Schotten Totten Expert Variant: Claim One Turn Later

The one sentence that changes

The Schotten Totten rulebook offers a variant, often called expert mode, for players who already know the game. It leaves the cards, the formations and the victory conditions alone. It moves exactly one moment of the turn: you may only claim a stone at the start of your turn, before you play a card, rather than right after playing it. Everything else follows the usual Schotten Totten rules.

The rulebook gives its own reason: claiming becomes slower, and your opponent gets a chance to turn the battle around by playing a Tactic card. Keep that sentence in mind. It explains almost everything below.

Sources: Schotten Totten rulebook, RulesPal transcription (base rule and expert variant); this site's game engine for the "In the online game" section below.

What the delay really does

In the base game you complete your side, check the proof and take the stone in the same breath. In the expert variant, between the moment your formation becomes unbeatable and the moment you are allowed to claim it, your opponent plays a whole turn. The whole variant lives inside that free turn.

So what can they do with it? A claim is proven by considering every card not yet on the table, including the ones in their hand and even the ones in yours. The method is laid out step by step in our guide to claiming a stone. Whatever card they now add to that stone was already part of the calculation. It can only confirm what the proof already showed. A tie does not rescue them either: with equal formation and equal total, the stone goes to whoever completed their side first, which is you.

The consequence most players miss: with clan cards only, a proven stone stays proven. The expert variant does not take it from you. It only puts it on hold.

When waiting loses the game

Your opponent cannot undo your stone, but they can win before you. Victory goes to whoever holds 5 stones, or 3 adjacent stones, and in the expert variant each player reaches that total at the start of their own turn, when they cash in the stones they proved on the turn before.

The delay hits both players the same way, so whoever proves first usually collects first. There is one exception. Picture both players one stone away from winning. The card you play proves your stone, but it is also the very card their proof was waiting to see on the table. Under the base rules you claim on the spot and the game ends. In the expert variant the turn passes: they claim at the start of theirs and win before you can collect yours.

Three habits follow:

• Count the pending stones on both sides. A stone that is proven but not yet claimed is worth nothing until your turn comes back.
• Check what your card reveals. Before you play the card that proves your stone, make sure it does not also complete the proof of a decisive stone on their side.
• Watch the three in a row. It is the fastest way to win, and the delay sharpens it: a middle stone they have already proven hands them the trio before your next claim.

With the Tactic cards, the delay has teeth

Everything changes once the 10 Tactic cards are in play. A proof only weighs clan cards: it never accounts for a tactic still in your opponent's hand. A Joker, the Spy or the Shield-Bearer can complete their side with a card the proof had ruled out, and others act on a stone where your side is already complete: they take your formation apart or rewrite the stone itself.

• Banshee discards one of your cards, clan or tactic, from an unclaimed stone. Your side is incomplete again and your proof is gone.
• Traitor steals one of your clan cards or elite troops from an unclaimed stone and plays it on their side. You lose a piece and they turn it against you.
• Mud Fight raises the stone to four cards per side. Your three-card formation is no longer complete.
• Blind-Man's Bluff makes the stone a contest of totals only. A low colour run can suddenly lose.

Each card is covered in our guide to the Schotten Totten tactics cards. Without the expert variant, the immediate claim outruns them: once a stone is claimed it is closed, and nobody plays there again. In the expert variant the stone stays open for one enemy turn, which is exactly the turn they need to bring out the Banshee or the Traitor. Our Schotten Totten tactics statistics measure the gap: in 400 AI games with the claim at the start of the turn, the Traitor was played 165 times and the Banshee 254 times; in 400 games with the printed order, 79 and 142 times.

So the right way to play the variant is this: a stone is only safe once your opponent has nothing left that can undo it. Count the tactics already played, remember that nobody may play a tactic while they have played more than their opponent, and use it: when they are already one tactic ahead of you, they cannot play one next turn, so that is the moment to prove. But if you play a tactic to complete your proof, you give them that right back.

In the online game

The engine that referees games on this site follows the printed turn in both of its modes. Under the base rules and under the Tactic variant alike, you claim after the card is played and before the draw, as the rulebook says; in the Tactic variant you choose your deck after the claim. The site has no expert mode, so the variant is one to try at the table. If you do, start with the Tactic cards: as shown above, without them the delay only changes the race to victory.

For the other timing questions (several stones in one turn, an empty deck, ties), every case is replayed by the engine in our Schotten Totten rules FAQ. And to improve in both modes, our Schotten Totten tips put numbers on what actually wins games.