If you look up economic warfare in the ever-useful Wikipedia, you'll find the following explanation: "The purpose of economic warfare is to capture critical economic resources so that the military can operate at full efficiency and/or deprive the enemy forces of those resources so that they cannot fight the war properly." The game of EVE: TSG is very much a game of economic warfare, and in your role as the CEO of a corporation at war, you have to make good use of all your resources. Let's delve into some of the decisions you have to make in the game so that we can get a better understanding of the underlying strategy.

The Mulligan

It's probably best to start at the beginning of the game and work our way from there. The mulligan is the first important decision you have to make. First of all, you're going to need income. The initial stipend of 2 ISK per turn is not likely to win you many games, so if you don't have any locations or other income-generating cards in your opening hand, shuffling everything back may be the best way to go. Generally, you also want to shuffle back the more expensive cards in your starting hand, because they won’t help you until the late game. If your starting hand is full of cards you can’t play yet, there certainly won’t be a late game for you.

The First Turns

The first turn is usually uneventful, with each player just playing a location and then passing the turn. Once you get your first ship out you have a lot more options and with these options, there is a greater chance of making a mistake. You can forget to active a command, you can fail to realize your opponent is vulnerable to an attack, or you can simply forget to use the ship altogether.

One of the most important aspects of the game is knowing when to play an outer region. You’ll need a ship in the region in order to control it, so you’re going to have to pay attention to what your opponent is doing. Take note if he's assembling a ship that's going to be ready on the next turn: it might be able to destroy yours in battle, in which case he's going to grab that region for himself. Likewise, if your opponent has a card that can destroy or otherwise remove your ship, you don't control the region any more. You will end up paying for an economic resource (the outer region), the benefits of which your opponent has deprived you. You must defend your resources in order to hold on to them.

One of the greatest weapons you have is information. You have to consider what you know about your opponent. For example, if he is playing Minmatar, he is likely to have news cards that can damage and destroy your ships, such as Adaster's Disaster, because the Minmatar strategy tends to be slanted in that direction. If, on the other hand, he is playing Caldari, he is far less likely to have news cards that remove your ships, because Caldari players can't play with any such cards.

Conserving Resources and

Withholding Information

Whenever you can, you should try to keep your options open by not spending all your ISK. Playing that Ibis on the first turn might seem like a good idea, but if you don't have any locations to mine, it's just a tiny ship with no attack power that doesn't help you at all, while on your next turn that 1 ISK you wasted could mean that you're 1 ISK short of a much larger ship. The same goes for defensive starbase structures that don't give you any income; they don't do much in the early game, so you might as well hold on to them until you actually need them.

You never know what your opponent might do during his turn, so leaving ISK in your wallet to play news cards is usually the best thing to do. It also makes it far more difficult for him to make decisions, because he has to take into account the fact that you just might have the perfect card to disrupt his plans. If your opponents knows exactly what you can do, it is less likely that he will make mistakes. Without perfect information, you cannot make the perfect play. Information can be just as valuable as ISK or extra cards.

There are a few things you should always think about when deciding what to do during your turn. First, how much ISK does your opponent have? Second, how many cards are in his hand? Third, which ships are being assembled in his starbase? If he has a lot of ISK and some cards in hand, he will likely be able to respond to your actions, meaning you will have to be careful. If you know your opponent well, you also have to take into account how likely he is to be bluffing. You have to know his combined attack power at all times. If he's getting a strong ship on the following turn, you might have to bring your ships back to defend your home region so he can't destroy your starbase when he attacks.

At the heart of all this is the money, your ISK. Whether you make it, steal it or see to it that your opponent doesn't get it, it's going to be what fuels your deck to win games.

Some of this might seem obvious to card game veterans, but sometimes the obvious has to be stated so that it’s not forgotten and so that new people can learn it. These are merely some dos and donts that will help you make the right decisions and hopefully assist newer players in developing their own strategy. Card games take on a life of their own as soon as they are released and the community starts to build their own decks and strategies. Hopefully, this site will become a home to this community, where players can meet and discuss and contribute to the game. We are very excited to see this happen and will try our best to be a part of this community.