A channel that gets quickly down to business about board and card games for solo enthusiasts. I tend to focus on medium to heavy games and only those that can be played solo. I try to keep my videos practical and to the point in order to help you learn about solo games, see their components, see them in action and ultimately understand if you want them in your collection or not. Thank you very much for your feedback and comments!
I am also open to working on solo reviews for new and upcoming games. If you are a publisher or designer who wants to reach the solo board game community and like what I do here, please feel free to contact me via Facebook. Thank you!
Yikes. A couple days (when I have free time) of struggling with the rules and I’m on page 12. My brain is melting and I have at least 12 more pages to go, plus learning solo play. Dont think I’m gonna make it through this. I’ll report back, but I may need to go back to something simple like Age of Innovation :) Sometimes I wonder if designers feel like they need to make more complex games for the sake of complexity, or to show their prowess at game design. But, as Ian Malcolm said, “they were so concerned with whether they COULD, they didn’t stop to ask if they SHOULD.” Again, I’ll keep trying based on your comments and the fact that I love complex games.
You might want to watch my teaching video of this one to help frame everything you are reading. I certainly can understand the feeling of being overwhelmed while trying to learn the game from the rules. There is just such a lot to take in…
Hi John. I'm looking to buy Unsettled or ISS Vanguard for solo play and would appreciate your opinion on which one is better? I ruled out Voidfall because of the of the weight and extensive set up and take down. I also don't like managing more than two hands. For context, my favorite games are Mage Knight, TMB Undertow, and Marvel / Arkham LCG's. Thanks again.
So they are completely different feels. You have to ask yourself what you are looking for. Each game of Unsettled is its own thing. Think of it as one large puzzle to be solved with each scenario and each planet being an isolated version of the puzzle. Not too much dice rolling or randomness besides the card draws. ISS Vanguard is huge and very long campaign where each session affects the future of the game. Lots of dice rolling to perform checks on success on this one. Both games have plenty of content and are very enjoyable but they are completely different. Based on your favorite games, I think you would be good with either but I think the choice comes down to if you want a campaign or no campaign.
Yeah I said the same thing - game is very unfriendly to learn and play, due to how fiddly the turn structure is and how abstract the theme is, not giving that turn structure any thematic sense. But ..love the game, the experience is just so much fun and so rewarding 😁🙏
@@boriskirov3953 Exactly my sentiments. I am, however, finding the bot to be easy to beat on the first and second level. I will try to keep uping the difficulty to see how things go.
Just cracked this open & played solo and I have to agree - it was clearly an afterthought. I'll see if anyone has developed a good solo automa on BGG before making a decision about this one.
Dang, I’ve heard you and Tom (Slickerdrips) both say, more than once, how difficult it was to learn this game. I typically don’t heard either of you say that a game was very difficult to learn so I’m a bit intimidated knowing that you both found it challenging. Yet, at the same time, it’s helpful to know that it’s gonna take some time but will be worth the work.
Played my first solo game last night and it was quick and fun! I lost haha but can’t wait for another go! I certainly get some Legacy of Yu vibes for sure. The card draft each round was a little annoying but at the same time great to get so my options before you start the round. I’ve slowed down on sleeving but man, so many cards to shuffle afterwards and sleeves would certainly help! Thanks again and I really enjoy your channel.
Thanks so much for this video!! I wanted to buy that game, now, I will buy it!! One thing that Rahdo did to speed the game is that you don't shuffle the cards and put them under the stack of cards, you only do that when the stacks are empty. Anyway, I'm going to buy that game NOW!! 😋
Ouch! Glad I avoided this one, the solo looked like a total miss for me when I read the rules... I had those "super-cheaty" vibes when doing so, which is never a good thing.
I’m glad I double checked. I got on a very similar site and was thinking it was too good to be true honestly, so I double checked to see if they were a scam before ordering. Also the odd thing - the site doesn’t mention going out of business sale, just the deep discounts… which also made me suspicious.
It's worth noting that the Cornucopia and Honey Pot expansions, besides Fall Flavors, also add to the solo experience with a wide variety of contests/objectives, plus drone dice to replace the cards, which might keep it on your shelf for an extremely long time....if you like solo beat-your-own scores, that is. I hope an official or unofficial automa comes out for this because this game is ripe for that. A shame how with 3 expansions they couldn't come up with a legit A.I.
I certainly could have come up with a "legit AI," but I chose not to. I wanted to make a hybrid solo mode that had a win/loss condition along with a dead simple NPC system. I wouldn't call it beat-your-own-score. The cornucopia and Honey Pot allow you to replace the drone cards with dice, which a lot of people like, so there's that.
