J'ai une âme solitaire: Solitaire Boardgaming Megathread!

I couldn’t see mention of this news on QT3 yet, so I guess here is an okay place to do it - Dawn of the Zeds is going digital. This is from the latest Kickstarter backer update:

In the past, we’ve teamed up with Hexwar Games to bring our titles to the digital realm. They brought our popular game, Infection, to mobile and PC and now they’re working on Dawn of the Zeds! It’s still in the early stages of development but they sent us a screenshot and we wanted to give you all an exclusive, backer-only sneak peek of it.

More details about the digital version of Dawn of the Zeds will be released as it gets closer to release, which should hopefully be sometime next year. The day is coming when you guys will be able to take this great zombie apocaplypse action with you on the go.

Well that is a instant buy, I like playing the second edition version but the set up and longer play time keeps it off my table a ton.

Oh cool, I’ve nearly bought that game a bunch of times. Think a digital copy will suit me much better anyway.

I finally got Darkest Night out with all the expansions, originally for a (finally) four player game (I know, solitaire thread, but I prefer playing cooperatively when possible). Another tenant in my apartment building takes the same bus I do to and from work and one day I noticed him carrying a copy of Settlers of Catan on the way home and recognized a fellow boardgamer so I invited him to join us. He had other commitments up until this point, but was finally able to drop by tonight, and he was agreeable to a session of Darkest Night. Then my friend Eddy’s mom called him - she was having car issues and needed a ride from the car repair place (in Inver Grove Heights) over to her home in East St. Paul, so he had to bail and since he was the ride for our fourth, that abruptly halved our population. So my neighbor and I each took over one of their characters and we carried on.

He ran the Seer and Shaman, I ran the Valkyrie and Wizard. The Seer’s Dowse (exhaust to automatically succeed at a search) and Foreknowledge (draw two event cards whenever you would draw one and resolve whichever you choose) were insanely handy, as were the Shaman’s Spirit Sight (at the start of the turn if the card is empty, place a map card on it that you can substitute in place of drawing a map card) and…um, I forget the name of it but it gave him an extra die on all rolls on event cards. Later the Shaman got the Hydra Totem (which you activate in a location and can then on a later turn deactivate to roll 8 dice and destroy a blight in that location for each 6 rolled) which ended up being our primary blightkiller despite indifferent rolling. My Valkyrie and Wizard weren’t quite as influential as I kept rolling terribly, but the Wizard’s Lightning Strike was also productive in combat and a mid-game acquisition of Divination (exhaust for a 2 die search at any location) was quite handy, and I regularly managed to exploit the Valkyrie’s amazing Sprout Wings (activate at the cost of a secrecy, deactivate to move anywhere on the board as a free action). That thing is a starting power. Crazy. It was ultimately a game-winner.

New stuff: four classes, the Bard, the Alchemist, the Conjurer and the Tamer. We didn’t use them, so I can’t give any feedback there. There were a handful of new Blights, including Terror (roll an extra die on all rolls at that location and remove the highest result), Void (7 might and counts as two blights), Enigma (all search rolls are globally 1 harder), Stigma (heroes’ default Grace is reduced by two globally), Flux Cage (entering or leaving the location removes a Secrecy), Wraiths (4/4 attacking monster that cause two wounds if you fail to defend), and Nexus (blights at other locations can’t be destroyed until the nexus is destroyed). Three new items: Cursed Ashes, which can be discarded during your turn to ignore the effects of blights for the rest of the turn; Skull Tokens, which can be discarded after the Necromancer’s movement roll to move him to any location other than the Monastery instead, and the incredible Psion Stone, which can be permanently placed on one of your powers during your turn and from that point onwards every hero can use Tactic effects from that power as if the power were theirs. We stuck one on the Valkyrie’s Skewer tactic (fight with 2 dice) and suddenly everyone was a capable combatant. There are also three new search results: Stardust (reduce Darkness by 1), Inspiration (every hero draws a power card), and Revelation, which gives 3 clue points.

