I should confess I don’t even use bags. I prefer coffee cups so you can easily look in and see your token composition. That’s especially important in a game like Orleans: Invasion where you’re playing several “hands” and the rules are explicit about checking your bag’s contents at any time.
But, yeah, if you hate shuffling, these are the deck-builders for you!
-Tom
Coffee Roaster has a special track for your roasted beans “power”. Maybe you don’t remember how many time you have upgraded which coffee bean, but your roast track will tell you the total roast level added together… so that’s really helpful if you don’t want to risk overroasting.
Is Orelans: Invasion a good solo game? From what you wrote, it sounds like it. “Elegant” is a keyword for my game purchases.
Do you know Orleans? It’s a fantastic game and a classic for a reason! But it’s strictly a competitive game.
The Invasion add-on* does a great job fleshing it out, but it turns it from a head-to-head game into a cooperative game. And like pretty much every cooperative game without a traitor mechanic, yes, it works just fine in solitaire. Better, in fact, because you’re always the weakest player at the table and the strongest player at the table. :)
But if you don’t know the gameplay, I would suggest finding a good playthrough. The theming is your typical blandly Medieval village, but the economic engine building is top notch stuff with a lot of room for synergies and creative expression.
-Tom
* Invasion is actually just one of several modules included in the Invasion add-on:
Other modules included in the box are dedicated to head-to-head play and solitaire “drills”, for lack of a better word. They’re basically practice scenarios to tune your economic engine building, like running laps on a race track instead of actually driving in a race. The real solitaire gameplay is the Invasion scenario. But taken together, Orleans + Invasion seems to me a no-brainer for any collection, solo or multiplayer. It’s going to be around $100 new, but you can probably find used copies since it’s been around for so long.
yes, thanks a lot! We have inflation going on, so better spend money then keep it in the bank. I am watching a video “Tom Teaches Orleans” now …
Maybe take a look at Coffee Trader for a heavy euro or maybe Viva Java. Viva java isn’t a terrible game but you need a large group to make it fun.
Thanks! I’ve since realized the problem is instead figuring out what games my friend already has without dropping the hint about what I’m thinking about getting him…
I picked up some Flesh and Blood blitz decks and did something unusual - I actually went to my local FGLS on a Tuesday night, which is their F&B casual night.
I had read the rules and persued the decks, so had a rough idea of the gameplay and it was a quiet night with only two others showing up. Both in their 20’s I’d guess, nice fellas who were happy to show me the ropes while soundly kicking my ass. I needed it, because reading the rules wasn’t quite enough to actually grok what was happening on the table, not knowing much about the mechanics of each character. Turns out the deck I took and played with (Oldhim) was also one I hadn’t pre-read, so I was seeing it for the first time on each draw! Whoops.
We paid out $10 entry and round-robined for the night with each of them coaching me through my games while I played the other.
They both had constructed blitz decks against my pre-made Oldhim deck, so first up Viserai mopped the floor with me with large arcane runechant combos while I floundered around, even after he loaned me his arcane blocking boots.
I then watched them play each other, where Viserai was defeated by a multi-chaining, dagger-wielding Kassai.
Then I took on Kassai, it was not a bad fight. Kassai actually coached me on my first couple of turns, helping me to decide which card to Arsenal that would cause most pain for him in turn 2. After that I made one decent play myself during the game that threw a spanner in his works and drawing it out until we were each on 1 life, at which point I couldn’t hold out any longer and was slain.
Picked up a booster for my troubles as entry reward and a Oldhim, Grandfather of Eternity Rainbow Foil Promo! The other players also gifted me with a couple of upgrade cards for my deck - a better weapon and improved (pitch value) version of another card - along with around 100 or so other dupes from their collection. Not a bad night at all!
Was good fun, so I am planning on heading back. I may also have bought a bunch of boosters.
Had a busy couple of weeks!
Let’s see… the biggest of the group is probably Crescent Moon. This is very much a post-Root design. Deep asymmetry, but in some ways it ameliorates some of Root’s problems. For one thing, it uses threaded actions rather than big blocky turns, so it’s easier to stay involved over a long play. For another, it’s rather social. Everybody has some sort of leverage they can use against everybody else, whether it’s the threat of invasion, a corner on the card market, civilian income, or a large supply of mercenary troops for sale. That said, it’s also quite delicate. If everybody doesn’t play their role, it can come apart. Not in the sense that the game breaks, just that it’ll be stilted. Even after three plays, I’m not sure whether I would call it a “good” game.
Probably the one I’m enjoying the most is Wonderland’s War. It’s overproduced; honestly, it could have fit in a smaller box, with less plastic and half the setup/breakdown time. But it’s hilarious nonetheless. Think of it as an adversarial Quacks of Quedlinberg. Everybody has their own bag with their own chips, which they’re using to add strength to fights across multiple areas. Except you might “bust” in an area by drawing too many madness chips — the equivalent of boiling over in Quacks. Here, though, the stakes are intertangled with other players rather than being isolated in your own zone. Three plays in, we’ve laughed ourselves silly each time.
Played my first game of Railroad ink
I think I did pretty badly… I totally let the dice decide where I go, I could connect 5 exits however and had a decent railway length.
You roll 4 dice and have to use them and draw your roads. No matter what. After 7 rounds game over.
This is the basic game without objectives or expansion dice (included in the green version).
I think I like it a lot, you have a lot of freedom how to draw and where… It feels like this map is mine, and then you wipe it. 44 Pts maybe are not bad after all…
edit: works well with Cities: Skylines soundtrack
Oath is getting an expansion!
