Dandelion Guide

Overview of basic strategy and priorities for playing as Dandelion.

Summary

Dandelion is a rakish bard that follows his fellow adventurers, profiting from songs about their adventures. He isn't really a fighter or a mystery-solver; he mostly piggybacks off of the actions of friends.

Dandelion's strength lies in avoiding problems and capitalizing on others' successes. More on how to do this in the Strategies section.

Dandelion's signature action is to Sing, which grants 2 Orens (coins). You are unlikely to accumulate very much wealth at any one time, though, because his Development Cards provide many ways to use these coins.

Development Cards

There are 15 Development cards: 6 Skills and 9 Friends

• Friends work by paying 1 coin for 1 charge. Most are limited to "once per turn" with the exception of Cahir and Vincent Meis, who may be used any number of times in a battle.
  
• Dandelion's Skills figure mostly around getting stuff for being next to other characters.

High priority

• Blasco Grant
  
  • This Friend gets you out of end-of-turn combat situations which (unless you're drawing combat Investigation cards) will be 90% of the reasons Dandelion is forced into combat.
• Codringher
  
  • Lets you draw 1 extra Investigation card, giving you more choice between beneficial cards. More importantly, Codringher lets you almost always avoid Setback cards (which would otherwise waste your action AND hurt you).
• Clever Minstrel - Skill
  
  • Lets you convert 1 Arrow Shield* roll result into 2 shield results.
    
  • Dandelion's hero die has a 4 out of 6 chance of rolling an Arrow Shield, so this happens most of the time.
    
  • It's always nice to have this card, because it helps you avoid the Bad Stuff from monsters most of the time. In fact, you'll usually be untouchable by most Bronze monsters.
    
  • * (If someone has the official name, let me know and I'll update this)
• Shani
  
  • This card is a major part of what allows Dandelion to act efficiently. Keep yourself healed up and you won't be caught in a region with a Gold monster.
    
  • With Shani, there's almost no reason to ever use a Rest action again, which means your Rest icon becomes effectively a Foul Fate free space (similar to Yarpen's extra health spaces).
• Winning Smile - Skill
  
  • Receive 1 coin every time you complete anything on anyone's quest card.
    
  • More coins is always great and this functions as a sort of rebate on every quest-related expenditure, even helping others through Support tasks.
• Epic Ballad - Skill
  
  • When another hero in your region defeats a gold or silver monster, gain 2 or 1 VP respectively.
    
  • This skill nets you a nice income of Victory Points just for being near the other player characters when they kill Silver or Gold monsters. The others typically can't avoid combat as easily as Dandelion and this doesn't take anything away from them either.

Medium priority

• Carmen
  
  • Try to always have 1 charge up on Carmen. When another player uses up a Good Fortune card, Carmen lets you grab it for yourself. This really shines in longer games, where more quests means more Good Fortune, but is nevertheless a welcome advantage in many situations. Probably the most important advantage of this card is how it helps keep you from falling behind the other players.
• Vernon Roche
  
  • Lets you draw 1 more card when choosing your Main Quest. This is another Friend that shines best in 3- and 5-Quest games.
    
  • In a 1-Quest game, this card has the lowest priority since you will never draw a new quest.
• Half a Century of Poetry - Skill
  
  • Gain a Victory Point when another player in your region completes anything on their quest card.
    
  • The title of this card perplexes me, but otherwise it is a solid, medium-priority card. Along with Epic Ballad, this is the other card that gives you good reasons to be near other characters whenever you have the option.
• Vincent Meis and Cahir
  
  • These two cards let you pay coins to get Attack (Cahir) or Defense (Vincent) points in battles. Unlike all other Friend cards, these two have no "once per turn" restriction: If you have 5 charges on Cahir, you can use all of them to down that Gold Monster.
    
  • Speaking of, no monster card in the game requires more than 5 Attack, so never keep more charges than that on Cahir (unless you expect being forced into combat twice before your next turn).
    
  • In reality, you can get by plenty well most of the time by keeping 2 charges on each of these.

