Solo games tonight – my first plays through of Elevenses For One and At the Gates of Loyang.
The first is a very little (just 13 cards) solitaire puzzle of trying to manipulate a randomised sequence of eleven special abilities over the course of ~14 turns such that you can extract them in numerical order. I’ve been playing The Lost Expedition in recent times, and the gameplay made me think very slightly of that (but perhaps it’s simply reminiscent of other patience games generally). The art work is lovely, and I just really enjoy having a game which is themed (however lightly) around making a posh morning tea as quickly as possible. I managed to avoid being fired in two games, and in the other two Lady Agatha was so pleased with me she gave me a half-day off!
The cards are sturdy, but don’t seem to have a very smooth surface for good shuffling, so I was happy to discover that the only pack of card sleeves I had of the size in question, although nearly-depleted, contained 14 sleeves : ) That worked a treat.
It’s a very simple game – it’s not going to rock anyone’s world – but it’s tiny and fast and quite a nice puzzle, so I’m happy I picked it up. Most likely I’ll pop the cards it into a much smaller case of some kind, and it can live in my bag.
The box also contained a solo card game about 10-pin bowling, so I guess I’ll give that a whirl sometime. (The bowling game actually took up far more room in the box, as it has a larger deck and also a printed scorepad!)
At the Gates of Loyang took me a good couple of hours for my first game, but hopefully would be more like one hour with some practice. I managed 16 on the prosperity track, which I felt was totally acceptable for my first game (the manual said 17 was good, 18 was very good, and 19 was outstanding). I had a single ‘casual customer’ the entire game, who was fated to never receive a single vegetable : ) I was able to avoid ever taking a loan (those seem really brutal), and mostly I was doing reasonably well with regular customers – until I realised most of my fields were going to dry up with a couple rounds remaining, and I wasn’t in any position to fulfil orders and plant new fields. I got lucky with a couple of market cards in the final round, and was able to trade just enough of the things I didn’t have to reach my “almost but not quite ‘good’” result : )