The use of the camels is a balancing act: if you don’t have any then you have a problem if you want to take a lot of cards and your hand is empty. However, if you take a lot of camels then you risk leaving a very profitable market for your opponent.

If you do decide to take a large group of camels, it can be worthwhile doing this when your opponent already has 7 cards in hand. Then, if the new market is interesting, she’ll have to exchange cards and probably won’t be able to take all the cards wanted.

If you think that some valuable cards are due to turn up, it can be advantageous to make an exchange that fills the market with camels, forcing your opponent to open up the game for you.

There are three main sources of income:

• - the 3 expensive goods
• - the first tokens in each set
• - the big sales bonuses

All three are important so don’t let your opponent grab the lion’s share of the diamonds, gold and silver, sell before her if you can, and try to make one or two really big sales!