Which brings me to the new mechanic introduced in the expansion. If you choose to use it, keys are removed from the game. Instead, you have a clue marker on the darkness track, starting at zero. Whenever you would gain a key, you instead draw a Mystery card. You immediately gain an indicated amount of clue points, and then the card goes to either a specified location or a randomly determined one. The card will indicate some action or effect that generates further clue points at that location along with other possible consequences. These could be one-off actions after which the mystery disappears, permanent effects that remain for the rest of the game, or “key” effects. Each of the latter can pay out exactly once, after which you place a key token on that part of the card to indicate it’s been used. And what do clue points do for you? Well, to retrieve a relic no longer costs three keys, but rather (by default) 10 clue points. This is a really neat mechanic that I felt enhanced the game considerably. We had Mysteries like an Obelisk that led us to another Mystery, a couple that asked you to make a specific type of roll and then rewarding minor Clues for 4+, a specified item for 5+, and a larger amount of Clues for 6+, a Treasure Hunt that paid off 3 Clues for getting a 5+ on a search at the location (in addition to the regular search reward), Pray For Guidance (which permanently attached +2 clues for getting 2 or more Grace back from praying at the Monastery), and perhaps my favorite (though it didn’t pay off particularly in our session), Extinguish, which added a permanent effect to a random location that if you destroy the last blight in that location, the token goes on the card, you get 1 clue, and that blight type is instantly destroyed if it is ever again spawned. Which in our game, it was not. But the effect is repeatable!

We eventually won at 28 darkness, having gotten severely smacked around and despairing of success more than once, but we eventually managed to get a couple of major Clue payouts and joined an early Ruins relic theft with a late game snagging of the Forest relic by the Seer and then the nearly dead Valkyrie managing to take a moment of relative safety in the Forest to Sprout Wings, fly to the Swamp on the next turn and grab the relic, fight off a couple of undead menaces with the help of said relic, and then Sprout Wings again and fly back to the Monastery on the third turn. Nicely dramatic. The key play was probably the Seer taking on a Mystery that has you draw events until you lose Secrecy or Grace or get moved to another location, and gain a clue for each event resolved. Getting to pick between two events every time made for a string of like eleven successfully resolved events before resources finally ran out. That was a full relic right there.

Victory Point Games has posted a Nemo’s War update. Kickstarter coming in “late December.”

Arise!

I have two new faves for solo board games.

First up is Mistfall. It’s a bit like Mage Knight with the puzzle like gameplay and numerous mechanics, and Lord of the Rings LCG with the enemy placement, combined with a tile based map that you lay out randomly each time you play. Unlike the Pathfinder ACG, there is very little shuffling as you manage your hand of cards much more directly, often deciding when to place a card back into your draw, discard or burial pile. I’ve played it now about a half dozen times and I finally beat the intro quest (there are 4 in the book and more coming through small expansions). Now I’m about to move onto larger maps.

You WILL need to grab the turn order two sheeter from BGG if you want to play as the manual is atrocious. It even leaves out some small rules here and there. But a fan of the game created a turn order guide with some helpful tips that makes the game almost a breeze.

Second up is Warhammer Adventure Card Game which, in spite of sharing a bit of the same name as the aforementioned Pathfinder ACG, is more like Mistfall than anything else. I’ve only played the tutorial (which is about one half of the game) and one quest so far, but I like what I see. It’s amazing how much variety you have with only 4 cards that are played face up in front of you. And I suspect that FFG will be releasing expansions quickly over the next few months, expanding the game even more. I also love the streamlined advancement system for your characters in between quests. You can upgrade the amount of gear you can carry, one of your basic actions (the four cards I mentioned earlier), etc…

It really does capture the feel of the original Warhammer Quest, albeit with cards and a few dice.

I have it from the Kickstarter but haven’t played it other than a quick 2 or 3 turn runthrough I did to see how it looked. Reading about all the card errata online was depressing so I haven’t even downloaded any manual guides yet. I was a bit shocked to see how many typos/errors slipped through for this one. Glad to hear it’s fun once you get going though!

I’ve seen the same complaints, but I’m surprised that folks are so up in arms over that. The Pathfinder ACG card errata is freakin’ huge in comparison. And most FFG card games have a history of releasing numerous corrections soon after release. In comparison, there’s only about 14 cards with typos/wrong text on them in Mistfall (3 of them are the same card…so 17 to be technical). And 5 of them are the quest setup cards that are easily proxied in with the corrected ones during a game. I just printed out the corrected pages and keep them handy as I know which ones they are already.

I’m not excusing a lack of quality control. Don’t misunderstand me. I just don’t think the alarmists on BGG are being fair about it.

Also, the creator has already stated that future large expansions will include fixed cards for all previous games.

p.s. And don’t play unless you have this reference sheet nearby. It really does make the game a snap to play.

Ok now this I hadn’t seen - that would make me feel a lot better about the game for sure. I think it bothers me because the game looks great in the gameplay and art so I don’t want to mark up cards with corrections. Thanks for the info & reference sheet! I’ll have to look into when a possible expansion will be released so I can plan ahead.

