s final value. Governor majorities, Mausoleum rows and Walls are separate routes; choose actions that improve more than one route at once.
• Don’t fill regions just because you can. A second and third tableau card add Unrest. Keep room to recruit officials and use the region later, and remember that an Install Governor action returns one of each official from that region.
• Build an engine before chasing every reward. A Court action can activate matching abilities on your tableau. Tuck cards with triggers for actions you expect to take, then spend Court turns on those actions.
• Watch both tokens and turn order. A reward leader can pass or be unable to take the full reward. Track the next eligible player, and plan turn order because it breaks ties and resets after the reward phase.
• Workers are flexible, but regions are not. Palace construction needs an Architect and two workers in its region plus one elsewhere. Wall costs may require workers from separate regions.
• Keep soldiers for a useful row or column. Unlocking soldiers is only half the job; place them on fulfilled Mausoleum tiles and use their arrangement to score an extra 10 points per completed line.

Host game

Before round 1, demonstrate one Unification reward with both sizes of token. Ask the leader to choose aloud between spending all tokens of that aspect for the full reward and keeping them by passing. Check the Turn Order marker only moves on acceptance. Repeat that check at the first real Unification phase; the highest total is a choice, not an automatic payout.

Videos

• ZhanGuo: The First Empire – Tutorial & Playthrough, by Gaming Rules! — a full teach followed by play.
• All the Games with Steph: Zhanguo: The First Empire – Rules, by Steph Hodge — another explanation of the turn structure.
• Zhanguo: The First Empire | Solo Board Game Tutorial and Playthrough, by Totally Tabled — solo rules and a game against Li Si.

For official clarifications and edge cases, see the cited threads in the FAQ. The publisher’s English rulebook remains the rules authority.