Hazard Strategy Guide

Hazard rewards patience and border discipline far more than it rewards charging at the nearest enemy stack. Because every attack shows its exact odds before the dice roll, there’s no excuse for a bad gamble — the mistakes that lose games are almost always about where you fight and when you stop, not about the dice themselves. This guide covers the strategic layers from a first game to a serious ladder run.

Beginner principles

Claim a small region early. A region you can hold entirely pays you extra armies every single turn for as long as you hold it, and the smaller regions with fewer entry points are far easier to seal off than the large, sprawling ones.

Count the doors, not just the size. A region’s real defensive cost is how many neighboring territories touch it, not how many territories it contains — a tight region with three entrances is a fortress, while a bigger region with six entrances bleeds armies just to hold the line.

Don’t spread your armies evenly. Stacking most of your strength on your one or two border territories that actually face an enemy, and leaving your interior thin, is almost always correct — armies sitting deep in your own territory aren’t doing anything.

Check the odds before every attack. The game shows you your exact chance to win a fight before you commit dice — use it. An attack that only slightly favors you is often not worth the losses, especially early when you can’t easily replace armies.

Common mistakes

• Attacking without a plan for what happens after. Winning a fight and moving in a small occupying force just to have it as an easy target next is often worse than not attacking at all.
• Ignoring Bastions until it’s too late. A rival with three or more armies garrisoning one of the seven Bastions gets a real defensive edge — probe it, don’t charge it head-on unless you can bring an overwhelming force.
• Sitting on cards too long. Once you’re holding five or six Requisition cards you’re forced to trade before you can even place your armies — plan your trade before it becomes mandatory, and time it against the escalating payout so you’re not trading right before the value jumps.
• Overreaching after a win. A commander flush with momentum often keeps attacking past the point where their remaining force can actually hold what they’ve taken — know when to stop and fortify instead.
• Fighting on too many fronts. Splitting your attention across two or three separate borders usually means you’re weak everywhere instead of strong somewhere.

Intermediate ideas

Do the region math before you commit to holding one. A region’s bonus divided by how many doors it has tells you roughly how defensible it is per turn of income — the tightest regions on this map pay for themselves fastest.

Hunt for eliminations, not just territory. Knocking a weakened rival out of the game hands you every card they were holding, which can trigger an immediate forced trade and a burst of extra armies right when you need them.

Time your card trades against the dial. In the default escalating mode, every set traded by anyone at the table raises what the next set is worth — sometimes it pays to hold a valid set one more turn if the payout is about to jump, and sometimes it pays to cash in now before a rival’s elimination dumps more cards into the economy.

Use the fortify move to reinforce a threatened border, not just to consolidate leftover armies — moving your strength from a quiet interior territory to a front line the turn before you expect to be attacked is a genuinely strong defensive habit.

Advanced concepts

Read expected losses, not just win probability. Two attacks can have similar odds of success but very different costs in armies lost along the way — the odds display shows both, and the cheaper path to the same conquest is usually the better one if you’re planning to keep attacking afterward.

Plan kill chains. A single overwhelming attack that rolls through two or three connected, weakly held territories in one turn — especially if it eliminates a rival — is far more efficient than the same conquests spread across several turns, because you only pay the occupation cost once per stop instead of resetting every turn.

Deny region bonuses deliberately. Taking a single territory from a rival’s otherwise-complete region costs you little and strips their entire regional bonus the next time they draft — a small, cheap attack that pays off every subsequent turn.

Split occupations with intent. When you conquer a territory, moving in more than the minimum required armies can turn it into a forward base for your next attack, while moving in only the minimum keeps more strength at home — choose based on whether you’re planning to keep pushing this turn.

Practicing against the bots

Hazard’s ten bot levels change their actual decision-making, not just their error rate, so pick a level that matches the specific habit you’re trying to build:

• Levels 1–4 attack recklessly and often skip fortifying — good for practicing clean setup claims and basic border defense without a sharp opponent punishing every mistake.
• Level 5 plays like a solid casual commander: sound region claims, sensible card discipline, and real Bastion garrisons — a fair test of your fundamentals.
• Levels 6–7 start hunting kill chains and timing trades against the escalation dial, which makes them a good bench for testing your own defensive positioning and card timing.
• Level 8 plays like a strong, experienced commander — sharp about which rival to pressure and when to consolidate — beating it consistently is a real sign you’re playing well.
• Levels 9–10 play close to flawlessly, chasing full kill chains and rarely making a placement or attack you can punish — treat them as a final exam, not a place to learn the basics.

One fact worth knowing at every level: the dice themselves are identical no matter which bot you’re facing, and bots never get to see your hidden cards — difficulty changes judgment, never fairness.

Quick checklist

• Have you claimed a region you can actually defend, counting its doors?
• Are your armies concentrated on the borders that matter, not spread thin everywhere?
• Did you check the odds display before committing to an attack?
• Are you holding Requisition cards past five, forcing a trade you didn’t plan?
• Is your fortify move reinforcing a threatened front, not just tidying up?
• Could this turn’s attacks chain into an elimination instead of stopping short?