My strategy on Solo Ark Nova is, at the beginning don't be afraid to use your worker on a continent or on a university. Just try to put as many animals in your zoo as possible and be the building card the first one you upgrade and animals the second! after each round you will loose 1 turn. so you should be enable to do multiple things at once. until mid game you have to find at least 1 or 2 useful support cards that can lead you to a good combo to get conservation points. at the beginning you should not worry about those! It will take away your possibilities to get animals easily. Also about those starter conservation point cards, don't take them too seriously. most of the time your starting hand can't cover those so don't worry about them! So over all, at the beginning of the game, just try to get as many different icons and attraction points as possible. and from the mid game then you should start to find combos. it is easyer to find good combo when you already have diversity of icons in your zoo!
Watched this before trying my first solo game and wow you're so right about the association actions being limited! Thanks for the video it helped a lot. That game was the most fun I've had with a solo board game.
Nice video! My observations from playing solo Ark Nova versus multiplayer 1. In the multiplayer game, it's usually good to contribute to a conservation project early in one of the small slots (2 conservation points) to free up another worker. In the solo game, it's better to wait and make your contributions at the end, when you have more time to get the higher conservation point bonuses. Most of the time in the solo game, by the time I get an extra association worker, I don't have time to use them before a break comes along. One exception might be if you have a 2x on your board, but even then you'll need two extra workers in order to make 2 contributions. 2. Going for multiple smaller animals is usually a better strategy than going for bigger animals., maybe with the exception of the big animals goal / conservation project. Smaller animals are usually cheaper, and they get you more continent and animal type tags faster. That said, if you are going to go this route, it's best to upgrade the build action as your first upgrade so that you can build multiple buildings at a time and / or build the reptile house / aviary to free up space later in the game. 3. In the last three rounds of the game, I want to be playing 2 animals or donating to a conservation project as many times as I can. That moves the tracks in the right direction.
Shipping-Solo I've avoided with the turn-limited nature, I'm glad you've tried ARNO too. Regular Solo is a "sprint" rather than the regular "marathon" when you can build towards a strategy...
Does anyone else struggle with Ark Nova solo game play? I start at 20 Appeal but still end up with a negative score - which gets discouraging after a while. There just are not enough turns. My fix is to add 12 extra turns and 3 extra breaks by adding 3 cubes to the solo card. This results in playing rounds 3, 4, and 5 twice. With these extra turns I am able to get to a healthy positive score. The goal will be to reduce the extra turns as my scores improve.
have you tried the ARNO fan made automa on bgg? (using the app makes it so easy!) if so what do you think about it? my main issue with the official solo is the timer.. I don't like it (like in most solo modes in other games) the ARNO feels like a true multiplayer, I love it (but won't ever play it without the app... too complex ..)
Hey, yeah I agree, I actually streamed with ARNO recently! This video was made before that so now I do agree I would prefer it with ARNO :) You can find it here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-FBRqeq5tkVA.html
