If you love and/or hate making friends, Iago is the captain for you! The silver-tongued Iago faces a unique challenge in Captain’s Gambit, but interesting opportunies as well. Avoid a handful of common traps and you’ll find yourself sailing to victory.
Unlike many other captains, Iago faces a challenge in that he has a very particular schedule to keep. Other captains have the luxury of Networking a bunch, alternating between Drains and Shields, or Fortifying everyone at the table. Meanwhile, the first rule of Iago is to attack whenever you can - this relegates nearly half of your actions towards Striking others. And since those Strikes require energy, Iago spends nearly half of his remaining turns Charging or Overcharging for the next volley.
And yet, Iago is one of the more popular captains to pilot, and becomes more complex to play the more accustomed your table gets to Captain’s Gambit. Iago’s intrigue primarily comes from an implication in his victory condition: as long as he’s not marked for assassination, Iago can win with a huge majority of the captains at the table. This makes him an ally to many, and because he has a propensity for attacks, you’ll quickly find a lot of captains asking you for favours to target one person or another.
Goals
Iago’s first design was not it
If you’re piloting Iago, you can expect an enjoyable social game where your main focus is forming an alliance with anyone who doesn’t want to murder you. Your secondary focus is weaving together a convincing list of reasons to prevent an early victory, ideally preventing attacks for a round so you can take the blood lead.
Since most captains grow closer to victory when their opponents have low health, Iago’s victory condition of bloodletting actually makes him far less of a target than one may expect - if you’re Hamlet and Iago is offering to bring your target into kill range, of course you would happily let him do so.
The only downside of Iago’s blood requirement is that he is sometimes unable to win during the early rounds of the game, meaning your alliance is contingent on giving him enough time to loose a few Strikes.
Quick Summary
Overall though it’s pretty easy though, right? Just Overcharge and Strike a bunch, tell everyone it’s fine because you’re Iago, and win?
…Well, this is in fact actually true in some circles!
In gullible groups, you can net a win by simply declaring “Hi I’m Iago let’s team up” on round 1. If your table is naive enough to believe the first person to claim Iago, victory is assured while everyone fights over your favour. Sit back, fire lasers around, get lots of blood, and die to an assassin.
Problem #1: Snipers
…Oops, the presence of Portia specifically means your life will not be quite as easy as you’d hope. The better you’re doing in blood, the harder Portia will fight to eliminate you. And because you need more blood than anyone else to win, there is no way to ever win with Portia: you two are enemies forever.
Luckily, unlike Portia, you can win alongside other captains pretty easily. Most captains would prefer an Iago + Them victory over a Portia + Not-Them victory, so your solution is to simply lean even further into convincing everyone of what a nice and cool Iago you are. Essentially, your best play is to remind the table of Portia’s presence and make them fear bringing you into kill territory.
So Portia constantly gunning for you is a small problem, but one that can be fixed by mobilizing the table into protecting you. However, this does lead us to the next issue in the way of a simple Iago victory.
Problem #2: Doubt
At some point the players at your table will Get Good, and that’s when you may finally hear a contender: round 1 turn 1, another player says “Hi just wanted to say I’m Iago and I’m willing to team up with anyone other than Portia”.
But you’re Iago. Who the heck is this?
The biggest challenge to your victory is doubt. If players start to worry that you’re not actually Iago, then “player who constantly attacks others and has a lot of blood” points to decidedly non-ally captains instead like Romeo+Juliet, Titus, and Lady Macbeth.
This can be one reason you may want to take a break from attacking for a turn, just to cool off the natural hostility that you’ll get from smacking others.
If the table loses faith that you’re Iago, they’re going to start ignoring your deals and aim for victory even before you have the blood you need. Worse, sometimes they’ll just try to kill you outright under the assumption that you’re someone like Titus or Lady Macbeth. It doesn’t help that there will probably be a Portia will be cheering on such accusations.
Generally the best response to such accusations is to find ways to continue gaining blood with actions that are generally agreeable to the whole table - I wouldn’t bother getting defensive, since that just continues to put the spotlight on yourself.
Some decent things are shrugging and attacking high-health targets with Strike, making sure that you never Barrage, and threatening to shield low-health captains if you don’t have enough blood. The more you can make actions that clearly only make sense to a true Iago, the more believable you’ll be.
Problem #3: Early Victories
The next problem is captains who have a pretty dang good shot of winning before you have enough blood to win with them. Assassins tend to be great candidates for early victories, especially Portia (More Portia problems!).
Your best counters to early victories are:
Drain aggressive captains to prevent them from landing two Strikes in a row, while also netting yourself a bit of blood.
Barrage defensive players. Defensive players may respond to your Strike with a Barrage (“That’ll show you for attacking me!”) - but if you Barrage them, it’ll get them worried about their health and will make them spend their energy on a Fortify or Shield instead. You can actually exploit their fears by Barraging them every few turns - this will lock them out from an early victory, since defensive players often can’t focus on winning until they’re at a comfortable health value.
Don’t Barrage aggressive players. Some people don’t care about being at 6 health and will reply with Barrages of their own, leading to a potentially early game even if they die in the process. Do Strike them though, nobody deserves 10 health. Except you, of course.
Network for full permit sets. If you suspect you gain full information on a permit, you’ll be in a great position to call bluffs - and each successful bluff is the cancellation of a full action. I did just spend 75% of this guide talking about how many Strikes you’ll have to do, but early on you may want to consider holding back if you think someone might win from it.
Problem #4: Titus
If you suspect Titus is in the game, kill that bucko as soon as you can. That guy is terrifying on his own, but he also makes it really tough for you to get ahead in blood.
I guess look out for Domination captains in general, but that’s not really Iago specific. Titus is specifically scary for Iago though. Even the mere potential presence of Titus in the pool will make things harder, as everyone will think you’re a mass-murderer when you’re merely an innocent manipulator.
Have Fun
Overall, Iago is an enjoyable character to pilot for his distinct feel compared to other captains. His actions are essentially locked in to a narrow set of abilities, since he needs to Strike so often, but in exchange he enjoys a lot of conversational flexibility - have fun shaping the direction of entire games with your promises and bribes.
Keep an eye out for those who want you dead, but as long as you can successfully come across as a trustworthy and helpful friend, you should be well-positioned to stroll into victory.
