“The truest wisdom is a resolute determination”

So said Bonaparte, who knew a thing or two about combat strategy. Combat is a great place to start as we dissect Voidfall, because it’s where you’ll see the biggest difference between it and its peers, like Twilight Imperium. Combat in 4X games often sees players chucking handfuls of dice across the table at one another, praying to the chance cube gods for a favourable outcome. Combat in Voidfall is deterministic. If deterministic isn’t a word in your day-to-day vocabulary, it soon will be.

When you’re talking about a game, deterministic combat means that you already know the outcome of the encounter before it begins. You know what the defenders can do, you know what you can do as the aggressor, and you know what the board state will be in the aftermath. It’s a really important thing to bring up early because it’s the part that will likely make or break Voidfall for a lot of people.

Lots of people enjoy rolling dice. Part of that epic game experience is picking a fight with someone you have no right to win, but clinging on to that small chance that Lady Luck has blown kisses your way. Voidfall is a stark contrast. There’s no trench run with a torpedo down an exhaust vent here. You go full Death Star or you go home. That unknown quantity, the seeds of randomness sown into the soil of the 4X landscape, just isn’t there. Hearing all of this might have made the game sound dull, and there’s a chance you want to close this tab right now. I should know, I was one of those people.

When I first heard how my epic space battles’ outcomes were already carved in stone before my thrusters sputtered into life, I wasn’t exactly enthused. It sounded boring.

I was wrong.

Get your house in order

Each player represents a grand house in the game. A sci-fi race of intergalactic beings bent on ruling the cosmos. Each house is asymmetric in play style, each with its own perks, abilities, and suggested ways to play. Even the player boards that track your progress along the different tech tracks are different from one another. The nuts-and-bolts mechanisms in Voidfall are resource management, area control, and action selection. Sounds pretty Euro-gamey, right? That’s because it is. It’s a heavy Euro in disguise, gorging itself on thematic vol-au-vents at the buffet of an Ameritrash members-only party.

You’ve got a board covered in dials that track your resource levels and production rates. Thank goodness it’s there too, because having to manage five more types of tokens during the game would have been the tipping point in terms of what’s manageable.

In the main action phase of each of the game’s three cycles, you’ll take turns playing cards from your hand. Each card has three actions on it, some of which have costs, and you can pick any two of these actions to perform. The cards and actions have themes and names that help tie things together. Even without knowing the game, you can hazard a guess at the sort of things you can do with the Development and Conquest cards. Production isn’t a standard phase of the game however, as you might expect from a game of this ilk. If you want to produce resources with the various guilds you have strewn around the galaxy, you need to use one of your actions on one of your turns, and if you’re producing, you ain’t fighting.

It all stokes the fires that in turn power the engines of a good Euro game. Tech tracks and advancements, taking and fulfilling agenda cards, spending resources to build guilds and defenses on tiles. All the while trying to manage the orange corruption markers that invade the main board and your player boards. Then you’ve got the technology market where you can buy cards which, once again, add a layer of asymmetry to proceedings. All of a sudden you’ve got shields to soak up damage during fights, or missiles that let you deal damage before you even invade a hex. There is so much to try to keep track of.

A bridge too far?

Amazing as it may seem, I still haven’t talked about loads of things in the game. Population dice, trade tokens, and skirmishes – oh my! If you don’t like heavy games with lots of decision-making, where you’re trying to make a hundred tiny gears turn in unison, you’re not going to have a good time with Voidfall. In all honesty, I’d be surprised if you got through setting up and playing the tutorial. It’s a 3-4 hour assault on your cognitive abilities.

Even when you revel in this level of complexity – which I do – it’s still a force to be reckoned with. You’ll have an idea of what you want to accomplish in your next turn, and likely have 10-15 minutes to plan how to do it. But the cards are temptresses. Sirens, beckoning your brain onto the rocks of indecision. As you place card on top of card, stacking an action queue for the ages, you’ll see something that makes you think “Ooh, actually I could do this, couldn’t I?”, and by the time you return from that cerebral rabbit hole you’ve got no idea what your original plan was. Of course, by the time it gets back to your turn the game state will have changed again, and you can almost guarantee that someone else has clamped your war machine’s wheels, but that’s just what Voidfall is like.

The time and space commitments are genuine concerns too. Setting up a game of Voidfall is an undertaking that can easily take 30-60 minutes, depending on the number of players and the scenario you’ve opted for. It will also swamp your table. I don’t care how big your table is, Voidfall will devour the lot and insist on a wafer-thin mint to finish.

