Thank you for writing that. I’d seen this in my FLGS but knew nothing about it, and hadn’t been inspired to follow up; but that explanation sounded really great, so I ended up just grabbing it the next time I was there. The game comes as a regular “deck of cards” box, but has somewhat confusingly been printed here in two different box styles, which makes it seem like they might vary in some way; but I understand the cards and art is identical in both – it’s purely down to which box art you prefer.
The custom deck is very nice, with every single card having a unique character illustration, and good card quality (BGG forum says “black core german casino quality linen”), but you can absolutely play this with any standard 52-card-plus-2-jokers deck of cards (or of course, conversely, use the custom deck to play any other standard deck card game). New Zealanders will also get a kick out of the #5 character of each suit : ) (The designers and artist are all Kiwis).
My sole complaint about the production is that the text in the little playing-card-sized manual/booklet is really small and yet the blank margins on each page are relatively large… so even without increasing the page count, they could have increased the text size and made things easier for us folks with poor eyesight. There’s not too much to learn at least, and you can print out a larger set of rules if you need to, so it’s only a temporary issue if it affects you; but I do still think they dropped the ball in this one area. A single extra sheet in the booklet (increasing the page count from 10 to 14), or any other format allowing significantly bigger text, would have been much appreciated.
I played the game solo several times today, and have really enjoyed it. I lost my first two games (I didn’t even reach the kings the first time, which made it seem very daunting), but I’ve managed three wins since then; albeit only at the lowest success-level each time (using both jokers – I really thought I was going to get away with one joker in my last game, but found I had two kings left to face when I’d thought I had only one : )
Assuming you have a standard deck of cards at hand, I thoroughly recommend trying this game; I think it’s a really neat design which constantly presents you with little dilemmas and tricky decisions.
They’ve even managed to make all of the suits thematic. Hearts represent injured heroes being healed so that they will be available to hire again later; Diamonds represent payment for hiring heroes from the tavern to join the fight; Clubs represent extra damage; and Spades could look a bit like a shield if you squint right…? The card art reflects this as well – every Spade character is depicted with shields or extra armour; Club characters have clubs or other bludgeoning weapons; Heart characters are holding healing potions; and Diamond characters are… er… wielding fire?! (Maybe “appear to be wealthy” didn’t look as good. Or perhaps it was fire all along, and instead of hiring heroes it’s actually a torches (and pitchforks) approach to recruiting from the tavern.)
“The player who has most recently committed regicide goes first” is also the funniest start-player rule I’ve seen in ages : )
From the looks of things, its Kickstarter campaign is still a good resource, but it only provides the rules for 2-4 players. The changes for solo play are that you have a hand limit of 8 cards, and jokers are used completely differently: instead of nullifying the suit of an enemy (there is no way to do that when playing solo), they are simply a two-time resource which you can use before attacking or taking damage, which causes you to discard your hand and draw a new hand of eight cards. You don’t actually need joker cards as such – just to keep count of whether you did this action 0, 1, or 2 times (for gold, silver, or bronze victory respectively, if you win).
Edit:
Official description of solo rules differences to the regular game
Set up the game as per usual but place the two Jesters to the side. You play with a single hand limited to 8 cards. Play as normal, playing each turn one after the other. However a Jester can be flipped to activate the following power: “Discard your hand and refill to 8 cards - this does not count as drawing for the purpose of enemy diamond immunity.” Since you have two Jesters this can be done twice per game. Flipping the Jesters in this way does not cancel immunity. You are allowed to use the Jester power a) at the start of step 1 before you play a card or b) at the start of step 4 before you have to take damage. Winning the game after using both Jesters achieves you a Bronze Victory. Winning after flipping only 1 Jester is called a Silver Victory and winning the game while having both Jesters untouched grants you the ever-elusive Gold Victory!
Slightly spoilerish explanation of how solo and multiplayer modes compare
In 4 players each player has 5 card max and takes a hit at the end of their turn, like every player does. However each individual player has to receive every fourth hit. In solo, you are bumped up from 5 to 8 cards, but you have to take every hit every turn! What you may be missing if you haven’t had a chance to play it yet is that seeing all 8 cards and knowing that you’ll go again next is a HUGE advantage that you don’t have in 4 player. If 4 player was open-handed full co-op you would win every time. It’s the informational asymmetry that makes difficult to play the perfect cards. In solo you have all the information at your literal fingertips so it’s way easier to play really efficiently with lots of exact kills.
Both collapsed comments are from Solo rules | Regicide on BGG.