High Form Strategy

1) Board Management

Keep your piece-count down. If a piece of your own is not helping your position and you have a chance to destroy it, do so rather than destroying an enemy piece--this puts you rather than them closer to a flare. If you're ahead in the game and your piece count is high, consider discarding cards or summoning a being on top of your own piece (oversummoning) to avoid placing another piece on the board.

Keep your pieces together. If your position is dispersed, those pieces will add to your piece-count, making it impossible to get a life-saving flare while being useless for summoning or claiming tasks.

Place pieces on or around coloured squares by preference. Even if there's no coloured summoning/conquest task on the board, one will eventually pop up. (Caveat: do not casually leave pieces on red squares if you are playing against Highland and they haven't yet played Blood Shaman.)

Do not let your opponent set up camp far away from you. Make sure you are always able to destroy a piece or two of theirs.

Disrupt your opponent's pieces. By preference, destroy or move whatever pieces your opponent put down on the last turn: they probably placed them for a reason. In general, it's not a good idea to let them establish a formation undisturbed.

2) Hand Management

Play or discard cards rather than letting them go stale. Don't grow too attached to a card unless you're absolutely sure you need to use it soon to accomplish a task. If it's not helping you, get rid of it by summoning it, even if you can't trigger its effects, or discard it. The smaller your deck, the more precise your endgame play will be, as you will know with certainty what you will draw; and if you cannot score 9 points, you want to be the person who triggers the endgame by running out of cards. -- By discarding you can also get rid of a flare that is hard to trigger, or Legends that are not useful. It also improves the precision of your endgame if you use the opportunity to place one or two cards on the bottom of your deck.

Anticipate key cards in your deck. Don't just set up existing patterns in your hand (though do that too!); if you know a useful card is in your deck, try to keep a few pieces on the board that will help you achieve that pattern. It might be the next card you draw. (E.g. if you have the Highland deck, try to maintain a few pieces at the corners of a green square in anticipation of Ritual Master, or a bow-shape for Warlord / Eagle Lord.) When you're just starting out, it is impossible to remember all the cards, but be aware of the most powerful and disruptive ones: Hypnotist and Bomb (North/South Empire); Blood Shaman, Werewolf, and Ritual Master (Highland); Forest Ancient (Sylvan); Everfrost Sentinel; Possessed Summoner (Nethervoid); Polarity Queen and Merchant of Time (Etherweave); and Leviathan and Time Elemental (Legends).

Track the cards. If you are playing a turn-based game, use the Notes feature of BGA to keep track of both your cards and your opponent's.

Learn the decks and Legendary Beings. To reiterate: as a beginner, do not worry about memorizing every single card! But eventually you will need to be able to recognize patterns that your opponent is trying to form, and know what's coming up in your own deck that might be useful.

3) Flares

THE GOLDEN RULE: Flares are not a catch-up mechanism. They penalize bad, aggressive play, rather than compensating players who are losing. Grasping this point is essential to playing Tash-Kalar well.

Be wary of flares. A typical beginner's mistake is to assume that accumulating more pieces than your opponent, and destroying many of your opponent's pieces, is a good idea. But while it may work occasionally, this brute-force approach will usually lose the game against a competent player, because it gives them the opportunity to flare every turn. Extra actions are extremely valuable in Tash-Kalar--often they are the deciding factor in claiming a task or totally reshaping the board--so don't let your opponent get flares easily. If you are ahead in piece-count, try to stay ahead by a maximum of 2 heroic pieces and 3 pieces in total--this guarantees that only one flare (the 2/5 one) is playable.

Don't be TOO cautious. You sometimes still need to risk a flare for the sake of scoring. However, if you must exceed the 2/3 limit, avoid triggering top and bottom flares at once. (The upper number on flares ranges from 2 to 5; the lower number from 4 to 6.) None of the bottom-4 flares are big game-changing ones; but several top-3 flares are powerful, so if you're going to risk triggering one, go ahead 2/4 rather than 3/3 by preference.

Play your flare! If you can play it, the vast majority of the time you should. This is true even if it does nothing helpful--in that case, play it simply to discard it and get a more useful one in return.

Discard a bad flare when possible. If you have a high-value flare (such as 4/6 or 5/5) that you can't trigger, and you're falling behind in the game, consider discarding in order to ditch the flare. In addition to refreshing your hand and hopefully landing you a more usable flare, the discard action means you put down one fewer piece on the turn, meaning that you're very likely to be able to play the new flare.

4) Tasks, Legends, and Scoring

Prioritize 1- and 2-point tasks, not 3-pointers and Legends. In particular, Side Chain and Corner Chain are very difficult to achieve without an exorbitant cost; they should be late-game goals or threats, but never strive to score them early on at the expense of snapping up cheap tasks (a common beginner's mistake). Legends are good, but since the 1 point they give is no better than an easily achievable 1-point task, can be taken away from you, and can net a max of 3 VPs in total, they should not be a priority unless they help accomplish a task. Claim easy tasks before your opponent does, as they stack up quickly--in particular, never leave End of Legends, Heroic Destruction or Rainbow Domination unclaimed for long, as they are the easiest 2-point tasks to claim.