Low priority

• Myrhrman
  
  • This is probably the meanest thing Dandelion can do: He shunts a Foul Fate token from his sheet onto that of another character in his region (yet another reason to follow the other characters around).
    
  • A word of caution -- When you are avoiding combat and Investigation Setbacks, you may realize that most Foul Fate cards really aren't that bad. With that in mind, weigh how much you value your relationships with the other players before you make heavy use of this card (lest you find Myrhrman is the only friend you have left).
• Enchanting Voice - Skill
  
  • Allows you to gain 1 blue Lead, instead of 2 coins, when you perform a Sing Action.
    
  • I get this card last, if at all. It's really only situationally useful. You can usually get a blue Lead from a Travel action and travelling can also move you out of danger or toward one of the healing towns. I just feel like it's much more valuable to Sing for 2 coins, pay Codringher, and draw a blue Investigation card that might net you far more than a single Lead.
• Silver Tongue - Skill
  
  • Convert 5 Orens for 1 purple Proof.
    
  • Dandelion only needs 3 purple Leads to make 1 purple Proof. 5 Orens are far better spent on Friends. If you have 5 coins, ask yourself if Carmen, Blasco Grant and Codringher all have charges before you use Silver Tongue.
• Bernie Hofmeier
  
  • Pay this Friend and you can fulfill Support tasks for a character in the same region (instead of having to be at the same location like you normally do).
    
  • Regions aren't that big, so you're rarely more than one Travel away from the other character anyway. The only time to use this is if you have reason to worry that you won't reach the other character before either A) they finish their quest, or B) another player has a chance to do the Support task before you. That seems unlikely to happen very often, which makes this one of the worst ways to spend your coin.

Strategies

(NOTE: This is the newest section of the guide and I'm still deciding what to put here)

The basic goal of the game involves accumulating victory points (VP) and completing main quests. Since Dandelion is not a very efficient fighter, farming monsters for victory points isn't really an option. No, Dandelion will gain most of his victory points from 3 sources: Epic Ballad, Support tasks and fully completing his own quest cards.

Main quest cards tend to come in 3 flavors:

8 VP for 2 purple Proof

12 VP for 1 purple Proof + 1 blue Proof

16 VP for 1 purple Proof + 1 red Proof

Dandelion converts Leads to Proof like so:
3 purple Leads = 1 purple Proof
5 blue Leads = 1 blue Proof
7 red Leads = 1 red Proof
I tend to look at the game as a kind of long-distance race; you probably shouldn't sprint, but you don't want to fall behind either. With that in mind, when choosing quest cards, weigh the payout against the time it will take to accumulate the required Leads. In that time, could your opponents get closer to your VP total?

Obviously, quest cards that require red Proof will take Dandelion significantly longer to acquire and are probably not worth the slow down. 4 more VP can usually be earned by defeating 2 gold monsters, which is something the other characters can do far easier than Dandelion. In this way, Geralt might easily gain momentum while you're singing to pay Cahir and/or Vincent Meis to get you through red Investigation cards.

Strategies for taking advantage of Dandelion's aforementioned strengths

• Avoiding problems
  
  • Trouble usually comes in the form of end-of-turn Monsters or Foul Fate and Setback Investigation cards.
    
    • Codringher helps tremendously with avoiding Setbacks.
      
    • Blasco Grant lets you escape Monsters.
  • One of the easiest ways to avoid trouble is simply to move out of the region.
    
    • Use Shani to keep your Travel Action healed up and ready to go.
      
    • Take note of how close you are to the healing towns (they have big red heart shapes by their names). While not useful for healing your Travel Action, keeping other actions healed-up helps make sure you're never forced to put a wound on your Travel Actions in the first place.
• Capitalizing on others' successes
  
  • Support your friends whenever possible: completing a Support task on someone else's quest card nets you 6 Victory Points while they get 3.
    
  • A third of Dandelion's Development cards deal with other players in some way -- Carmen, Epic Ballad, Half a Century of Poetry, Myrhrman and Bernie Hofmeier.

[Killdrax]

Amazing guide!