New Year Trophy Resolutions

     If these statements apply to you, fear not! There are still plenty of trophies to chase after, from straightforward card games to long and involved role playing games. The trophies for all the games in this list are not based on a table listing the highest scoring Neopians so far in the month. They involve no jockeying around, trying to secure a given tier of score at the time of trophy awarding. As a result, they are equally easy/difficult to obtain at any point in the year. All these games are also Flash-free, so they can still be played without trouble.

     If you feel okay with some small competition that is not tied to the first of the month, this first list is for you. For these trophies, you play against a specific set of opponents, rather than all other Neopians, and you earn higher trophies as you defeat more of them.

     • Cheat! In Cheat, the goal is to get rid of all the cards in your hand before anyone else does. The key is that you’re allowed to cheat, but only if no one else accuses you. If they catch you cheating, you have to pick up the entire discard pile. Conversely, you can also accuse them, forcing them to pick up the whole pile if they were indeed cheating. If an accusation is made when the player is not cheating, the accuser must pick up the whole. Try to keep track of who is picking up what cards, and use your knowledge of the cards in your hand to catch cheating. Getting past the first 3 rounds earns a bronze trophy, the first 5 a silver trophy, and all 7 a gold trophy.

     • Go! Go! Go! Though still a card game, Go Go Go is a bit more complicated than Cheat. You start out with 3 sets of cards: your hand, face up cards, and face down cards. You must play any and all cards in your hand before you can play the face up cards, and you must play all the cards in your hand and face up cards before you can play the face down cards. The goal is to get rid of all your cards first. If you are not the last to play all your cards, you will win some neopoints, but you will not advance to the next round until you are the first to play all your cards in a round. If you are unable to play a card on your turn, you must pick up the entire discard pile, and it becomes part of your hand. There is some strategy to this game, but also a fair bit of luck. When it comes to the face down cards, you need to just randomly pick one to play without knowing what it is. If it does not result in a legal move, you will be forced to pick up the discard pile. If you defeat all the opponents in round 2, you will get a bronze trophy. For besting all opponents in round 5, you get silver. For winning round 8, the final round, you will win a gold trophy.

     • Round Table Poker. A classic card game, poker isn’t too difficult to learn, but doing well requires some knowledge and ideally experience. You need to decide when it’s a good idea to bet or fold given the cards in your hand. If you have something better than a pair in your hand, that will usually be enough to win that hand. Each tournament consists of a specific number of hands, which increases as you progress through the tournaments. You advance to the next tournament by having the most neopoints at the end of the last hand. Upon winning tournament 5, you receive a runner up trophy. The bronze, silver, and gold trophies are based solely upon performance in tournament 6 as compared to other Neopians, though.

     • Snow Wars. In each round of Snow Wars, you and your opponent each have pieces hidden around your boards. You need to wipe out all of your opponent’s pieces before they get all of yours. Try to spread out your shots to efficiently find all the pieces that take up more than one square, and use the shapes to your advantage. There are ten opponents total. Upon defeating the fifth opponent, you will receive a bronze trophy, and upon defeating the seventh you receive silver. You must defeat all ten in order to get the gold trophy.

     • Cellblock. Cellblock definitely requires some strategy. You and your opponent take turns placing your pieces on the board, and the goal is to get five of your own pieces in a row first. I’ve seen several strategies described, so I suggest looking at a few guides and picking what seems best to you. Different strategies sometimes work differently for different players, and some work better or worse depending on the opponent you’re currently facing as well. The game is structured with 11 tournaments, each consisting of 8 rounds. In each round, you must win more games than the opponent to proceed to the next, and the number of games increases each round. Upon completion of the final round of the first tournament, you earn a bronze trophy. For a silver trophy, you must win tournament 11, round 4. You must make it all the way past round 8 of tournament 11 to earn the gold trophy.

     If all forms of competition are not your thing, there are still trophy options for you. These trophies mark milestones within a game, rather than victories over opponents of any kind.

     • Sakhmet Solitaire. The Sakhmetian version of Solitaire is pretty straightforward; get all the cards into the Stack Piles by building up from Ace to King. When starting a game, you will be given the option to choose 1 card per draw or 3 cards per draw. It is better to choose 3 cards per draw. If you choose 1 card per draw, you will see every card in the draw pile, but you will only be able to go through the draw pile once. On the other hand, if you choose 3 cards per draw, you may not see every card (unless you are able to play all of them immediately), but you can go through the pile three times, which gives you a greater likelihood of winning than seeing every card only a single time. If you win two games, you will be awarded a bronze trophy, and if you win five, you will be awarded a silver trophy. In order to get a gold trophy, you must win two consecutive games. It is not possible to win every game, or even most games, due to the starting layout of the cards, but if you play enough, eventually you are almost guaranteed to get a gold trophy.

     • Pyramids. The goal of Pyramids is to clear the pyramid shaped arrangement of cards by playing cards that either one higher or lower than the card on the stack next to the draw pile before running out of cards in the draw pile. Try to reveal as many cards in the pyramid as possible as soon as possible, and when faced with a choice, choose whichever card is more likely to allow you to play a longer sequence. This game is quite similar to Sakhmet Solitaire in that most of the games, it will not be possible to win with the initial layout of cards given. The trophy structure is also identical to that of Sakhmet Solitaire.

     • Plushie Tycoon. In this game you are building a business making and selling plushies. The game runs for a month, but you can choose to start later in the month. You start out with 50,000 neopoints, and the goal is to finish the month with more than that. If at the end of the month you have a net positive number of neopoints in the game, you will be awarded a trophy. The trophy is based on how many neopoints you earned in the game. Less than 250,000 earns a bronze trophy, 250,000 to 1 million earns silver, and more than 1 million earns a gold trophy.

     • Neoquest I and II. Both Neoquests are role playing games in which you journey to various places, battling monsters to level up and find supplies, and fight bosses to restore order to the land. They are both rather long and time consuming, but Neoquest II is longer. The best advice I can give for these games is to find some maps, so you’re not just aimlessly wandering around. Both games have three difficulty settings: Normal, Evil, and InSaNe. You must complete the game on Normal before you can attempt Evil, and you must complete it on Evil before attempting InSaNe. These three difficulties correspond to the three tiers of trophy. Completing the game on Normal earns a bronze trophy, on Evil earns a silver trophy, and on InSaNe earns a gold trophy.

     Hopefully you are now well-equipped to achieve those sparkly resolutions for this year. I wish you best of luck in your endeavours!