Oath is pretty polarizing, but for me it is one of my favorite games of all-time.
An expansion is kind of an odd thing, because I don’t think the game needs more content.
The struggle I have is that I can rarely get it to the table because my group I game with isn’t static, and thus it turns into a 3hr teach each time, which is brutal.
What it needs is rules streamlining - but that doesn’t really fall in expansion territory?
I would also like a more viable solo mode since it is tough to get to the table. While a lot of Oath is the player-to-player interaction, I still like watching the world evolve around me and still build personal narratives even when playing alone. Maybe they can improve on the Clockwork Prince.
I just wrapped a couple solo games of the new Andrew Parks Kickstarter that arrived, Core Worlds: Empires.
This one kind of takes its spiritual predecessor, the deck builder Core Worlds, and bolts it into a worker placement framework. You start with a random empire with 5 drafted worlds, and 3 workers - a random leader and two other generics, ‘ambassadors’.
The progression of the event deck triggers the gradual arrival of two more, for a total of five. The generic ambassadors can be upgraded to ‘heroes’ during the game, which, like the Leader, have combat stats and an ability card. All the workers can hold a hand of cards and a retinue of unit tokens, which are used when annexing other worlds.
The general sequence of play is: progressing/resolving the event deck, placing new neutral worlds, then taking it in turns to move each worker either to a world or an advancement.
Earlier worlds tend to give base resources, with later ones more about trading resources from one type to another, including cards and units. Advancements are upgradeable slots on your player board that do similar.
After workers have moved, conflicts are resolved which involves spending unit tokens at the world the worker is at to try annex it. There’s also player conflict here, with rules for determining military dominance and damaging/destroying each other’s units. No dice involved, it’s all about the units, hero, and tactic cards you play.
In the solo mode, you just draw a card for each bot turn. No deck segmentation/stacking, it’s a straight random shuffle. The bot mostly just scores, and competes for cards and worlds, but it works well as some of its cards increase in strength based on event deck progress, so you’re watching for them and hoping they come early. The only aspect of the multiplayer game that seems missing in solo is the conflict resolution, where you can damage and destroy each other’s units when competing for a world. Here you can damage the bot’s units, which are listed on the solo card, but not vice versa.
Once the last turn is done, you compare VPs from all your Worlds and a specific VP resource (called Empire Points) to get a winner. It’s refreshingly simple scoring for the genre! There is also a cool wrinkle where the last set (‘Epoch’) of event cards can each score bonus points based on amounts of the various resources you have, each card tied to a different resource. A fixed amount of Event cards come out each game by default, but they are a resource themselves and you can use worker actions to get up to 5 extra ones per turn - so you’re aiming to get more to come out late game if you want to try get those bonus points. Or not, if you’re behind in most resource counts!
I enjoyed it. First game was a mess, but the second went smoothly. The strategy was heavily influenced by my random starting situation, and I liked how drafting gave you some slight control over empire focus. There’s a token players compete for, that lets the owner choose between two worlds when a new one comes out, which I found very useful in picking worlds that meshed with your own goals.
There are a lot of bits in the box but the game ends up playing fairly simply and smoothly. No storage solution is included so I had to build my own, otherwise setup/teardown is just too painful! Especially at the end, when lots of stuff is out.
The angle this photo is taken at makes me think that you’re playing the game on a wall. Can’t un-see… :)
Upside-down. Playing from the Southern Hemisphere does that.
Same here. It’s clearly a dart board on a wall with a bunch of stuff tacked up nearby. :D
I love the idea of this, because I think Core Worlds is a superlative deck-builder. However, I just don’t think it would work very well as a solitaire game, despite the fact that there’s now a solitaire bot available in the latest add-on.
But it sounds like this Empires adaptation and the Core Worlds basic game just use that lowest common denominator of solitaire gaming: a deck of cards with arbitrary instructions on them. Ugh. This sort of stuff just kills me:
Andrew Park is a really good designer. But slapping a deck of cards onto the side of a multiplayer game is such a half-assed way to pander to the popularity of solitaire gaming. Yet everyone is doing it and no one but me seems to mind. Sigh. I need to go find some kids to play on my lawn so I can yell at them to get off my lawn.
Thanks for the breakdown, Andrew. As a multiplayer game especially, it looks like a cool iteration on the Core Worlds concepts.
-Tom
Is solo boardgaming that popular (outside of Covid)? When I mention solo play to other boardgamers many tell me they would never play a boardgame solo. They would play a video game instead, They will not even play a digital boardgame. I believe the consensus is that boardgames are meant to be social. Though they will play on Boardgame Arena or using the phone (we play Dice Throne Adventures that way). I suppose they look at a digital version as playing against the AI which is lacking in most of them.
I mean, I appreciate your experience and the point of view of those in your gaming circle as anecdotal evidence of one side of the coin regarding boardgames as a social experience – and I think they very much are that for a lot of people in the hobby.
But with that said, the proliferation of solo modes, and more and more co-op games or straight up solo games designed from the base with a solo experience in mind tells me that there’s data to suggest that failure to have a solitaire option probably shuts off a fairly large revenue spigot – especially for more complex games, or narrative-driven games.
I basically only play Solo Boardgames, and for me that started a few years before Covid. I like solo better. It’s easier to schedule and I like doing something that gives me a break from all the screen time from work.
I prefer groups, but still play a lot solo. Spirit Island, Mage Knight, Oath, soon Sleeping God’s.
And even light games like Yahtzee