Don't focus on destroying your opponent's legendary pieces. Unless the legendary piece is actually dangerous (e.g. Red/Green Legends is up for grabs), keep focused on claiming tasks not destroying it. Very few cards can even move it, so it'll probably just sit there anyway until you can deal with it. It's better to either summon your own Legend, work towards a task, or demolish their position. If you destroy the legendary piece without getting rid of their heroic pieces, your opponent will just summon up another anyway. Keep in mind that once they have 3 legendary pieces on board, they can't score any more from summoning another one.

5) Opening Moves

In general (though this advice is dependent on your initial draw and the first tasks available), place your first pieces near the centre but somewhat off-centre, and in the vicinity of (rather than directly on) coloured squares. This maximizes control of the board, positional flexibility, and ability to engage in direct conflict or move away from it. Placing a common piece on a coloured square at the game's beginning is just asking for it to be destroyed; it is generally better to build towards summoning a heroic piece onto the square, which will be more resistant to attack and more capable of fulfilling tasks.

If your hand is full of 2- and 3-piece patterns, being right next to your opponent's pieces is good, as you will be able to destroy their pieces easily. If it's full of 4- and 5-piece patterns, keep more distance at first.

6) Patience

Tash-Kalar games tend to have a dramatic mid-game "bounce": it is very hard to hang on to an early lead, because the player in the lead will have typically grabbed all the tasks they can easily grab, used their best cards, and be on the verge of giving up flares. If you are behind, even by a substantial number of points, do not give in easily, especially since you will have a more precise sense of what's in your deck and your opponent's and can plan accordingly. If you are ahead, be wary: start reducing your piece-count, and if you have a strong lead, summon (or discard) Beings as much as possible to hasten the endgame.

Cards

Here is a full list of all cards in Tash-Kalar's BGA implementation (numbers denote the pieces in the pattern):

IMPERIAL

• 2: Messenger, Swordmaster, Bomb
• 3: Chronicler, Herald, High Priestess, Summoner, Cannon, Assassin
• 4: Gryphon Rider, Knight, Master of Intrigue, Cavalry Captain, Infantry Captain, Champion, Time Mage, Gun Tower, Hypnotist

SYLVAN

• 2: Sapling, Kiskin Farseeders, Forest Wardens
• 3: Naiad, Charging Buck, Kiskin Spirit, Dryad, Forest Mystic, Sylvan Princess, Woodland Druid
• 4: Unicorn, Kiskin Boughrunner, Kiskin Leafsplitter, Centaur Spearman, Forest Ancient, Centaur Chieftain, Sylvan Queen, Tree Shepherd

HIGHLAND

• 2: Ritual Keeper, Wild Eagle, Clan Axeman
• 3: Dire Wolf, Clan Healer, Clan Guardian, Ritual Master, Hungry Bear, Werewolf
• 4: Wolf Rider, Mountain Troll, Hill Giant, Eagle Lord, War Summoner, War Drummer, Legend Slayer, Blood Shaman
• 5: Warlord

EVERFROST

• 2: Snow Fox, Crystal Mirror, Crystal Grower
• 3: Ice Princess, Royal Reindeer, Frostweave Illusionist, Frostweave Summoner, Frost Imp, Frozen Chest
• 4: Winter Whisperer, Glacier Giant, Ice Queen, Ice Wyvern, Everfrost Sentinel, Deathbringer, War Sled, Polar Bear, Snow Monster

NETHERVOID

• 1: Demon of Sloth
• 2: Flame Imp, Shadow Imp
• 3: Acolyte of Destruction, Demon of Envy, Demon of Gluttony, Demon of Pride, Gate Keeper
• 4: Acolyte of Growth, Demon of Greed, Demon of Lust, Demon of Wrath, Hellhound, Hell Rider, Possessed Summoner, Power Seeker, Vortex Master
• 5: Gate Master

ETHERWEAVE

• 2: Antimatter Spirit, Doppelganger
• 3: Gate of Oblivion, Greater Shadow Twin, Lesser Shadow Twin, Paradox Worm, Time Traveler, Warp Master
• 4: Dark Sphere, Eternal Emperor, Merchant of Time, Polarity Queen, Reality Patch, Singularity, Translocationist, Void Summoner
• 5: Iris of Eternity, Ziggurat Sentinel

LEGENDS

• Time Elemental, Earth Elemental, Fire Elemental, Storm Elemental, Leviathan, Hell Bull, Angel of Death, Two-Headed Dragon, Fire Dragon, Titan, Bone Catapult, The Eldest Tree

FLARES

Symbols:

• m = standard move; x = combat move
• ^ = standard leap; x^ = combat leap
• + = upgrade; A = gain action
• no sign = place
• H = heroic; C = common; P = any non-legendary piece

Cards:

• 2 / 5 : ^C / A
• 3 / 4 : C / xP or mPP
• 3 / 5 : mCCC / A
• 3 / 6 : mC or +C / CC
• 3 / 6 : C / H
• 4 / 4 : C / C
• 4 / 4 : C or +C / x^C
• 4 / 6 : C / +C and A
• 4 / 5 : A / C
• 4 / 5 : C / C or convert enemy C
• 5 / 4 : H / mC xC
• 5 / 5 : CC / C