platypotamus
Member
Well I guess I'll have to play again sometime, but from what I remember I get screwed out of abilities by being behind other players. This can either be by drawing terrain for locations that are already exhausted or blocked (why is blocking a bad strat?), or by drawing the same terrain again for locations I've already claimed such that I can't place houses anywhere else. I guess bad decision making has also played a part, when considering your logic and looking at how the locations are set up on the maps (but then again, some locations are bordered by only 1 terrain type).
Blocking isn't inherently bad, but most of the special locations border 2+ terrain types, so if you block off your entire portion of the terrain, you are very likely increasing the number of terrain types you border (I know one of the harbors is an exception to this, off the top of my head, very blockable with Desert I believe). So blocking a hypothetical player (you don't know what card they have, and probability wise, it's actually less likely to be the same as yours, since once of those is missing) isn't generally worth potentially adding another card that screws you to your next draw.
There IS a bit of an exception if the special ability in question is a "mover" rather than a "placer", since you can move away the connecting house before placement, breaking the connection.