[following on from What Should I Play? (Help me decide)]
Last week, I did get Fantastic Factories to the table for a solo game. I was a bit disappointed. The “AI” wasn’t very competitive and the whole thing felt like a fairly flimsy solo experience. I’m surprised, then, at how much love the BGG 1PG has shown FF over the years.
Still, I will hang on to Fantastic Factories for the moment because I think a “build your tableau and then run it” where everyone is running their factory at the same time is a valuable design-artifact to have around, if it works as well as it looks like it might. Concurrent turns is such a hard thing to do in a game; the only thing left to determine is how samey and solitaire the multiplayer experience is.
I’m glad I resisted the temptation to buy the recent expansions when they were on Kickstarter.
That night, I was going to follow up Fantastic Factories with a game of Baseball Highlights: 2045. I got everything out of the box and was looking at integrating some more of the expansions when I realized I was missing a rulebook for roughly half of the expansions (which is normal, I think?). I checked and found that I had downloaded the missing reference document, but had not yet printed it for ease of play. Feeling a bit tired, I packed everything away again.
Until last night. I got everything out, printed the missing document, along with a fan-made solo variant that is nearly ubiquitous at this point, for playing with the expansions. The key differences with the solo variant are as follows:
- After resolving the immediate effects and hits for the AI’s card, if its
costis 5 or less, send it down to the AI’s minor leagues and replace it with a card from the Free Agent deck before placing it in the Dugout; do not resolve the new card. - Keep 10 available free agent cards in the market instead of the usual 6.
With the new rules reference in-hand, I shuffled all of the expansions into the Free Agent deck, using everything except the Coaches and Ballparks expansions.
For my starter team, I chose United Kingdom, in honour of all my UK friends here. I opted to do easy mode with 4 buy rounds before starting; but only 3 of them yielded any roster changes.
I was competitive throughout the first game; keeping it roughly tied through most of the game. The last AI card would have cancelled all 3 of my Average runners if I had been in the lead, but luck would have it I was trailing by a point, nullifying the AI’s ability and then allowing for me to take the win by 2 points (1 Average on base, 3 single Average runners threatened). The AI threatened 1 at the end and by luck I pulled a Cancel 1 Hit for the Visitor Save.
Only once did the AI draw a card with a cost of 5 or less (and it was a 5, of course). Even still, I feel the solo game with all of the expansions is a lot flimsier than the base game or with just Rally Cap. The AI’s team has tons of really expensive, very powerful players – but they are all randomly assembled and their abilities are highly contextual.
Unfortunately, by that point in the evening, it was too late to play another game of the series, so I packed away everything carefully so that I can continue another time.