Peter’s Style of Play

When I play Wizard’s Museum, I like to place several of my artifacts in my opponents’ Museums and keep my own small and compact. This does not always work out for me, but I have learned several things about how best to dump my own unwanted tiles on my rivals.

The best reason to play on your opponents’ Museums is to ensure that they end the game with one of every artifact type. Ending the game without any of a given artifact results in a big reward of ten points, and it can be very difficult to make up that score difference with your own Collections. Throughout a game, I am usually eyeing what the other players have in front of them and doing my best to make sure that they end up with one of every artifact type.

Sometimes one of my opponents begins working on a large Collection and I start getting nervous. When this happens, I like to play a single tile adjacent to that Collection, which can often hinder my opponent from making it larger. The look on a player’s face is priceless when she has a sixth Lyre in her hand but can’t fit it in with her others because the Collection has been blocked off. The little -1’s from having single artifacts really add up when scoring at the end of the game, too.

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that this strategy frequently gets me into trouble. In some games, I am too busy making my opponents’ Museums disorganized and neglect my own. When this happens, my opponents end the game with several Collections of single artifacts, which results in many -1’s during scoring, but they easily make those points up with their other, larger Collections. I, meanwhile, find myself with a very small, sad Museum and too few Collections of my own to match their scores. Moderation in all things!

— Peter S. Williams