AuZtralia, solo, x 3.
It’s good! I think I’ve seen enough to want to pick up TaZmania at some point, which targets solo and 2-player games, but I reckon I should try some 2-handers as well, as the game surely loses something when there are only two tokens (you + the AI) on the time track.
Set-up seemed pretty arduous the first time, but actually isn’t bad once you know how it works, and I found I could zip through all the tile and resource placements pretty quickly in my subsequent games. The extent to which things get randomised, both across the map, and in the card decks, ensures that no two games will play out the same way. This inevitably means that the difficulty will vary from game to game; but if you like this kind of variability then this game has it in spades. It also has multiple different ways to adjust the difficulty, plus a double-sided map with rules variations for each side, so I think there’s a ton of longevity here if you enjoy the game.
The actual gameplay feels smooth and streamlined in a good way – turns go by quickly, and it feels to me like getting a very solid amount of game for the time put in (games are taking ~90mins I think, which is potentially on the slow side on my part, but probably the right ballpark).
With railways costing more time to build than anything else, the initial “safe” expansion-oriented phase of the game goes by shockingly quickly, before the Old Ones start to awaken and move. There simply isn’t nearly enough time to do all the things you’d like to do.
I managed to win my third game (playing on easiest difficulty). It was actually a large margin (albeit with some awfully favourable cards), so I’ll attempt the normal difficulty next time.
I’d come close to winning my second game – for the solo objective card I’d drawn, I needed to prevent any old ones ever getting within 3 hexes of my port for a points bonus which would have made all the difference, and I almost managed this, but in the final turns a new old one awoke too close to the port and just made a bee line for it, as I had no farms which would have distracted it (a tactical blunder).
My first game was a more hilarious loss. I didn’t know what the pyramids did yet, so it was a little distressing when the very worst thing in the game suddenly spawned three spaces from my port, and immediately moved to attack it. I managed to do 11/15 damage before conceding defeat, which I thought wasn’t bad in the circumstances :)
Edit: If a sub-3-minute introduction to the game sounds appealing, check out this video.