Did I mention that it’s an absolute pain to teach? There are a ton of concepts that you need to understand if you want to play. You need to understand that your production level and yield are two different things. You need to know about approach and salvo damage and mitigation in combat, on top of initiative. You need to understand how to calculate end-of-cycle skirmish combat values, and how fleets can be broken and regrouped. And the icons. Oh, the icons.

In addition to the rulebook, compendium, and glossary included in the box (40, 86, and 52 pages respectively), there’s a four-page icon reference sheet detailing 214(!) different icons used in the game. Two hundred and fourteen! Voidfall is not a midweek game for after the kids have gone to bed.

Final thoughts

You’d think that after that last section, I wouldn’t be recommending Voidfall. It’s an expensive, intense, time-hungry investment. But by the maker, is it worth it! Voidfall is a truly incredible game. If you can find a game to be a part of, I urge you to try it. Before you do, go over and watch the excellent how-to-play video from Paul at Gaming Rules!. It might take two full games to properly absorb the rules and iconography, but you’ll have such a good time getting there that you won’t care.

If I didn’t know the game was from the minds of Nigel Buckle & Dávid Turczi, who don’t seem to be able to put a foot wrong lately, I’d have sworn this was a Vlaada Chvátil game. The hex-based map, deterministic combat, card play, resources, and meticulous planning involved all make it feel like it’s what you’d get if he took Mage Knight and set it in space. Voidfall could so easily have tripped over its own feet if it weren’t for yet more sterling work in the graphic design department, thanks to Ian O’Toole. The man is some kind of wizard, I’m sure of it.

I could easily write twice the number of words I already have to try to explain the game better. I haven’t touched on the three different play modes, for instance. You can play competitively, cooperatively, and solo. The solo game runs smoothly and without too much overhead, and while I’ll be honest and say I haven’t had a cooperative game yet, the competitive mode is outstanding. When you consider the different houses and abilities, the pages and pages of scenarios on offer, and the different ways to play it, I can hand-on-heart say that the high price of the game is justified by its content, not just the amount of stuff in the box.

Hype games come and hype games go. I have a personal guideline which means I steer clear of heavily-hyped games for the first few months after release, just to see if people are still talking about them when the latest shiny trinkets are thrown before them. People are still talking about Voidfall, and I believe people will still be talking about Voidfall in the coming years too. It’s nothing short of spectacular. I recently played a four-player game at a convention which took close to four hours to complete. When we finished there was a palpable deflation, and had we not all had other games to go and play, I think we’d have all happily reset the game and played again immediately. Voidfall is that good.

You can buy this game from my retail partner, Kienda. Remember to sign-up for your account at kienda.co.uk/punchboard for a 5% discount on your first order of £60 or more.

Voidfall (2023)

Design: Nigel Buckle, Dávid Turczi
Publisher: Mindclash Games
Art: Ian O’Toole
Players: 1-4
Playing time: 120-240 mins

The post Voidfall Review appeared first on Punchboard.

The Gig is a new mixture of genres to me. When it comes to board games, regular readers know I love roll- or flip-and-writes (I refuse to call them verb-and-writes), and while I’ve tried lots of different kinds, I’ve never played one with a real-time element. That kind of lunacy goes hand-in-hand with the Jazz Fusion vibes the  game’s art gives off. Have Braincrack Games got Ron Burgundy’s jazz flute in their hands, or something more like Ross’ keyboard?

More cowbell

The idea of The Gig is novel. Each player is a musician in the same band, but it’s a jazz improv band, and they all want to be the centre of attention. Each player’s instrument board is different, and the aim of the game is to cross out polyomino shapes on it, in order to score the most points. The biggest score at the end, wins. You know the drill.

In most games, the shapes you draw or place would be dictated by a symbol on a card, á la Hadrian’s Wall, or a cardboard tile, like in The Isle of Cats. In The Gig, however, each song (round) is a blank sheet of music. All players roll their dice at once, then the craziness begins. After rolling, you can pick up any number of your dice and plonk them on the row of the song which matches their values. It’s first come, first serve, so you need to be fast.

When all the dice are used, and your friends have stopped cursing each other for claiming the one place they desperately needed, it’s time to get your Bob Ross on, and get drawing. The shapes formed by your dice are the shapes you can draw on your instrument board, following a simple set of rules. Fill in your board, claim the bonuses, and get out under that spotlight as often as possible.