Hi John, love your channel. Thanks for mentioning Asian Tigers and Stephens, the solo mode for both was made by me. Hope you have the chance to try them and hopefully enjoy them.
Sadly not yet. I live in the US and don’t get any of these sweet preview opportunities like a lot of other channels get. What you see here is paid for out of my pocket and what is available to buy at my FLGS. I am looking forward to getting a copy of both of these games as soon as I can. Thanks for the comment and for making solo modes so I can play!
Both are fantastic. I would say Arborea is more innovative in its gameplay, but something about Scholars really makes me love it. I would watch both of my solo reviews and then make the choice on what you think looks to be more fun. You cannot go wrong with either choice.
@CarlosGonzalez-vp2ms good question. While neither game has any modules that you can add or subtract, both have evolving strategies that change depending on what decisions you make. Ultimately though, I think Arborea probably wins the nod here but I have played Scholars over a dozen times too and have not gotten board with it.
I’m finally getting to Trickerion now. Had the collector’s edition sealed for 6 years sitting on my shelf! Outlined the rules. Looks really darn good. Can’t wait to dive in.
@@JohnLaRuffa what a great game! I played on “easy”, which we know is like Normal when it comes to Turczi solo modes, and I won by tiebreaker. It was 80 to 80, and I won because I was first in initiative order. Crazy. And this was using just the base game, not the Academy or Dawn of Discovery. I can only imagine what it would be like to throw the whole kitchen sink in, but the base game is really meaty in itself. I did wrack my brain quite a few times too, so this made me believe that easy really wasn’t easy
@realdealastrology9 In all honesty, probably not for a while since it is such an undertaking to learn and play and I have a lot of games in my rotation at the moment I am trying to keep current. I have not parted with it, nor will I ever, but it is just not something I can tackle at the moment.
Around 23:00 you researched with two white dice and bumped up the red track. You have to use colored dice unless you do the lowest level of research (or white dice with a colored worker) to research, and you can only go up the track of the color dice you use.
I need to mention here that when you move more than once space during the Forage action, you pay 2 coins per space you move. I think I said that you just pay one.
Not relevant to this video, but I figure I'd comment here: I wonder if you can do a video about board game burnout, like when you feel like you don't want to play games for an extended period of time, or you're in a big selling trend. That's how I feel right now. I've encountered 3 games in a row that I just opened, started reading the rules, and the rulebook was just so disorganized that it left a very sour taste in my mouth and caused me to just sell it. For some reason, my patience for learning games is wearing thin these days. It extremely aggravates me when there's a disorganized rulebook and/or I have to constantly reference BGG for rules questions and ambiguities. To me, that's a hallmark of a badly designed game.
I think the video I did a few months ago was as a result of burnout. I do want to do a follow up video to that and will do it soon, discussing similar things. I feel like I do hit a wall sometimes, especially with trying to learn something new. That has prevented a lot of impulse buying in the last 9 months or so for me.
the 2 mini expansions....Honey Pot and then Cornucopia for Fall Flavors has some extra stuff for solo; it adds some drone dice that you use to mix up how it moves and acts
Thank you for being the 1st to review the game after it delivered to Kickstarter backers. I’ve read the rules and will be playing it solo this week. Very happy to see you liked it. Great overview.
You are quite welcome. I made a teaching video of it as well that will hopefully help you if you need more support while learning the game. Enjoy! This one is fantastic!
So I bought Lisboa before I started my channel and I still have it. However, it has been about 6 years since I have played it. When I learn and play it again, I will do a review, but I don’t know when that will be to be honest. Shikoku 1889, no because it does not have a solo mode and I don’t own it. I love 1862 though!
Glad to see you subscriber numbers growing as you have the best channel focused on solo games. You and one stop coop shop. Just wish you did some more reviews of adventure, survival and exploration games. Also miniatures games. Euro's are beat you own score vs. a win lose condition in coop games. Thanks again, John.
Thank you very much for watching. The reality is, the games you see here are the ones I buy with my own money and enjoy. I don’t get provided games to review from publishers (although I wish I did) and so you are basically watching my gaming life unfold in realtime. I do like adventure, survival and exploration games a lot, but I have not found a lot of them that really interest me as much as other games these days. Perhaps you could search my channel to find the ones I have enjoyed in the past and see if they are what you are looking for? And, if you have any personal favorites that are not posted on my channel, feel free to suggest them and I will look into if they are something that I would be interested in buying. Thanks again!
