I’ve been thinking I should do that, thanks for reminding me. I think the Nusfjord solo mode is really well-done even without the campaign and I’ve had a few fun games with it. It has so very little book-keeping to do because you’re just messing with your own worker spots from round to round 
1 Like
Very true, it’s a common theme in Uwe Rosenberg games now it seems, for solo play.
I was a bit confused as to how the campaign worked, but I’ve got it figured now, so hopefully these answer any questions you have going in 
- Each game is a brand new game. Boats, elders and forests get reset back to normal starting conditions.
- When you remove your buildings at the end of games one and two, they go back in the box and aren’t used again.
- At the end of games one and two, the unbuilt A and B buildings get put into a ‘reserve’ pile to one side of the board.
- At the end of games one and two, any C buildings you didn’t build get shuffled back into the C deck.
- Game two basically just uses the remaining A and B buildings you didn’t put into the supply for game one.
- For game three, shuffle the reserve pile you’ve made of A & B cards you didn’t build in games one and two and deal them out. You may have too many or too few, you’ve just got to deal with it
I hope that helps if you do try it, they were all the questions I had going into it.
3 Likes
So the game makes sure that you need to take a good look at all the buildings in a deck. How different were game one and two? Were there buildings that you really didn’t want to see when they came up again in game three?
Yeah, well, in theory all the buildings in game three are the ones you didn’t want for the first two games, so at first glance you think ‘oh no, it’s going to be all the rubbish I didn’t want’, but it turns out sometimes it’s just the combinations of buildings in the first two games that didn’t work.
I really liked that fact that it made me buy buildings I’d never usually use, and I found some great combinations I would never have before. My game three, which in theory is just the buildings I didn’t want, ended up being my highest-scoring of the three - 40 pts.
My screenshot of Scorepal above shows you the scores I got for each game.
2 Likes
Imperial Assault - not loads to report here. continues to be a fairly satisfying app-driven adventuring experience with super weird random spawning. We polished off the back half of the mission I posted about last time, and the Imperials brought in another Jawa (still all alone) and some Tusken Raiders because why not, right? Oh, and a Nexu because sure. We murdered everything, and fled just as villainous missile droid BT-something-or-other was trundling along trying to navigate nearly the entire level to catch up with us. Progression is pretty darn satisfying, and now our melee folks (me included) have some spiffy gear upgrades to match what our more ranged fellows have been rocking.
Too Many Bones - We finished up the second half of our trial run and, to our deep surprise, managed to defeat the Tyrant first go. This was by no means easy. It was day 9 by the time we tackled him, and a 27 point Baddie Queue plus two boss-placed 5 pointers is nothing to sneeze at, not to mention the fact that the 20 pointer came with 2 5 pointers and nearly every 5 pointer we drew after the boss’ came with Signal of at least 1. And we had no means to clear poison, so the fact that half the map inflicted it and the Tyrant amplified it made it a real killer. Plus, we had to charge down those first two 5 pointers to be able to even hurt the boss. And jesus, we could not roll for shit. On my last turn, I rolled 5 attack dice and got 3 damage, connecting with just 1 after the boss’ defense dice. The 20 point griffon averaged 7 damage on the same dice. We all nearly completely whiffed our first turns, skills, defense, attack all racking up dem bones. But we did manage to kill the two Bog defenders (I was particularly proud of using Way of the Wild to render a Manticore a completely useless sack of HP before Executing it a bit later to keep it from defending the boss) and limpingly, thanks to some also spectacularly low damage rolls from the bad guys, finally managed to have Picket knock the last 2 HP off Drellen and win. We still had probably 20-odd points worth of BQ to go, but you win when you kill the Tyrant, so there you have it.
All in all, a pretty spectacular game. We really, really could have stood to roll better basically every battle, our luck was bafflingly awful. But lots of interesting decisions, battle is tough and rewarding and varied, and the characters have such cool asymmetric setups with lots of different ways you could build them.
Hostage Negotiator - did a quick solo run of this just now with the most basic setup. Lost due to timeout. I did manage to save most of the hostages but again my rolls were awful and I beefed card after card in the late game, basically never managing to get a meaningful amount of conversation points to buy better cards, nor talk him back down after a Terror card undid all my hard work at de-escalating earlier. I was surprised at how quick it is, though. You’re pretty much just playing a few cards, rolling 1-3 dice each time, maybe buying a card or two to play next turn, and then cycling and doing a single Terror event. All told it can’t have taken more than half an hour. I just need to figure out the strategies!
