Well that was an enjoyable Friday evening.
Solo game using the solo rules provided.
Era start
I am yellow. The Competition is represented by Blue, Green & Purple all using Blue bases.
The smaller board to the right is the score counting board + contract. Note the Yellow (me) & Blue (Competition) Profit tokens at the start of the track. This is the games Score as well as being a resource.
Era end
I leap frogged my way from the moon, to establishing a base on Halley’s Comet then leapfrogged to Phobos where a factory was established to help build on Mars.
The Competition landed on Northern Mars and discovered primitive bacteria. we took Southern Mars and discovered water. Note I ended up 1 Profit being the Competition.
As a last gasp I launch a team into the Beyond to the Asteroid belt and snag the 1st Beyond marker.
Era 2 begins
Well this escalated quickly. The complexity of the game has taken another big step up. My infrastructure (lower right) is relatively weak. But my 1st Beyond expedition gave me a team on Ceres which has Water. Note the interim production extended the Competitions lead over me to 2T.
Early thoughts after Era 1
I am really having a great time. Its always a nice feeling when you are in the hands of a master game designer. In this case with Chad Jenson developing and Butterfield designing you have two.
I have zero complaints mechanically, although I suspect there maybe a dominant strategy for the first Era, we shall see.
I have a few minor negatives. Mainly around graphic design.
The game is a little cold for me. While there is some theme I feel like the cards were wasted. Instead of a bunch of repeated stock images we could have had little theme text boxes and unique images even for duplicate effects.
Some of the colour choices are a little off. I am not colour blind but the purple, team gets lost on the map and the less said about using black cubes in a space game the better.
Worst the rule book commits the sin of having a watermarked image behind the text (as you can see in the lower left above). They grey sometimes get so dark in the background picking out the black text becomes a chore.
Speaking of the rulebook its laid out fairly procedurally. Which makes learning the game easier (you dont need to know everything to play Era 1 just setup and learn the rules while playing). Thats good. very good. Whats bad is the lack of index, so you end upo flipping through that book a lot hunting down where you say such and such rule although the reference cards are good.
I think the most pleasant surprise is how smoothly such a heavy game plays. The Solo rules seem to make things play quicker which is a rare and most welcome.
It has this nice feeling of being a substantial game. Each move is meaningful and weighty. Turns are in years or decades and it feels right for what its trying to cover which is a lot. The analysis paralysis level is spot on for me. Not too much, but enough that I enjoy planning.