How to Win

Do the star math first

You need just over half the stars at the table:

You start with one (your capital). So before turn five you should know, roughly, where the rest are coming from. There are only two kinds:

• Wild fragments — tend to claim. Cost: some tends, maybe a scrap over territory. Cheap.
• Capital stars — capture a rival's founding city. Cost: an army, a siege, a war. Expensive.

Count the wild fragments you can plausibly reach. Every one you claim is a war you don't have to fight. The difference between the stars you need and the fragments you can get is the number of capitals you must take — that number decides how military your game has to be, and it's worth knowing early.

The three phases

Grow (roughly turns 1–15). Nothing but economy: tend, craft, found. Your action points go to development; your stockpile quietly fills. The player with the most structures at the midgame usually dictates the endgame. See The AP Economy.

Arm (when a target is chosen — or a threat appears). Armies in Krestfell are bought in a burst from savings, not drip-fed (see Raising Armies). You arm when you have a reason: a capital you intend to take, a fragment someone will contest, or a hostile army marching.

Strike. Wars are won by arithmetic before the first attack (see Breaking Defenses). Bring the force the count demands — not less, and not much more, because every unit past sufficiency was economy you didn't build.

Tempo: the unspent point

You get 3 action points a turn and they don't bank. Over a 100-turn game that's 300 points, and your entire development — every tend, every structure, every settler, every attack — comes out of them. The simplest self-review in Krestfell: how many points did I waste this turn? Wasting one point a turn compounds into a whole city's worth of development by the end.

Know when you're the villain

Your star count feeds your public dread. Cross the table's dread threshold and leagues start forming with your name on them. The last star is always the hardest: take it before the table sets itself against you, or take it in a way nobody can answer — an undefended fragment, a betrayal from inside a shield. Playing the Table is the chapter for that.