Nice…

The Gig is another departure from the more serious Euro games we’ve seen from Braincrack. Ragusa, Venice, and Florence are all great games, but after the light-hearted Last Resort, I’m really pleased to see them trying something different again. Not only trying, but succeeding. Before I go any further, I want to give a special mention to the artwork through the game. The styling is very cool, and so thematic, I love it.

The first song or two that you play feel a bit chaotic, but once you get the feel of it, and the way the dice interact with your boards, it’s a chaos you can embrace. It’s the difference between listening to freeform jazz and wanting to plug your ears with cheese, and suddenly understanding it and snapping your fingers in nodding appreciation, daddio.

It’s worth noting that there is an alternative, turn-based way to play the game. It’s great for teaching new players the game, and also if you’re playing with anyone who feels too pressured trying to place dice on the song sheet. If you can though, the real-time mode is definitely the way to go, it’s frenzied and hilarious.

Polytempo

One of the things I really like about The Gig is the asymmetry. Each instrument’s board is laid out differently, and each has its own way to score bonuses. It’s a really nice way to do things, as it’s going to take you a long time to figure out how to do each of them well. There’s this wonderful feeling that’s like doing the Hokey Cokey as a kid (or Hokey Pokey as my Transatlantic friends might know it). You all descend on the song on the centre of the table, rushing in to try to claim the spots you want, especially as many of them carry bonuses when claimed.

After that comes the calm, as your focus turns towards your instrument board, and trying to work out the best way to use the shape you created. It means there’s tons of interaction between the players, but there’s never any meanness or spite in it. You’re so focused on what you want to achieve, on your board, that any clashes on the song sheet are the result of both wanting something, rather than trying to deny someone of something. It’s a small, yet important detail, which makes the game a fun experience for everyone around the table.

Final thoughts

I really like The Gig. When Lewis (one of the designers and heads of Braincrack Games) tweeted about a new game that was a real-time roll-and-write, my interest was immediately piqued. When you consider the fact that the game is in no way a reflection of playing music at all, it’s remarkable that it feels so thematic. A lot of that is owed to the presentation and artwork. It screams ‘jazz club cool’, and it’s gorgeous. The songbook pages are really clear and easy to read, and even the box lid looks like an aged LP.

It does a great job of simultaneously feeling like a party game and a clever roll-and-write, which is no mean feat. There’s a stupid amount of variety in the game too, not just because you’re at the mercy of the dice gods, but also through the sheer number of combinations of songs and instruments. There aren’t many games around at the moment that give that same feeling of being a ‘proper’ game – for want of a better word – rather than a filler, and do it in half an hour. But that’s exactly what The Gig does.

Dávid Turczi has once again got his mitts on a game to make a good solo variant. While the solo mode is decent enough, and a good way to practice, the multiplayer mode is how to get the most out of it. So much of the fun and laughter comes from the madcap scramble to roll and re-roll your dice, over and over again, willing them to land the way you want. The Gig isn’t going to melt your brain, and I’m sure the theme might not land with everyone, but grab some friends and some smooth tunes, and you’re going to have a great time.

The Gig launches soon on Kickstarter. Register here to be notified when.

The Gig (2022)

Designers: Jamie Gray, Dann May, Robb Smigielski, Lewis Shaw
Publisher: Braincrack Games
Art: Dann May, Robb Smigielski, Lewis Shaw
Players: 1-4
Playing time: 20-30 mins

The post The Gig Preview appeared first on Punchboard.

Venice is a gorgeous-looking mix of worker placement and pick-up and deliver mechanisms. Players move their gondolier between their two gondolas, navigating the famous canals, and leaving their apprentices in the various buildings and businesses of the 16th century setting. The trouble is, rival merchants are trying to do the same, increasing their influence in the city. While all this political and mercantile posturing is happening, players have to be careful not to raise too much suspicion, otherwise they might find themselves on the wrong end of the Venetian Inquisition.

Staying afloat

Venice is a really simple game to play, on a mechanical level at least. Move your little plastic gondola along, pay any costs for the distance travelled, resolve any passing of rivals, and pick up or deliver stuff. You can place your assistants in the buildings around the map, but there aren’t enough to place one in every building, so there are some tricky choices to make. The longer an assistant remains in a building, the more powerful and influential they become, and the greater the rewards for coming back. Make money, spend money, buy stuff, complete missions with the stuff – you know the score.

