Ah, I just double-checked the rules and BGG and realised I’d missed the fact you discard a card at the start of a round when I’d skimmed the rules to remind myself. That would’ve made things a lot easier 
4 Likes
It’s a memory game that I can play, i.e. not a whole lot to remember. Played it once, enjoyed it, not in a rush to buy.
4 Likes
Jump Drive campaigns. A lot of this. Just the right activity at the right time.
After early success, though, I’m having trouble filling out an entire campaign. It tends to go like this:
- First hand, I satisfy three of the four objectives in one go.
- I select one to cross off.
- Last hand, I fail miserably at the last open objective, but do satisfy one I previously crossed off in a hand where I completed multiple objectives (including what I just failed).
One could say I’m crossing things off in the wrong order but it’s more likely mental. First round I always score huge under several constraints. Last hand I’m probably trying too hard.
Separately, Planet Unknown. Played this solo and was underwhelmed. Now that it’s on BGA, played it async and was underwhelmed. On paper I should love this game and I’m unlikely to give it the axe until it’s had a real play, with real people, in real time, but yeah. It hasn’t hit yet.
7 Likes
Planet Unknown shines a little brighter when you use other than standard maps or corporations. Just don‘t combine any that can‘t work. Like a corporation based on the water track and a planet with no water. There are definitely pairings that don‘t work. I think it is thought that you will only choose one variation (either map or corporation).
However, at its heart its‘s nothing but polyominoes and tracks. Both very simple mechanisms. Maybe it is the very fancy „packaging“ with the Lazy Susan and the big box and all suggests something more complex… but it is not really.
And maybe that combination just does nothing for you?
I still enjoy it and think it is a very good iteration on the „polyominoes on almost on their own“ variant.
7 Likes
Was out today visiting non-gaming people, and thought “what can I bring that’s easy to play and explain, but still good fun?”. The answer, of course, is That’s Not a Hat. We played it about 10 times, and it was very entertaining. Not sure if my friends understand the idea of competition, since they (ok, and me) were trying to collectively say what cards were on the table. Good times!
9 Likes
I’ve just bought that and looking forward to getting it to the table!
6 Likes
My order of Food Chain Magnate came through on Saturday, just in time for me to pick it up when I went home for lunch. So I played:
Agricola. Still a brilliant game, but I’m getting rusty. Came second thanks to not adjusting my play to react to my neighbours, and ignoring my amazingfood generating occ I drafted.
QE: Stupid fun that made everyone laugh, even people who hated it. Won the first 6 bids by pushing the amounts spent up very high, and pulled back enough to have spent the second most (would have been least but someone won no tiles).
Food Chain Magnate: All three of us went trainer opener (my preference over recruitment). Got beaten to Guru because I then went for the recruitment milestone. Proceeded to wipe the floor. One player built up a back office of admin staff but sold no food items. The other got close to overtaking me but I’d spammed pizza marketing everywhere and he only had two pizzas to sell.
QE again. First bid was 14 trillion. Proceeded to stick to scientific notation, but called the game when one player bid 9x10^999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 and nobody else could be bothered to count the numbers anymore. We just called it a loss for that player.
11 Likes
Haven - pretty cool 2 player. I don’t need it.
Strozzi - fun, but not enough to stay in the collection
Velonimo - shedding game. A bit too derivative to be interesting. And when I played Planet Cute after, I immediately forgot about this game.
Furnace + Interbellum - mirroring what I said previously: this is a fun Cube Accounting game. Quick too.
Planet Cute - played it 2 player for the first time. And it still works!
Terraforming Mars + Prelude + Elysium - I got a company that is more into amoebas. But since my starting hand and prelude cards steers me towards Space strategy, i went for that one. At least the company special ability where I can redo a used action card helps with the Space strategy I setup.
6 Likes
I’ve done a good amount (for me, at least) solo gaming in the last few weeks. I posted about it on BGG’s 1PG, but thought I’d share the love here as well
Maracaibo
Spinning circles in the Caribbean. A good game held back by its fiddly setup.
Eek! I kept telling myself that I should play games when I have the time and energy to do so, and I can catch up on posting about them later in the month. And then I ran out of month!
