Hey everyone, new and old! You guys probably don’t know or care who I am. You might not even care what this blog is about, but I figured that since I’ve just won my 3rd Casting in a row that I can do something with that and give you all advice on how to do well in a Casting. How I will do it is tell you how I approach these Slow Casting games and give you all a starting point on how to play them.
1. Before joining a Casting, check the game to see who’s in it. Depending on the person, the game could either be inactive and have a lot of people die off (automatically get evicted from the game), or it could be quite active. The games I’m in tend to be more towards the latter of the 2. If you are in an inactive game and you don’t die off, great. That means you will get a better position without having to waste too much effort on it. But if you’re like me and you end up being in a more active game, you’ll just need to try harder to get a good spot in the game.
2. This one’s obvious, but be active enough that you won’t die off. Activity is everything in Castings, as it keeps you off the block longer, even if you have less than 2 keys. It can also get you evicted though, as most of the time, if you’re an active nominee, you’ll most likely be voted out of the game, so be vigilant as well.
3. Only sign up for the game when you know you have the time for it. Otherwise, you will get eliminated sooner rather than later. On Day 1, you should be able to survive if you can keep commenting for at least the first 2 updates. But if work or school gets in the way, that will obviously hinder your chances as you won’t be able to be as active.
4. As much as some people blindly believe that alliances are pointless, and that is true to an extent as you need to keep yourself off the block as long as possible, it sometimes pays to have someone in your corner. Why? Because if you have people keeping you in the game, there’s a chance you could come off the block at Day Change if you can survive the eviction, even if you can’t find any keys between now and Day Change. It’s happened in a few games I’ve been a part of.
5. As much as people like to think that having triple evictions in Castings are beneficial, the truth of the matter is that deaths can actually work against you. One game I was in had 3 new people go up on the block on Day 5 even though only 1 person died off from the game at Day Change. To help combat this, first ask yourself “Do I really feel confident about not going on the block at the next Day Change?” If the answer to your question is no, then you should be voting to evict the inactive that is going to be leaving anyway rather than the active who mostly everyone else wants to vote out. Sure, it’ll add 12 hours to the game, but at the end of the day, you are playing for yourself, so you need to do whatever you can to keep yourself off the block rather than make everyone else happy.
6. Stay out of any drama if you can. People will vote down other people’s comments and take sides if drama is afoot. If you do happen to be in a game of drama, sit back and let them have at it so that you don’t get negged and targeted yourself.
7. When it comes to plussing people, the best strategy is to start the game plussing everyone. That way, more people will start to plus you as the first night goes on. However, you need to be sure to count everyone’s plusses as you comment and plus so you can exactly who is and isn’t plussing. If there is someone who has more plusses than they should, they’re probably not plussing back. If this happens, stop plussing them. It’s not fair that one person is getting every plus in the world while you’re stuck with only a few. This leads into the next one.
8. Only continue to plus people if they are plussing you back. If you keep trading plusses for plusses, it not only helps their game, it helps yours too. It gets you more checks, and it sometimes even keeps you in the game. If you are not plussing people back, they may start to notice this and then they might stop plussing you.
9. Play by your own rules. You’ll find that you will have much more fun with the game if you do what you want to do rather than have someone boss you around about who to vote.
10. When it comes to who wins the game, checks and challenges are always more important than keys or apples. Apple scores are added to your profile health after the game and keys only help you stay off the block. Checks and challenges show activity, and the better you are at both those areas, the likelier you are to win the game. :)
I understand that I probably wrote too much for you to read, but hopefully this will help you get better at Castings as you play more games here on Tengaged. I hope you had as much reading this as I did writing this, and if you have anything else to add, politely let me know in the comments, and I definitely welcome any feedback you have on this. But for now, I wish you all good luck on Tengaged, and have a good afternoon. < 3
When it comes to who wins the game, checks and challenges are always more important than keys or apples.
this is probs the reason why i lost with the most checks and highest scores several times!
Correct about plussing only those that plus you. Even if you plus EVERYONE, and NO ONE pluses you back, you checks won't go up. It makes no sense to me at all.
