In my opinion, 2-handing is mandatory for Marvel Champions solo.
I’m definitely noticing a trend where the “solo mode” bot in games means you play an entirely different game.
In London 2e it locks you into the fastest cycle of cards possible, so you don’t get to play your assets and have them give back value over a long time, you’re just racing.
In base game Everdell it shifts the goal to “don’t let the bot get any events or it wins, so set up your entire strategy to be able to buy the events”.
Obsession plays very differently when you don’t know the right type of room to buy to impress the romantic partners ahead of each round, which is a rule for the solo mode.
Parks solo is so different (with an emphasis on definitely not being last to reach the end of the track?) that I can’t remember the priorities for a normal game. There’s even different “end of the track” actions in the solo.
Viticulture becomes a mad race with a fixed number of rounds, instead of having the luxury of a slower human opponent who might give you more time to invest initially because they haven’t built their trellis by round 1 either etc. No chance of a relaxing “I’m having a good time growing wine”, it’s pulled back to “I can’t miss a round of selling for points or I’m sunk”.
I guess I’ve frequently found that putting a ticking clock on a game totally reverses the point of the game or turns it into a single efficiency puzzle with a fixed setting. I can’t think of a way to do bots that doesn’t do that, but it’s been a really different experience to multiplayer for all sorts of games.
Despite not having played most of the games you listed, I agree wholeheartedly. It does seem that most solo modes just make the game more of a race and you don’t really get a chance to actually enjoy the game. I played GWT against the Sam, the solo bot, and he just gets to automatically achieve everything while I was struggling to get an engine going. Felt rushed, got trounced, and didn’t really feel like I got to play the game.
In Firefly you only have so many turns to complete the objective or you lose. Frankly, I’m just having fun flying around and doing jobs, I don’t want to worry about a time limit.
Many solo modes for competitive games are simply putting you under pressure by keeping a high tempo and forcing you to finish the game faster than many multiplayer games would. Ark Nova has such a solo–it gives you a very limited number of turns to build your zoo. I feel practicing this one would give me an advantage in games with others because if I am used to play a high tempo and they are not I have an advantage.
I don’t mind “tempo” modes so much.
I don’t mind beat-your-own-score modes.
I don’t mind multi-handing cooperative games
I dislike automas where just doing the bots turn takes so much brain capacity that I cannot concentrate on my own game.
And Wakan is a special case for being so opaque for me that in a game where I need to read my opponent I feel it is impossible for me to play against the bot. Plus the details in handling Wakan that always put me on edge because I just can’t remember it all.
This is my biggest issue with the “every game must have a solo mode” ideology that has spread over the last few years.
If a game can have a good (or great) solo mode, great (or good)! But don’t force it.
If the solo mode is a different game… well… I dunno. Maybe that different game is interesting on its own, or maybe it’s not. I appreciate being able to get double-duty out of the games I own (ask me about publishers who could put a second map/board/mode on the back of large, bulky components but don’t, and instead release them as expansions), but if the solo is great and the multiplayer is bad, or vice versa, I now have more complicated multi-variable algebra problems to solve when looking at culling.
And, of course, if the solo mode (or 2-player mode, or team mode to accommodate large player numbers, etc) feels extremely different to the other specific player-counts, I get frustrated that BGG doesn’t allow a per-player count rating. But that’s another rant (albeit: a short one)
What do you think about publishers who could put a second map/board/mode on the back of large, bulky components but don’t, and instead release them as expansions?
For me, it depends on whether the omission was intentional or incidental and what “could” means in this context.
For example, Terraforming Mars has a single-sided board. They could have done a 2-sided board with a different map, but I don’t think they had a different map in mind and/or ready to publish. They then came out with an expansion that included a double-sided board with 2 new maps. So, I don’t fault them for only having a single-sided board in the base game.
How much of my 18xx collection could be compacted down like Age of Steam? I’m not sure.
But the dual game boxes I have (1844/1854, 1861/1867) are examples of doing it right… But then get bogged down by the question: do you need both?
Like, when I look at the game 504, I think, “I wish they would have just found the best 2 game modes and put that in a box instead of the best 504”
When a game comes with lots of game modes, there’s always the problem of, “okay, but which is the one I should play now?” That adds noise to an already noisy landscape.
But, at the end of the day, I’m bothered by wasted real estate on the back of large, bulky components.