I had this game setup on my table for a couple of weeks by the time the (BGG 1-Players’ Guild) Peoples Choice named it #54. I commented on the Top 200 list and was convinced to get it learned and played, since people mentioned that setup was more involved than the game play.
After a rocky start and some confusion, I did get the game played. It’s… good?
There’s a lot of strategic horizons that I’m missing, I’m sure. I felt the game was actually pretty solid, held back only by the lengthy and fiddly setup. If the game was half as involved to setup, I could certainly see the possibility of getting this game out with a table of low-to-medium complexity euro gamers.
I wasn’t wowed by the experience. I was never bored, but I often found myself in situations where I knew I couldn’t compete with the AI right now and was left with several options to pursue a strong second place… in… a 2-player game. Unsurprisingly, the AI won by a landslide – something I often appreciate in my first play; but usually only if I can look back and see where I could have made different choices to effect the final scores.
Legendary: A James Bond Deck Building Game
A favorite movie franchise married to a beautifully constructed card game – plenty of chances to feel clever and relatively well-married to the theme and setting.
During the time that Maracaibo was set up on my table, I happened across a YouTube video of Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building Game being played. And while I don’t own Legendary, I do own a few of the off-shoots like James Bond, Legendary: Big Trouble in Little China, and Legendary Encounters: A Firefly Deck Building Game (mostly because I’ve never really been into comics, so the base game doesn’t actually appeal to me all that much… except maybe through the lens of the MCU).
So I decided that as soon as Maracaibo was cleaned up, I would finally get Legendary on the table and get it played, because the playthrough I watched was not hard to follow at all.
It’s pretty good! I really enjoyed it. I played true solo, which I didn’t set out to do, initially. But it seems to me that true-solo is likely a bit more tense of an experience. With that in mind, I went up against Goldfinger using the default, recommended first time groups. As part of the 1-player setup, it says to only play with 4 heroes, so I randomly chose to remove Miss Galore from the recommended heroes; leaving me with James Bond - Goldfinger, Allies - Goldfinger, Equipment - Goldfinger, and Vehicles - Goldfinger. I went with the canon choice of Sean Connery and randomly selected Special Upgrades for my unique starter.
I think I missed a few rules here and there, and maybe that came out in my favor just slightly, but I was able to defeat Goldfinger relatively easily. Dealing with the “On Assignment” was mostly pretty straight forward, but there were a handful of occasions where I needed to get both lucky and clever to avoid disaster. I don’t remember the specific combination of cards, but at one point I had a hard-to-defeat villain that would deal a wound every time it moved being pushed by a Goldfinger-specific Chase-effect card that moved everything along “On Assignment” every turn. This one combination was responsible for the vast majority of wounds in my deck, and I really thought I wouldn’t be able to come back from it. I swapped the chase villain to the end of the line and allowed it to escape, giving me some more breathing room to deal with the wound-ful villain.
Near the end of the game, I got to get really familiar with the Inevitable concept and it really ratcheted up the tension for the game. After setting back the Inevitable once and then watching for 2 consecutive turns as I was helpless to do anything, I managed to get the cards to defeat Goldfinger twice in a single turn, ending the game with a suave victory (but without the Bond girl or any cheesy lines).
1800: Colorado
This isn’t the 18xx for soloing. But it is free to print-and-play. But if you didn’t already know other 18xx games, this would be nigh impossible to learn. Glad I played it, but won’t return to it as a solo experience.
I had built my print-and-play copy of 1800: Colorado a few months ago, mostly in case I had the opportunity to introduce a friend to 18xx at a convention; wanting something short and simple, but 18xx-y enough to convey what 18xx is and why it’s so great.
However, I was a bit hesitant to move forward with that opportunity (good thing it actually never came around) because I had never played this game and its rules are not… uh… complete. Or maybe not clear. It follows the classic 18xx idiom of “It’s 1830 except…” but some of the “excepts” have been lost or mistranslated through the editions – my edition is a redraw and the rulebook makes note of certain things in the context of the original magazine-insert edition which do not align with my components.
Woof! What a tight map! Colorado seemed a lot bigger when last I was there. Did you know that in the depicted portion of Colorado (Denver, Ft Collins, and a cheeky bit of Cheyenne, WY), there’s only room for NINE hexagons!?
