I think one of the most important things you often say in your videos is the phrase, "the commitment to earn points" (and its variants). I've heard you say this particularly in your analysis videos of the top players and it keeps echoing in my mind. I've tried cultivating the commitment to earn points and I can already see the difference. So, thank you, Sam.

I think my biggest mistake is the donation. I'm donating too much and all the time XD. Now I'll weigh the pros and cons before making a donation. I hope my English improves a bit. And i love ur video, i learn a lot !

I'd call myself an average Ark Nova player and your videos are really helpful. Some tips are obvious, but somehow still overlooked sometimes and some tips are completely eye opening. I'm glad I found your channel a few days ago.

Hey Sam! Good victory. Appreciated the tip about triggering the break.

Thanks Sam, more great content. The number 1 rule for me is to assume that the worst will happen. If there is a chance your opponent might cause a break or take the card you or they “need”, then you should assume that they will, and play accordingly. Wishful thinking loses games.

Quick, simple and effective: thanks!

Nice video, Sam! I think I got those covered mostly by now. I think when to trigger the end can be a hard thing to master as well. I have been taken by surprise many times and was short of one action or one X token.

One thing that took me a while to understand was making sure i was ready for a break at anytime. With the break at 2/9 using a 5power draw may help a lot but it also leaves you vulnerable to a 5power sponsored-break. In those cases it might be better to use an x token to play 2 animals or perform an association before setting up for a potential break.

The best thing that i learned from your videos is early conservation. Me and my friends just always went for 2 partners or 2 uni's. But when it hit how efficient that early extra worker is it made my winrate skyrocket. The thing i noticed was my very strong early game but a really weak midgame. I now know this is because i build too much. I'm really guilty of multiple turns building only 1 or 2 sized enclosures.

These are great points Sam! I've had to learn a lot of these the hard way, especially re: building too much. :) I feel like I'm not fantastic at putting together an endgame plan - would be interested in tips or thoughts around how you go about it.

I think point 1 isn't something generally applicable to newer players. In general, being the breaker is bad. It is not always as obvious as the example provided.Figuring out when the break is good for you and bad for your opponents takes a lot of games. Good advice for bad/good breaks, though I'd also add how your actions line up for next round and what your plan for it is. The reason top20 has a lot of breaks triggered is they know when it's "on them" to be the breaker

You imply at that end that the main reason you want to support an early conversation project is just to get a second worker. Sometimes the worker is worth taking, but the other bonuses (like five dollars) are often a better choice.

Hello Sam, thank you for your video's on Ark Nova. I was wondering if it would be an idea to do an analysis of a lower ranked game to point out the mistakes. I think it could be very educational.

I have two weaknesses that I can't seem to shake; building a steady income and setting up badly at endgame, especially with objective cards and sponsors with a post-game reward

