The tavern games: the game's hardest trophy is not a fight

Grandmaster sits at 7.5%, below the legendary ships. Draughts, fanorona and nine men's morris against an AI that genuinely wins, and the two-machines-against-each-other method.

Completing them unlocksGrandmasterSilver7.50%
The EveryTrophy team2 min readPublished on 31/08/2026Updated on 31/08/2026Covers 1 of the 50 trophies

The name misleads, the percentage doesn't

Grandmaster asks you to win one game at each of the three tavern games: draughts, fanorona and nine men's morris.

It sounds like a formality. It is not. At 7.5% it is the game's hardest trophy, below even Devil of the Caribbean — the four legendary ships, 8.4% — which is the one everybody points at.

The reason is simple: the tavern games' AI is genuinely tough, even at the lowest level. No difficulty setting softens it, no equipment upgrade helps, and no amount of retrying wears it down. Either you can play fanorona, or you do not win.

And one detail that saves losses before you even start: take on the opponents marked with one difficulty star, not the ones at your own base, who are considerably harder.

The method: two machines playing each other

The known trick for fanorona — and it works the same for draughts — is not learning to play: it is letting another machine play for you.

1. Open a playable online fanorona in your browser. 2. On the console, take the black pieces and let the machine move first. 3. Reproduce the opponent's move on the online board. 4. Copy the online board's reply back to your console, move by move.

You are the middleman, and what is really happening is that you are pitting two AIs against each other. All you need is for the outside one to be better than the game's, and it usually is.

The same procedure works for draughts. Nine men's morris is the most approachable of the three by hand.

Where to find them: the first fanorona is in Havana already, so this trophy can be attempted very early in the run. There is no reason to leave it to the end: if you are going to need several attempts, better to have them spread across 40 hours than crammed into the last one.

Fact

At 7.5% this is the least earned trophy in the game after the platinum, Dilettante and Blow The Man Down. It sits below the four legendary ships, the one everybody calls the hard one.

The trophies involved

Each one links to its section inside the full Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced trophy guide.

GrandmasterSilver7.50%
Win at each of the different tavern games
Original name: Grandmaster

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