Lefty took a gamble early in the game and took on the private that grants a share of D&RGW, which is expensive and I’m really not certain it’s worthwhile. Righty, with a bit more flexibility in the early game, was losing ground, mostly due to turn order. But when Righty laid some tragic track right in Lefty’s back yard, the game was effectively over. Lefty hung on and managed to stick around, though, and the final score is pretty close. If Righty hadn’t hamstrung Lefty like he did, Lefty would have ran away with it.
| Lefty | $ 3546 |
| Righty | $ 3779 |
18Mag: Hungarian Railway History
Not my first choice for solo 18xx, but my second. Out of 2 options. I wouldn’t recommend this as an introduction to 18xx for solo, 2-player or multiplayer. An interesting curio. I do want to revisit against more difficult AI settings, and I want to try out the full game multiplayer, but it probably is not a “keep forever” game.
While I was playing 1800: Colorado, I was thinking mostly about how the next game I was going to play was 18Mag. Honestly, it was the game I reached for before getting 1800 down, but opted to stutter-step and play the shorter, more-straight-forward game first, because 18Mag is weird.
It has a lot of the usual trappings of 18xx, but with a lot of unusual things going on. The big, 10-share companies in the game are swapped, perhaps (if you squint your eyes just right), with the minors. Normally in 18xx games, minors do a bit of early track development on the map but then become irrelevant once the majors come in. 18Mag turns that on its head by saying that almost the entire game is done by players running minors (minors that they get at the start of the game and cannot be sold or traded). The majors just provide almost all of the functions that the minors need. You can lay one track tile, but if you want to lay a second (yellow), you pay one of the majors for that. You can buy any train you want, but some of the money you spend on the train goes to that associated major. The board has terrain costs, and if you want to build across difficult terrain, there’s a major for that too! Nearly all of the functions of an operating turn can and will involve one or more of the majors.
It’s also interesting that there are no train rusting events, and nobody is actually even required to own a train.
So how does it play solo? Pretty interesting, really! I once made a solo mode for 18CZ, a game by the same designer as 18Mag. In order to get the 18CZ solo mode working in a way that felt compelling, I came up with a few interesting hooks here and there about how that bot worked; I was surprised to find a lot of the same patterns here (not claiming Lonny copied my work; merely saying that there seems to be a logical conclusion about how to make AI opponents in Lonny’s unique style of games). Some of these similarities are actually present in the base game and as part of the weirdness of 18Mag.
I really like how the AI doesn’t build any track during the game. Because you start with and keep the same minors throughout the game, the AI simply builds all of its track during the setup. It will upgrade track later (if you let it), and it will put out tokens on the map at certain points in the game, but otherwise it doesn’t really move the needle on the development of the board. The solo player is responsible for running the AI’s trains, but trains and routes are really quite simple in this game and, often, the AI would just run the same or very similar routes as the one my minors were using.
There are some really interesting things in 18Mag itself; how the phase progression advances is, in particular, quite clever. The solo mode is duct taped to the 2-player variant (much like my 18CZ solo mode is bolted onto the 18CZ 2-player mode). Sadly, the 2-player mode uses a less interesting map and some of the variety and features are removed (fewer majors, fewer minors, no mines, and overall less income for majors).
I played against the easy mode AI and I, honestly, wish I had chosen a more challenging opponent. Maybe a more aggressive opponent would have created more interesting decisions. The majors during my game were fairly limp and unresponsive – while taking the bulk of the stock round but ultimately providing about or less than half of the income. The minors were where things happened, but were fixed and lacked dynamism.
| AI Setting |
Player | Minors | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Green A | István | ❶ ⓫ | 2535 Ft |
| Me | ❹ ❼ | 2829 Ft |
Root
Perhaps the cutest wargame you could solo? Definitely interesting. With both the Clockwork Expansions there are a myriad of interesting things to explore in this charming woodland.
