Grand Austria Hotel - Solo playthrough of the Mautoma solo mode and final thoughts 

Sean!!!! You realise you're my very first super thanker!!! Thank you so very much for the support it's so humbling 🥰🥰🥰 I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving yesterday if you celebrate it (and maybe managed to get some sneaky Coral Island in too... 😊😏). Thank you again 💕

You’re welcome! We gave our dogs some left-over Thanksgiving turkey and puppuccinos, and one of them ended up comatose on the couch snoring like the old man he is, lol.

That's adorable 🥰 sounds like you had a good time. My dog is looking forward to Christmas for pretty much the same reasons 😁 must admit not sure I've seen Puppuccinos over here though!

Thank you so much for watching! Yes I've also considered grabbing the expansion too but the print and play files here do such a great job I've not felt the need yet. Glad you also enjoyed the game! 😁

Is the "official" solo variant much different from this??? Is it better/worse??? Does it make sense to buy the entire expansion just for this "official" solo mode ???

@@tombulva Honestly, I do not think so. The "official" solo variant that I have played (there are 2 in the expansion box) makes the game into more of a race than the unofficial variant that I found on BGG. I prefer the unofficial variant myself. YMMV.

Thank you so much I'm glad you are enjoying my content 😊 I have indeed thought about Carnegie and have heard very good things! It's not one that I own at the moment though but maybe one day I will get around to giving it a go! So many games and too little time and space...

Oh nice! Definitely not something I could ever imagine doing it would be so stressful! Yes shame that the art is a little bit of a miss on this one but gameplay definitely makes up for it! Thank you as always for watching 😁

@@bluedogboardgames haha, came to similar conclusions about the career possibility before I picked a major.

Nope I checked this with the designer, the AI does not score for any of the closing room bonuses whether VPs or emperor bonus 😊

No worries! From the wording on the rule, I believe it draws another card as it cannot fulfil a condition - "If there are no guests and/or dice corresponding to what is indicated on the automa card, discard it and draw a new one" :)

@@bluedogboardgames 🙂 Thx. I also played this way, but in the meantime I asked the same question on the bgg forum and the designer of the solo version, Mauro Gibertoni, states otherwise: "If the card reports two tables, you should pick two guests, if possible. If it possible to pick only one guest, that is still ok. You should pick at last 1 guest and later 1 die. If there is no possibility to pick at least 1 guest or 1 die, discard and draw another card." 🙃 There are two contradictory answers by Mauro Gibertoni in the thread on BGG (one from 2019, the other from 2022), but I assume that the one from a few days ago is binding 😉. Either way, it doesn't change much, and the solo mode is very nice and challenging 😊

Ha that's funny! Thank you for letting me know! As you say, doesn't change too much and is a good challenge either way 😁🤪

Question: how did you print the variant solo cards? Are they printed on two sides or one sided and cut to fit into a sleeve?

I am not that skilled or patient with print outs so these are two separate prints stuck together then laminated! To be fair that turns out much better than trying to line up the front and back on my printer! 😅

Yes there's nothing in the ruleset to forbid the passing action on your turn. I can never decide if it's worth losing a dice over though or if it's better to just work with what you get...I also forget about that option quite a lot 😂