4 Likes
The theme worked for Lords of Waterdeep, which at least has a vague medieval city look to appeal to worker placement fans. But Tyrants of the Underdark just doesn’t have a cover that will appeal to anyone who isn’t already a fan of Drizzt and familiar with that setting.
That could be one I try with my friends on TTS. It might even be better as I dislike shuffling small decks of cards!
1 Like
The TTS mod works really well. No shuffling and it counts everything at the end! AND sensible player colours.
(Just be careful that every card is counted by the auto counter. We’ve had experiences of it not counting the last card - it’s obvious because it flips cards over to the other side when it counts)
1 Like
I’d completely dismissed it until a friend badgered me in to playing it. Largely because of what you said. Drab colours, deep level nerd art.
Underneath though lurks a fun game, developed to nth degree for a smooth game with fun in the random market. Also how focussed on the board it is really makes the deck building feel an integrated support for the game state rather than the focus with a tacked on other thing to change the flow at some point. I’m now glad Peter pestered me to play and own my own copy too.
2 Likes
My partner and I had a nice game of Unearth on the balcony this afternoon. I won 65-53 which is an amazingly high score for each of us. I thought for sure she had me purely on Ruin points (she had almost triple the cards compared to me), but I managed to make some nice shuffles with some of the new colourless tiles, which netted me a hefty bunch of bonus points on my wonders for the win.
I pissed off the wind gods today, apparently, and it would gust every time I brought out the game, stopping instantly once I dragged it back in. This happened three times before it finally settled down enough to play. Was a beautiful day out, always nice to be able to play outside.
3 Likes
Managed to play a full game of Imperial Struggle with son 1 today. It took about 4 hours In total. Really enjoyed all the multiple action on the board. Rule book remains not optimal - there are a few rules including additional costs for some actions not in the place you expect to find them, but overall not insurmountable.
In action, just before the American War of Independence
2 things to note:
- France getting beaten back. Yes I was France. Yes I lost.
- Tablecloth has gone!
10 Likes
Is that board as big as it looks?
SVWAG said that one rule was missing from the rule book and only on the player aid.
One guy we game with has this on pre order. I’ve bagsied my game
Most importantly, how is it? Did you enjoy it?
Oh no 
1 Like
We loved it.
There are a few non critical rules that have been errataed but these are easily picked up on the faq on boardgamegeek.
The board is big, it stretched almost the width of our table - just measured as 39 (?) inches or about 1m.
And it remains a joy to look at!
3 Likes
Sorry. It will return I am sure!
Features of an Imperial Assault Imperial facility:
Jabba the Hutt
Tusken Raiders
a Nexu
a Rancor
I guess there were a handful of stormtroopers also.
2 Likes
“Civilian contractor”
“Indigenous allies”
“Commandant’s pet”
“Garbage disposal”
I suspect Imperial officers get a lot of practice writing reports like that.
4 Likes
Just played a second game of Kepler-3042. It’s really good. I feel like at some point it will lose it’s charm but getting to that point will be a lot of fun. Relatively light rules set, complex possibility space and really flies by. Knowing the rules well enough this time it only took 90 minutes. That’s a lot of game in a tight play time. Highly recommended.
2 Likes
Inspired by @IssiNoho77 I payed a solo triple of Nusfjord with the Hering deck yesternoon.
I scored 50, 46 and 37 on the three games, below is the board after game 3:
I think the first game got such a high score because I had to start over around turn 5 (of 7) because I had made some crucial mistake with a card that allowed me to put fish on plates but I never took the gold I should have and the game was going really horrible. Starting over I already knew which cards worked or didn’t and using that particular card I ended the game with 15 gold…
The solo mode for a single game is over so fast that the campaign mode makes more sense. also knowing all the suck cards return in game 3 made me think about not building something but leaving it for later and going for improved combos.
Overall I would highly recommend this mode and will try the other two decks eventually.
5 Likes
I hate things like that, very frustrating, even though you know it’s your own fault.
I noticed something that could possibly raise or lower your score quite a lot - you’re playing with the blue shares. You’re only meant to use the red ones in solo mode.
I’m glad you enjoyed it, I played it again with the three fish deck the other night and scored 127.
1 Like
I am using too many shares? Ouch. I thought I was going to use only one color but it said something about the other color… yikes and I must have misread. As I knew how the solo mode worked I skipped rereading all the rules in favor of looking up a few specifics. Only game one I used a lot of those shares so that may explain that. Hmmf have to play again and do better
1 Like