I officially have a new criterion for triggering the sale of a game: if I have to constantly go back and forth to BGG because of rule ambiguities. I HATE that. It tells me that the rules as written are very very poor. If there is at least one ambiguity that can make or break the game state, forget it. The frustration I feel is enormous, and it’s not worth the aggravation. Better to sell in this case. The latest game to meet this fate was Deliverance. Simply awful.
That can certainly be frustrating and I have a tough time with that too. While I won’t necessarily sell it at the first or second sign of something like that, I did literally sell Tabannusi because of that exact reason. The solo was just too ambiguously frustrating for me.
Thanks for the overview and review! I unboxed last night and I'm hoping to table today. Wayfarers is my favourite Garphill game (#2 all-time) but Ezra and Nehemiah and Scholars are both also in my top 25 all-time. So, if Inventors is on the same level as those I'm going to love it.
Once I achieved second to highest score (20ish games), I was done with this one - great game but a bit repetitive as there are not that many variations to the setup or objectives.
@@boriskirov3953 I think I will need to play on at least the 3rd or 4th difficulty because when I played on easy, I was able to score 164. Too much freedom to do what I wanted to do. Also, I am going to start mixing in the expansion content now.
Thank you for the video, John! There are a 2 things I caught which are the Workshop Tile costs and Dummy Tent placement. 10:10 - Quoting the rulebook; "Placing Workshop Tiles into the left-most incomplete column on [a] Player Board is always free. If players want to place into a column further to the right, they must pay 1 Silver per column beyond this." For example, if the first column is already filled with 3 tiles, the next workshop tile you place, regardless of the row, will be free. If you then place another workshop tile in that same row, it will cost a Silver. It was difficult for me to grasp in the first few plays but I think the example in the rulebook (pg 10) is a good reference. Also, the Dummy Player only ever has one tent to place throughout the game. You or the AI are basically using the Dummy player to block tent spots at the end of each round. When raising Tents at the end of the round, the Dummy player's tent is returned to their supply. I usually place it at the bottom of the Pass tiles just as a reminder. Besides that, it's a very thorough and concise rules breakdown for a game this heavy. Thanks again.
Ah. I see that now about the dummy player tent. That will make things a lot easier in order to win some of the end game majorities or at least place in them. As for the workshop placement, that is great to see too! I have been making it harder than it needs to be. Thank you for the help!
I made a small mistake when I talked about the bot taking the tenting action. When it does it from the second to last card, if it takes that second action, it completes the second action first, then you immediately flip the last card and tent. Also, the Dummy player never moves their tent up. It just goes off the board until it is placed in a later round. In this way, they will never score additional influence based on tents. Finally, the cost of a workshop time is only paid if you decide to place it in a new column when there is already an incomplete column on your board. Once the first column is complete, the second column becomes the free one and so forth.
Scholars is fun. I actually don't have plans to pick up inventors. But the whole South Tigris trilogy looks terrific. They each have a great aesthetic.
Thanks for the teach! Looks like I did a couple of small things wrong. I was reading priorities wrong-for example 2-3-1 I interpreted as first priority was card 2, second priority was card 3, last priority was card 1. The way you explain makes a lot more sense! I am still not completely sure on test priority though. I think I played it completely wrong-test blue, period. Now do priority order on blue. Only move on to orange if all blue are full. (I was going top to bottom in color.) That meant the AI tested tons of blue, not much black. I still don’t completely get priority for testing though-is it first test blue if free in the leftmost, top position, then test black if free in the leftmost, bottom position, then test orange if free in the leftmost, middle position, then if none move to the next column, etc?
@@mrsamtheman80 the testing priority is a bit unclear for me too to be honest. I play it as it wants to test the color in the number 1 slot. Then, it looks from left column going down and then back to the top and right and tests the first blue slot it can find.
Here's how I've played it. I hope the breakdown below is clear enough. Example of Scheme Card with Test Focus of Blue 1, Orange 3, Black 2 i) Firstly, check Colour Focus (In this case, Blue because it is Focus 1) ii) Then, check Colour Focus with Number Focus on Built Devices (Check Built Devices column to see if there is a Blue Test space available beginning with the top device, then bottom device, then middle device. You're going in that order because the number focus is 1 then 3 then 2) iii) If no spaces available in Built Devices, then use Colour Focus and Number Focus on Published Devices (again, seeing if there is a Blue Test space available beginning with the top device, then bottom device, then middle device) iv) If still no spaces available, then change Colour Focus to the next priority and start again on step ii (Focus has moved to Black because is it Focus 2)
