So as promised to myself I played a “big” solo game tonight. This is my Paladins of the West Kingdom + City of Crowns board in its final glorious state. After about 2 hours spent on setting up and learning/relearning the rules, remembering why I hate the bot—despite good reminders on the bot side of the board, it really needs a helper sheet with reminders for the specifics of the actions. Over all the whole game is in desperate need of some player aids that go beyond the back of the rulebooks. This is one of those games where I keep going back to the rulebook all the time, every single game.
It’s a table hog. This is just a small part of the game. See here.
I feel inadequate at explaining this monstrosity (I like it, but that doesn’t change the fact that my partner goes running for the hills when the box comes out and he hates running). So shortest possible explanation: Over seven rounds you place your bunch of more or less randomly collected workers on the board in order to build walls, monasteries, camps and collect blue vases, convert strangers and hire townsfolk—all in a quest to raise your faith, power and (whatever blue is) ratings to get points but which are also prerequisites to be able to use the actions. The major actions each reward you with a certain rating while they require a different one. For each rating combination there is a different type of major action. You cannot do it all and the rewards get better the more you invest into one or two things. But you really need three to get going… so maybe you can fake the third by getting short-lived bonuses from your eponymous paladins (a card you choose from your deck every round).
Lots of the same tropes as the other West Kingdom games: debt deeds and crime paying off (or not). This time there is an inquisition punishing those who use criminals.
In the first 2 rounds, you have maybe 6 workers and no money, no provisions and all the good actions require 3 of your workers. The board seems daunting but by round 6 or 7 you manage to wrangle a lot more actions and workers out of it, scraping by with one more worker from a card here, converting a criminal (joker color) into 3 laborers (who are only useful for the most basic of spots) with the King’s Favor…
It’s quite fun and I’d love to play multiplayer because the bot at best gets in my way taking cards from the different markets or blocking spots for my camps & monks but it isn’t really competing while requiring a whole lot of remembering how it performs each action.
I cannot truly post a score on this—though by my count I won by a lot—because I know I made a bunch of mistakes. I wish this was a solo like Nusfjord where I just have to fight my own plans. The game itself is already such a huge puzzle and the bot takes me away from my own board too much.
PS: City of Crowns adds yet another “rating” to the point salad and 2 fun new actions with 2 new card types: Negotiate and Muster. Those make the game easier because they allow you to circumvent the strict requirements for the other actions sometimes. I played Negotiate on every turn and 3 times in the last turn alone (having to “pray” the worker spot free twice)