Prompted to take another look by the Peoples Choice naming this the one-hundred and thirty-first best solo game. I have owned all of Root for a long time. But I’ve never played it. I tried, at one point, but my board was so warped, I couldn’t easily keep or move pieces around on the board. Of course, at the time, I also didn’t have a dedicated gaming area and if I set up a game during the evening, I had to tear it down before I went to bed – this was particularly troubling with Root because there’s quite a bit of stuff in the boxes, but you need less than half of it for any given game. Being able to set it up one day or evening, study the rules a bit for the factions the next day, and get the game knocked out that night was the key to finally coming eye-to-eye and face-to-face with this adorable, cutesy wargame.
A long time ago, I tried to play as the Woodland Alliance vs the Mechanical Marquise 2.0; but that failed for a number of reasons. This time around, I added in the Electric Eyrie to get the board properly filled out. I really love the concept of the Woodland Alliance and wanted to finally have a chance to play as them. But this first journey into the woods and world of Root was bad. The robocats and the birdbots just, mostly, happily coexisted in this beautiful autumn forest, leaving my feisty mice scrambling to find victory points.
Okay, that was a bad start. The WA-mice just don’t interfere with these bots enough. And the bots just don’t care about the alliance, woodland or otherwise. It was also a mistake to put the bots on “easy”; if anything, I should have ratcheted them up a bit, and then maybe they would have gotten in each others’ face more, rather than just racing ahead to get VPs from their buildings on the board.
Major loss for me and the mice.
I posted about my experience a bit on the Peoples Choice geeklist and was reassured that there’s a game here and I took a glance at the wrong corner of this world. A few days later, I took another stab at it. This time one-on-one, with me running the Eyrie going up against the Cautoma. I would have swapped it around, but I found in the previous game that I really did not like running the Electric Eyrie. It’s tedious and occupied way too much effort to be worthwhile. Besides, the Eyrie looked way more interesting that the run-of-the-mill (ha, get it!?) Cats.
This time around, I opted to flip my playmat over (I bought the playmats because of how warped my base game board is… I guess I could have asked Leder for a replacement, but the playmat is very nice (but kind of hard to see the building spots, especially on the winter board side)).
Because of the random clearing-suit assignment, I ended up in a hard spot with the Eyrie. After the first 2 turns, I found myself stuck in the southwest corner, nary a Mouse Clearing in sight, and only had drawn Mouse cards so far, with my starting hand already gone. So, yeah, turn 3 turmoil; not great, right? WRONG, it was fantastic! I was a bit sad to ditch the leader I had, but my next leader made a successful turnaround. I was able to seed my Decree with almost exclusively bird cards from then on, having a few (very safe) Bunny cards mixed in just because I could.
That second leader was able to take me up to and almost to victory, except I eventually had all of my buildings on the board, and the cats were just too ineffective (on default difficulty) to do anything about it… so I spent my pen-penultimate turn in turmoil, losing a ton of points due to the birds in my Decree, but otherwise leaving me ready to close out the game. I was having a ton of fun; so much so that I forgot to take advantage of my leaders’ special powers literally every single time. I never once remembered to take the special ability on the card. I also never crafted a card other than items. I really need to slow down and spend more time looking at my board and hand…
But I had a ton of fun and I’m very eager to explore this woodland again.
This game, however, reminded me of my attempts to delve into the word of GMT’s COIN series. And, it just so happens, that on the recent P500 sale, I picked up the Falling Sky: The Gallic Revolt Against Caesar – Ariovistus expansion to Falling Sky. So I cleared up Root and got FS out. I have a very similar history with Falling Sky as I did with Root; I had it out on my table a few times (more than Root, even) but back when I didn’t have a dedicated gaming space. This time, I’ve done a lot more learning (and I’m way more practiced at complex games now than I was even a few years ago), and I’ve just finished watching a YouTube video series covering Caesar’s conquest of Gaul, which is something I do enjoy when delving into historical gaming – researching the actual history to better understand what the game is presenting and representing.
Yukon Airways
Fly to picturesque (not shown) locations and deliver your cuboid passengers for fun and profit.
In a bit of a departure from the rest of my solo gaming in November, this one jumps way down on the complexity scale. This is, really, a family-weight game with some really interesting decisions.
The graphic design on this game is definitely what attracted my attention, but I was pulled in by the pick-up-and-deliver mechanism. Sadly, the pick-up-and-deliver is pretty thin here, but that doesn’t mean this game isn’t worth playing. This game is, really, about upgrading your personal plane in a very tight and exciting economic race.