Thanks for the impressions Hepcat. I was wondering about that game. How is the play time? Is it long?

hep, how are you finding the rules for WHACG? I read the tutorial rulebook while waiting for my copy to come in, and watched a bit of a playthough of it (which was shot twice because of rule errors) and I’m a bit concerned that the rules are a little more complex than what I was expecting. Some of the posts on BGG seem to indicate folks having similar impressions, that the learning curve is a little steep and some vagueness in the rulebooks.

Jellyfish: I have only played the first scenario so far. That’s a rather brief one with only 4 tiles total (including the starting safe zone tile), but it still took almost 90 minutes for 3 players ( with two people who knew the rules really well). So I would say a good guess is that the standard tile map (a 3x3 grid) should take about an hour per player. But take that with a grain of salt as I haven’t tried it with a group that consists of seasoned players yet. It could be much faster. However, there is a danger of AP in this game with those in your group prone to that affliction.

Gedd: Don’t try to play after just going through the tutorial. That way leads to madness, frustration and hair loss. You should play the tutorial to get the basic combat/card play mechanics down…then go through the advanced section of the learn to play manual, before finally grabbing the reference manual and reviewing the extended rules for each step of the game. The tutorial alone is NOT sufficient to start playing, I believe.

My biggest problem with the game (and that may be because I’m a dim light bulb) is that I struggled with the difference between attack and engage. More specifically, what I could engage and what I could attack while engaged. Engaged is essentially “drawing” the enemy to you (for the most part). After which you can attack. It also refers to those already in your engagement zone, though. So it’s a bit fiddly in its execution.

However, I’m a big fan of the reference manual being a separate booklet in FFG games. I loved it in Eldritch Horror. But they do need to stress that you should review the reference manual after playing a tutorial when the tutorial is this gimped in regards to the full game experience.

Thanks for the info. I definitely plan to read through everything after the tutorial. Part of the fun with new games (for me) is reading through the rulebook(s). The engage/attack thing reminds me a lot of the LotR LCG, so I think that won’t be a problem, although in LotR you can’t engage another player’s enemies unless you’ve got a card ability that allows it. Looking forward to getting this one played soon.

If they’re going to include a Learn to Play reference in their games, FFG really needs to look at GMT for helpful suggestions on how to do it properly.

I got to play the tutorial for WACG last night and I had a lot of fun with it. It’s much easier on the brain than some of the other games I play solo, and I like that it’s not too long. It does have a lot of that LotR:LCG vibe, but without the deck-building which can really suck up some time. I also really like that they have clear, easy ways to mitigate bad dice rolls (aid/success tokens), but you can still get that “epic roll!” feeling from it. Looking forward to starting the campaign soon.

I did read through the advanced rules and rules reference afterward, and I agree that the rules reference could use some work. I found some things that weren’t explained really well or clearly, and some stuff that should have been duplicated in other topics. For instance, there’s only one place in the rules reference (and not in the learn to play book at all) that mentions you can’t put excess explore tokens on the active location, and it’s not the explanation of the explore action, it’s with the locations topics. Meanwhile they made sure in multiple places to mention you can only put a maximum of two success tokens on an action.

If anyone else is interested, I did watch a play through from Grey Elephant Gaming of the first quest which really saved me a lot of time looking up details because I had a good idea of the flow before playing.

Hmm, I just won my very first game of Onirim, which is never a good sign. It seems to me a good solitaire game should be more challenging that just letting you stumble into a win the first time you play. :(

By the way, Onirim is a solitaire trick taking game about escaping from a dream world. It has nothing to do with onanism.

-Tom

The basic game is just a tutorial. As in, “Yay! You beat the tutorial!” Now play with the expansions. That is the real game.

Yeah, I’m realizing that as I fiddle with it more. Also, I was playing it wrong*! Doh. No wonder it was so easy. Do you like it, jellyfish? I’m playing someone else’s copy but now I’m considering getting my own copy.

-Tom

  • You can’t play two symbols of the same kind in a row. However, I was ignoring that rule once I’d played a set of three. I was starting a new set of three starting with the same symbol the ended the previous set of three. Now that I realize you can’t do that, it’s much more challenging!

Well I see in that other thread that you already bought it. Yes I like it. I play it primarily as a co-op though. And if I am not mistaken you aren’t into that sort of thing.

Well, I don’t like playing co-op games cooperatively if there’s no reason to play them cooperatively (i.e. if they don’t have any hidden information). But I quite enjoy playing those sorts of games solitaire. :) That said, I can see two-player Onirim being an interesting multiplayer puzzle if you play without communicating to the other player what’s in your hand. Is that how you’ve played it? Or do you and another player just work together openly? I can imagine the former can be pretty challenging/frustrating.

And, yeah, I went ahead and bought Onirim for myself. It’s what triggered my latest boardgaming binge. Stupid Onirim.

-Tom