Mario Party Superstars is only a couple of months away now, which is still a long wait but is also an opportunity. Unlike previous entries, this is a greatest hits compilation drawn from the entire series, and that means there’s time to practice before it launches and its online multiplayer goes live. Many Mario Party games come down to luck, and many of them are too simple to require strategy. There are a few, however, which can be easily gamed and that can make all the difference in the race for stars and superstardom. Here are five easy tricks to practice before Mario Party Superstars releases this October.

Mushroom Mix-Up

Mushroom Mix-Up is a simple game. Toad holds up a colored flag and everyone must race to that the mushroom sharing its color before the rest sink. Yet, there is room for strategy here. The first: avoid jumping as much as possible. Jumping seems safe, but it opens one up to getting bounced-off by the other players. Try to jump at the last second so that another player can’t get underneath.

The second: try ground-pounding in the late game. See, in both the Mario Party 1 and Mario Party 2 versions of this game, the platforms changed and sank fast and faster. Eventually it would get so fast that the color shown by Toad didn’t matter; all one had to do was do a high jump ground-pound and they could stay safe. If ground-pounding is still available in this new version, then chances are that this strategy will still apply. Unless one makes a mistake, it’s impossible to lose using this method.

Etch n’ Catch

In this team game, players must work together with their partner to draw circles around moving toad stamps. Again, this is a simple game, but there's a way to maximize efficiency. Instead of just scrambling up to each stamp and drawing whatever way works in the moment, both team members should always draw their circle in the same direction: clockwise or counter-clockwise. Teams should choose a direction before the game starts and then always follow it, ideally from opposite points of the stamp. Master this to unlock the ability to literally draw circles around the competition.

Parasol Plummet

This is an “everybody wins” kind of game. So long as one manages to collect a coin as they fall, they’ll be able to keep that coin. In this game, all players spend about a minute falling through a sky filled with coins and hammers. They're equipped only with an umbrella which can help temporarily slow their fall and bring them up to the top of the screen. Most players will try to scramble for coins wherever they fall. Don’t do this.

Instead, immediately move to either side of the screen when the game starts. Next, open the umbrella and drift to the top of the screen. Open and close it to stay as high as possible, and then drop once coins start appearing. Coins are thrown from both sides and eventually move to the middle. By quickly dropping from above, it’s possible to snap up all these coins before they make it to the middle or into the pockets of other players. This is a good way to smack into a hammer too, but this is outweighed by the sheer amount of coins one can collect. Expect a yield of anywhere from 25 to forty coins.

Sneak n’ Snore

This game stuffs players into barrels and tasks them with sneaking up to a button in front of a sleeping Chain Chomp and then make it all the way back. The catch: they must do it without getting caught when the pooch inevitably wakes up. Chain Chomp wakes up at random, so there’s no reliable way to predict exactly when it’ll grab the intruders. In order to stay safe, players must have already stopped moving before Chain Chomp wakes up, which isn’t exactly easy to do. There is, however, a way to make a good guess as to when to do this.

The key is to carefully watch the Chain Chomp’s sleep bubble, which grows and shrinks at a regular rhythm. The moment it breaks that rhythm is the moment that the Chomp will wake up. As soon as that rhythm breaks, STOP! It should be enough to get back into the barrel before it’s too late. It also helps to not run at full-tilt, but doing so can risk falling behind the others. It takes practice and isn’t 100 percent fool-proof, but mastering this can turn this game into a solid opportunity for coins.

Archer-ival

This 1-v-3 game casts one player as an archer and the rest of the players as targets. There’s no denying that the archer often has an advantage, but it’s not overwhelming. For the three targets, they key is coordination and maintaining mobility. They must box-in the NPC targets as much as possible in order to preserve the team’s mobility. If the team is able to move around, they can fake-out the archer and run down the clock. It’ll still often come down to just one target player, but that should be okay if enough time has been wasted.

As for the archer, do not shoot the NPC targets! They may award a couple coins, but they're the key to victory. Eliminate the most mobile target player first and save the least mobile (one stuck between the two NPCs, for example) for last. Try to fake them out and/or anticipate their moves, and it should be enough to win.

Mastering these strategies will help anyone get an edge over their competition, but then these are just five out of at least 100 minigames included in Mario Party Superstars. Stay tuned for more tricks and strategies for both minigames and boards as Nintendo releases more information. Until then, the clock’s ticking so get practicing already!