The solo mode is a ranked BYOS and that likely changes the way the solo game feels, to some degree. While there’s no competition for dice (passengers), it definitely keeps the heat on when it comes down to completing the race on time.
I thought, throughout the game, that I was going to fall short on points, so I focused on generating as many points as I could. Ultimately, I had plenty of points (okay, not plenty) but I came 1 location short during final scoring (really, I should have seen that coming… but… I didn’t). Beautiful game and lovely (if a bit fiddly) production. I might 3D print some replacement for the “switch” upgrades at the bottom of the player board; the little cardboard chits that you are supposed to use look like the punchboard scraps you throw out of other games.
I do wish the actual gameplay featured more of the stunning art like the box cover. Otherwise I adore the graphical elements of the game and the gameplay is lovely.
8 Likes
Falling Sky: The Gallic Revolt Against Caesar
Scenario: The Great Revolt
52 BC, Spring through 51 BC, Spring – Year 1
Caesar has returned from Cisalpina and finds a troubling sight in front of him in Gaul.
The Arverni are in a weakened position, but Caesar’s hasty retreat to quarters this past winter has left his forces scattered and parts, that were once well in-control, vulnerable.
Rome’s occasional ally, the Aedui, have been reliable this past year, most recently permitting the Roman Supply Line to pass in preparation for winter, but also in aiding Rome to keep western Gaul sedated – a situation that cannot sustain itself. The Aedui even managed to gain the favor of Gergovia, Vercingetorix’s home and birthplace, something that no one could have seen coming.
Chief among Caesar’s concerns is the ongoing threat of civil war looming in Rome driven by the Optimates among the Senate. In the future, if his success is Gaul appears to be near, the Optimates may make a move and Caesar would be forced to move his Legions southward to fight a civil war. This would open the door for the Arverni and Vercingetorix to ignore half of their victory condition – Caesar must walk a narrow line between success in Gaul and keeping the Arverni on the run.
This game is slow. And the Romans are jerks. I keep hoping for the Arverni and Belgae bots to tear apart the Roman Legions… and then I remember that I’m playing as Rome. And Legions (especially when Caesar is around) are amazing.
It’s a shame it takes 30 minutes to run through 3 bots between my turns. By the time it gets back around to me, I’m so used to just running bots, I sit there thinking, “Hmm, I wonder what Rome is going to do…” and then I remember that that’s me; I’m him. I should have been thinking about that all along!
Once you get going, the bots do get a bit easier to run. I wish there were some really comprehensive play aids; I have two rulebooks and 4 different 2- or 4-sided player aids that I keep shuffling back and forth depending on what’s happening.
Falling Sky: The Gallic Revolt Against Caesar
Scenario: The Great Revolt
51 BC, Spring through 50 BC, Spring – Year 2
51 BC was a dramatic year in ancient Gaul. VercingetorixBot foolishly wasted time and failed to secure nearby territory to allow retreat, and also allowed the Roman Legions massed near his position to await Caesar’s arrival – early in the year, Vercingetorix and his host of Gallic warbands were decimated in a brutal Roman attack. The Arverni forces, unable to retreat into Belgic, Audui, or German controlled lands were forced to stand and fight, but were no match for Rome’s Legions with Caesar personally overseeing the battle.
Caesar, however, in his pursuit of Vercingetorix, left the Aedui to oversee the occupation of the rest of Gaul. By the time Caesar had defeated the massed Arverni army in the east, the Aedui had spread across western Gaul, securing allies for themselves – poised several times thorughout the year for victory.
To prevent their ally from seizing complete control of the region, Caesar was forced to march westward, under the guise of putting down Arverni resistance near Carnutes and Mandubii, and reforge allies in those areas, taking control of those regions from the Aedui and reminding the gallic tribes that Rome, not the Aedui, are “protecting” them from the Suebi and Belgic factions to the north and east.
With the Aedui once again at his heel, Caesar turned his attention to the Belgae and the massing of their forces in the north. AmbiorixBot, so far, has seen fitting to play defensively in Belgica, creating a strong foundation for their eventual governorship of Gaul. Under Caesar’s command, 3 Legions and as many Auxilia were able to unseat Belgic control near Remi and spoil Ambiorix’s immediate path to victory.
