Deep underground, for reasons of profit

Last week I played a game of Castles of Mad King Ludwig with some friends including Naked Man.  I went hard into basement rooms and came out the victor by a substantial margin, largely on the back of 2 key things.  First, I had ridiculous cards.  I got the first stairway and ended up building all 6 basement rooms using 4 stairs in total.  This set me up perfectly for the basement card for 12, stairs card for 8, completed rooms for 7, and 450 rooms for 6.

The second thing that won me the game was me getting the basement room that likes basement rooms, and then rescoring it when I closed it as my sixth basement room.  That part was kind of funny, actually, as nobody else saw that as a possibility.  Many players, most even, seem to get stuck on the idea that when you score a basement completion you simply take another turn.  That is often good, but it isn't anywhere near automatic.  Taking another turn often involves getting 7 points for 2 bucks or so, and that is often worse than 5 pure points, 10 bucks, or rescoring the basement room itself.  Heck, even a Hail Mary for a bonus card or a blue room dig can be the best play at times.

The surprise came on the final turn of the game when I was master builder and everybody else bought the most expensive stuff from me, leaving me with a collection of mediocre tiles worth about 5 points each.  Nobody expected me to buy a hallway and rescore my basement that loves basements... but doing so got me 14 points in total so it was automatic.  Didn't matter to me what was left on the board, nothing was going to be as strong as that, especially for only 3 bucks!

Naked Man spent much of the early game insulting my basement investment, talking about how lots of basement rooms is bad.  After all, all but one of them give bonuses to upstairs rooms, so you really want two basement rooms that match your upstairs really nicely, in an ideal world.  Getting a ton of basements generally means each one is only worth 4 points or so, and that is quite weak.  I agree with this principle in general.  I like having a stairs available so nobody can pin me on basements, but I don't generally want to get more than two basement tiles.

However, when you have the basement card, and intend on rescoring the basement that loves basements... that +6 points / tile really changes the math a LOT.

Also I was extremely pleased to crush Naked Man with basements after he spent so much time telling me how terrible they were.  I was sitting to his left, no less, and he still couldn't stop me.  Or at the very least he did not choose to stop me - he could have taken the critical tile from me, but it would have cost him 8 bucks and would have only been worth 3 points to him.  Still, doing so would have dropped my final score by something like 19 points overall, which is a pretty crushing blow.  It would have given him the victory, I think.

The lesson here is firstly that yes, most of the time lots of basements isn't great.  Secondly, if you close basements, do not just automatically take another turn.  Regularly this is worse than other options.  Thirdly, if you happen to talk to Naked Man, ask him how he managed to lose to someone employing a massive basement board, given how bad basements are.  I am sure his reply will be entertaining.