Great video as always. I would list some intermediate / advanced mistakes that I see a lot of players doing: 1. Hate drafting. Hate drafting is usually very bad in AN because you're wasting action / bonus and you have a very limited number of them. A classic example is when someone take an upgrade sponsor only to deny it to their opponent when they have no intention of upgrading sponsor themselves or when someone takes a petting animal zoo just to deny it to their opponent. Hate drafting isn't so bad if you're drawing with the upgraded action card or getting it from a map bonus, especially if you didn't have any card to discard, but snapping just to hate draft is usually just very bad imo. On the other hand, contesting valuable cards is of course very good as long as you're being efficient about it (ie not using several X tokens to snap a card for example, usually that's not a good trade but of course exceptions exist). 2. Not contesting the Species Diversity and Habitat Diversity project when the 3CP option is not available. This is a mistake that I see a lot of players doing when either Species Diversity or Habitat Diversity come up with the 3CP being already taken leaving only the 2CP and 5CP option. When such situation happen, it seems clear to me that unfortunately a lot of the game is going to be about racing for that 5CP slot as getting it is going to be a 6CP swing in favor of whoever gets it (it's a bit more complicated than that since the player losing the race might get the 2CP first and get some value out of that) which is massive deal considering that completing those two projects happens with very low effort / luck. So here comes the mistake that I see players doing: they just complete the 2CP option asap even when they seem ahead in the race to complete the 5CP option and leave the 5CP option completely free to their opponent which is such a big advantage. Btw I only mention the 3CP option not being available because when the 2CP option isn't avaibable players usually understands that they should contest the 5CP one. 3. So that one might be a bit controversial, but the more I play the more I think it is bad to go for partner zoo first if you don't aim to complete a base conservation project round 2. If you aim to complete a conservation project round 2 then taking a partner zoo is completely fine and even usually very good since you can do the strong move of taking a second worker as bonus and then getting your second partner zoo round 2 / upgrade as it's usually extremely hard / impossible for your opponent to break before that. On the other hand and as I said, if you don't aim to complete a conservation round 2 (which often happen if there are no continent base project or if the one available has no 2CP option or simply if you opponent takes the needed partner zoo before you because he started first / he could play association action for 3 faster) then I think that taking university first should be the move 95% of the times (usually max hand though 2rep + 1 research can also be very good). Taking uni first allow more flexibility with hand space and more importantly you'll usually get that second upgrade round 2 with 5 rep. And also which is very underrated is that earlier rounds are usually slower so it's better to spend 4 strength for uni rather than 3 for partner zoo since you'll have to get uni at some point anyway so better to do it when it's easy to match the required strength because later you might want to do 8 strengh asso + partner zoo or simply you have two or more workers and want to do as much asso actions before the round end which obviously is easier to do if you need partner zoo rather than uni. 4. Another one that might be controversial which is: don't play bad cards. Now I know that AN is a super well balanced game and that there are almost no bad cards, but still I think a few cards are close to unplayable if you're here to win (if you just want to play cute animals then that's another story :D). Honestly there are really very few true bad cards so I might as well list them: Baboon Rock / Proboscis Monkey / Mandrill / Saltwater Crocodile. Now I'm sure some people would be like "ahem actually in that one game I was able to make perfect use of those cards in my monkey masterpiece strategy" but really 99% of the times those cards are just bad plain and simple (and yes monkeys cards are pretty bad in this game, except the Pifering ones and Horsfield's Tarsier / Cotton-Top Tamarin). There are a few others that are really bordeline (for example a lot of reptiles and reptile house is almost always bad), but for all of them I could easily think of a situation where you can find value out of it (usually related to conservation projects) and it would be too long to explain which cards are mediocre enough that you need certain conditions to play them. And regardless, as I said AN is well balanced enough that truly 90% of cards can easily be played often though some are obviously much better than others (New Zealand Fur Seal round 2 is pretty brutal and one of the only card that I consider bordeline OP). 5. Alright one last to make it to five: ending the game too early. So that one I think every AN player makes it when they start playing the game. The game is a race, it makes sense that you'd want to finish as soon as possible, right? Wrong. It can be better to stop as close as possible to the 100 points mark and then have another big turn. So for example you're at 80 points, you support an association project for 15+ points and then the turn after you play two animals (or support another association project) for an additional 15+ points. Of course this isn't always possible nor good in every game and sometimes it's good to finish asap, it completely depend on the state of the game and what your opponent is doing, but the point is, it is sometimes (and not in like 1% of games) better to, for example, not do that donation that would make you pass the 100 points threshold and instead hold on for one more turn to score a lot of points!

Hi. In your videos/live you said that petting zoo animals are bad. But, what if we started with 3 in the initial hand. Would it make sense to invest in them?

Sorry, I can't really follow as you talk much faster than showing things on the screen. It would be better to highlight the areas you're showing because on a phone screen it's impossible to see. I'll watch it again on a bigger screen later.. the idea of the video is good though. Thanks

Stop making these videos Sam. You're making it harder for me to get free elo. Jk. Even now I still think finding the right balance for build action is one of the hardest thing to do in Ark Nova. I agree that people tend to overbuild. It seems that their mindset is to fill out the zoo. But at the same time, I think many beginners tend to underbuild in the mid/late game. Like you said, many beginners don't realize how many turns they have left. At this stage, building size4/5 is not so simple and they think they can cycle through the actions easily. I'm also still guilty of this over/underbuilt thing, but I think it's important for beginners to consider whether they underbuild or overbuild at each stage of the game.