After playing against the recommended beginner automa faction, I checked out the other automa faction cards (1 for each) and only one of them seemed like it would pose a slightly more difficult opponent for a higher VP total than the others.
The automa is pretty independent and random. At each level of automa there is pretty much a spread of points that it can achieve so once you know the spread, I believe you then can plan accordingly being more or less aggressive in certain areas to make sure you can beat that spread.
After my game where I had NO idea what I was doing, I thought of a lot of strategies that will definitely boost my score and so I will have to raise the automa level up a few levels just to have that higher score to beat. Almost like a beat your own score game…with a spread.
But, saying that, in my game the automa started researching quickly with those research action cards coming out sooner so I had to switch what I was doing in trying to expand my planets to focus more on that area to try and get some bonus VP’s before he borked them out of the game.
And, the 2 end game scoring cards are a large part of the scoring so if the automa randomly is getting ahead in those score conditions, you need to shift a bit of your priority over to them.
I really enjoy the concept of the game and how it plays out. There are just enough choices to make it interesting each turn. But, the automa is really just there to slightly make you adjust your plans instead of really forcing you to work against it. At least that is my opinion after one game.
I tried Anachrony and there were just WAY too many choices in that game…so this one seems just about right. Good game for sure.
I’ve got my eye on Dungeon Alliance, a Kickstarter game which I believe is hitting retail stores in the next couple of days.
It’s a deck-building dungeon crawl with miniatures, where you use four characters but only have to manage a single deck. The solo play has simple AI cards to drive the monsters, and each AI card includes some decision for the player to potentially make too.
It’s designed by Andrew Parks who did the Star Trek re-skin of Mage Knight, and this seems to share some similarities to that, so it’s kind of low on random and big on working out how to use your cards to best beat the monsters.
Unfortunately it is high-score based, since I don’t think there’s any kind of meta or boss battles or anything like that. The goal would be to clear the dungeon within the time allotted, the final XP total indicating how well you did on the way to that. They are talking about more story-based objectives in the first expansion.
Received the new kickstarter version of Black Orchestra.
This is game where you travel around a map of Europe with 2 or more conspirators to reveal and grab items while avoiding suspicion and raising motivation in order to assassinate Hitler before the end of the war.
The conspirators are based on real life people and there are also conspirator cards which help you with assassination attempts.
The main item that drives the game are the event cards. There are 7 sets of cards which you turn over one by one after each player’s turn. The cards can move Hitler and his Generals around the board to different places, they can signal different historic events which can raise or lower the military power. The card events somewhat mirror history so at the start the military power rises fast and stays fairly high until the last 2-3 event card sets. This is important as the only way to take down Hitler is if your motivation level is high and if his military power is somewhat low.
You can try to kill him when you have a plot conspirator card. These each have different requirements to fulfill before you can carry out the plot. Also, items that you reveal when you travel around give more bonuses to the plot. So, you might have 3 dice to roll that you get from the basic requirements from the plot card and if you have certain items, you roll more dice for those. There are 2 hit sides on each 6 sided die so you need to roll hits that equal or exceed the military power at the time of the plot in order to take him out.
My one and only game so far I tried a plot in the 5th event round, had 6 dice, rolled NO hits, got sent to prison. My other conspirator got me out and at the end of the 7th and after turning over the last card in the last round, I tried again. 3 hits this time but his military power had gone up a bit right near the end due to the random card draws and so I could not match his 5 power.
Lost the game but it’s the first game in a long time where I was being vocal when Hitler would move somewhere away from the area I was plotting or when his generals would move to my space and I could not do a certain action that turn or many other outcomes which were somewhat random but cool.
Very thematic game. Supposed to be very had to beat at the 3 difficulty levels.
I really, really like this game for solo…cannot wait to play again.
Has anyone tried out the solo mode of Xia with the expansion? I missed the recent kickstarter, but it turns out you can late pledge and get all the same stuff. It looks interesting but I’d like to hear some impressions.
It takes some time to get used to following the flow the turns. The AI for the NPC’s is strange. But I do enjoy the way the game plays solo. I house rule a few things and one of the AI’s for the enforcer is so dumb it just sits there all game doing nothing (so I throw that ai choice out).
Just got my copy of Hexplore It. It’s an average sized box that feels like it weighs a ton because it’s so jam packed with content, which is sheer boardgame pornography for me :)
Dude I picked it up for $50 from eBay thanks to the coupon they had the other day and the seller having it underpriced for some reason. Reading the rulebook now.
I have a copy being held at my FLGS for pickup today. I really need to find a way to resist the call of all dungeon crawlers. But hey, I also liked Parks take on Mage Knight, plus I loved his earlier game, Core Worlds.