Feeling as though he was running out of time, Caesar scrambled to re-secure Rome’s Supply Lines, only for them to be sabotaged by German raids just at the onset of winter. Fortunately, the Aedui, once again “loyal” to Rome, permitted Caesar’s access return his armies to Provincia – had they not, the AeduiBot may have secured a victory in the coming year, but they don’t appear to be capable of scheming in such ways.
As Caesar prepares to mobilize his forces in the spring of 50 BC, a new Arverni leader has appeared near Gergovia, but their warbands are spread out and disorganized. The Belgae pose the largest threat but, over the last 2 years, have failed to push out of Belgica.
Unfortunately, the Senate has not been pleased with Caesar’s triumphs in Gaul, focusing only on his failure to maintain control over the gallic tribes throughout the region. As a result, Caesar will be tasked with funding his own operations in the region by seizing resources of the enemies – a move sure to create tension in the regions, and raising Auxilia to compensate for the Legions that he desperately needs to succeed but the Senate refuse him.
The bots are dumb. I want them to be smarter. During Year 2, I may have cheated in the bots’ favor a bit with some “better” decisions than the rules-as-written would demand. I expect to see this trend continue (even if, sometimes, on accident)
10 Likes
I find it hard to believe they did not change the iconography on the James Bond Legendary cards! That seems horribly lazy and kind of kills the theme for me a bit. Why is damage Wolverine’s claw marks? Why is the strength aspect Hulk’s fist? Bizarre!
3 Likes
I found the COIN bots to be so rubbish
2 Likes
Because you can invite James Bond played by Sean Connery, James Bond played by George Lazenby, James Bond played by Roger Moore, James Bond played by Timothy Dalton, James Bond played by Pierce Brosnan, and/or James Bond played by Daniel Craig to help you defeat Loki.
The game is completely interoperable with other Legendary products.
EDIT: maybe, more excitingly(?), you can have Hulk come help you smash Francisco Scaramanga
7 Likes
Interesting. I didn’t realize they could cross-play with each other.
2 Likes
Hanamikoji - played with @COMaestro and lost in the tiebreaker! Very quick even at BGA.
Terraforming Mars + Hellas map + Prelude + Venus Next + Colonies + Turmoil - I finally get to play this all-in.
I went with one of the floater companies and focused on floaters and terraforming Venus. I was on a good position but I made two mistakes - one is hard to prevent. 1.) I miss out on Milestones. Again. Note to self: it’s imperative to grab Milestones. 2.) It’s rather hard to gauge who is currently winning and who is ramping up their engine’s speed. Not sure if this is the case of opaqueness OR that the game is obtuse, which is often the case with modern Euros where the designer intentionally put blinkers on players.
But one thing that can be improved though is figuring out how to do a multi-round strategy swing once the parameter you are building up is maxed out. Swinging towards Forest strategy a few rounds before I needed it would have probably helped.
Yokai Septet - I only played it with 2 players using the 2 player variant. Playing it with 4 is awesome. We aren’t done yet but cheers for this game. I am really liking this
9 Likes
Played The Palaces of Carrara for the first time in real life last night.
I bought the first edition second hand. First point, all the teach videos I could find are for 2nd edition which I think has softer rules.
I really enjoyed it, the wheel is a cool thing. It’s another 60-75 minute quite interactive old school euro (like Hansa Teutonica and Calimala). I was thinking of selling it because I hadn’t played it but I’ll hold on to it for now.
Finished with a first game of Crokinole for a while. I got recommended acrylic nail powder to use as an alternative to gliss powder and it was brilliant; the board has never played faster.
12 Likes
Falling Sky: The Gallic Revolt Against Caesar
Scenario: The Great Revolt
50 BC, Spring through 50 BC, Autumn – Year 3
News from Gaul: The Belgae have defeat Caesar in battle. Caesar may be remembered, likely as an enemy of the Roman Senate, but Ambiorix’s name will forever be associated with military greatness!
The Great Revolt against Caesar, initiated by Vercingetorix, was finished by Ambiorix. In the very same region where Caesar put down the great Arverni leader, no less!
But how did this happen? It’s true that Caesar’s control over Gaul at the start of 50 BC wasn’t great, but no other faction was better off.
Year 3 was the story of great and numerous events; events that would have ongoing influence over the entire year and, as a result, the rest of time. The first of the pivotal events was the emergence of Indutiomarus, a chieftain within the Traveri – a Gallic tribe living at the juncture of Belgica, Germania, and Celtica. Indutiomarus swayed his people against the Romans and pledged their military prowess to Ambiorix. This granted Ambiorix a sudden and dramatic dominion over a large swath of Caesar’s focal point and his, often, supply line. This one event alone granted Ambiorix and the Belgae enough influence to sway all of Gaul toward Belgic control.
(a card so impactful that I immediately took a picture of it after I read it with slack-jaw amazement as the BelgaeBot was choosing to activate the shaded effect (but then had to retake it this morning because it was blurry))
The number of events (and capability cards) that proceeded from there was unfathomable. Seemingly, at every opportunity, Caesar would be unable to March or Battle and, instead, need to attend to the current event unfolding in Gaul. Caesar was not the only faction dealing with this; more and more momentous events would occur, granting each of the gallic factions with greater and greater capability.
By the time Caesar had finished dealing with these dramatic swings of power unfolding around him, a drought blighted the entirety of Gaul, sapping Caesar’s already-weakened resources and miring him and the bulk of his army in a devastated area near Vesontio. Using the remainder of his resources, he marched his armies to the Treveri region near where Ambiorix had amassed his armies. Unfortunately, the Belgae were better prepared and were able to move into Traveri and attack Rome’s encampment just as Caesar had finished seizing enough resources from the areas and tribes nearby to mobilize his forces into battle against the Belgic tribes.
Witnesses in the area say the situation looked bleak for the Romans. The last known digital photo of Caesar and his legions in Traveri was taken just before the battle began. The prochronistic photographer couldn’t bring himself to documenting the battle or the aftermath; it would simply be too grotesque – there were no Roman survivors
Gaul circa 50 BC. Caesar and Roman Legions stand against Ambiorix and Belgic Warbands in Traveri. (Colorized)
Technically, the year wasn’t over and it wouldn’t be until winter of 50 BC that Ambiorix would officially seize control of all of Gaul, but no significant events were recorded for the remainder of the year, due to the entirety of Gaul and everything in it being bagged up and placed into a game box.
The first 2 Roman turns of Year 3 were spent taking Capability cards so that Rome’s enemies wouldn’t gain an equally devastating anti-Roman Capability. Unfortunately, as each card presented itself, each of the previous cards became less useful, as Rome was unable to capitalize effectively on their newfound capabilities. Surely, then, you would think, ignore the capability cards! And that would have been easy, but each one revealed seemed worse than the previous – leading Caesar (and me, by extension) to rue his past turns wasted dealing with those events that, at the time, seemed pivotal, but through the course of continuing events, proved less so. Eventually on Rome’s third turn, Caesar ignored the event in order to make progress toward his goal of conquering all of Gaul.
In Year 1, zero capability cards were taken. In Year 2, the Aedui took 2 and the Belgae gained one. In Year 3, Rome gained 2, and the Arverni and Belgae both gained 1. Later in Year 3, the Arverni would have the opportunity to remove one of Rome’s Capability cards, making those first 2 turns even more troubling.
I enjoyed watching this drama unfold. I think the amount of control a single player has versus 4 other factions is frustratingly small; especially when your ally is a stupid bot. Admittedly, the opponent bots are also stupid, but the swing from a single card seems to be enough to upset that balance. When I play again, I’ll likely play both factions of one “side” (probably Arverni and Belgae) and run the bots for the other “side” – I’m not sure how that will feel, though, since it would likely be possible to leverage one faction to kingmake the other. This will require contemplation.
10 Likes
I think this is a functional detriment (actually I’m pretty certain it is) but I have millions (120) small ducks in my house so I thought I’d “upgrade” my copy of lacuna.
13 Likes
I have questions, mainly around small plastic ducks.
4 Likes
So - Quackuna?
1 Like