There are a set number of missions available, and when the last mission card is drawn the end of the game is triggered. The same thing happens when someone reaches a preset level on the Major Council track. When that happens, scores are tallied, and to the victor – the spoils. In a really interesting twist for a Euro game though, if a player ends the game with any amount of intrigue on their player board, and has the most among the players, they instantly get arrested and lose! I wasn’t prepared for this, it’s a really unusual thing for a game like this, so make sure all the players are aware of it before the first game starts. Playing a game for an hour then finding out it was all for nothing is a real kick in the teeth, and not something you want your friends and family to experience.

Actually, maybe that’s exactly what you want. Luckily, I’m not here to judge you.

Decisions, decisions

I really like Venice. It does something really clever, because it takes a medium weight game, and makes it feel much heavier. It feels like you have loads of decisions to make, but in reality, most of the time there are only a few valid ones. All of the missions are similar: collect a load of orange, purple and/or grey cubes (ceramics, cloth and silver respectively), go to the correct building, turn in the cubes to complete a mission card. There are only a few moves you can, or would want to make when you move your gondola, because only the first move is free. Every stop afterwards costs money.

What makes this feel deeper is the variance in setup. The locations of the buildings are changed every time you play, and there’s a deck of intrigue cards you can draw from to give you one-off bonuses. It means you can’t go into your next game thinking “I really ought to get my assistants in the church and library this time“, because they’ll probably be in completely different places.

Deep theme

I really like how well the theme has been baked into the gameplay. It’s not something I can always say about a Euro game, but it’s true with Venice. Let me give you a couple of examples.

If your gondola moves past another player’s, you have a choice – give them a scroll (like currency) as a bribe, or word gets around the canals that you’re up to something, and your intrigue level grow. Intrigue is a bad thing. So how do you get rid of intrigue? Easy, head to the library or church and get your assistants working there. After all, who’s not going to trust a man of the cloth or a librarian? At both locations, you can actively reduce your intrigue.

Alternatively, maybe you’ve planted someone in the mint. Sure, they can sneak you some money out when you visit them, but at the cost of suspicion, and raising the intrigue level again. It’s little details like this that make Venice feel like more than a game which has been built around some mechanisms, and then had a theme stickered over the top.

Man overboard

I think it’s only fair to mention the plastic gondolas that come with the game. Yes, they are incredibly cute, and many a grown man will have no choice but to make motorboat noises as they drive them around the board. Yes, it’s also very cool how they have the perfect space to carry up to five cubes in the front (the most you’re allowed to carry), and a little place for the gondolier to stand at the back. BUT, they also have a little plastic post and lantern on them. It looks really cool, but I find it nearly impossible to get the cubes and gondolier in and out of the boat because of it.

The number of times I’ve caught the post with my hand and accidentally tipped the boat over and spilled everything, or tried to move the gondolier and done the same, isn’t funny. It’s especially annoying when you’ll be moving the gondolier between your gondolas on nearly every turn. It got to the stage where I was just placing him next to the boat each time. I think the problem can be solved by just chopping the post off, which I’ll probably end up doing. Your mileage may vary of course, but I’ve got big hands (strangler’s hands I’ve been told) and it was annoying enough for me to write this.

Otherwise though, the component and art quality is top-notch, and I love what Braincrack do by putting little colour-coded cardboard boxes in the game. Each player can just lift theirs out and have everything they need in it.

One man and his Doge

Anyone who spotted Dávid Turczi‘s name at the top of this review will be pleased to know there’s a solo mode included. Along with Xavi Bordes, he’s added the Doge as an opponent. No… not that doge, meme fans. The Doge was the head of state for Venice back in the day.

It runs really smoothly, and in a change to a lot of automa opponents, you get to choose which card gets used on each turn, from a choice of two. In line with every Turczi solo opponent I’ve played against, there are options in the rule book to make the game easier or more difficult, should you want to do either. The Doge is a tough opponent, and it really reflects the feeling of a multiplayer game.

Venice – a summary

Venice is a great game. I don’t own many games where the distance you can move per turn is a factor. The closest I usually come to that is a rondel. I’ve played pick-up and deliver games in the past, but none felt as mature as Venice. The gondolas are annoying to handle (for me at least), but as I mentioned above, I think I can fix that with a sharp knife. The theme is really well implemented, and a lot of what’s happening makes sense and is logical. Mooring spots get really cramped when more than one boat is there, and there’s a feeling of claustrophobia and narrowness when you’re trying to make your way around the canals.

I think the sweet spot for Venice is three players. Anything more and it feels very busy, and it’s hard to tell from a glance what’s happening. I like the way two-player games are handled, where the game gives each player a smuggler deck and an extra gondola. The smugglers act as dummy players you control. I know some people really dislike dummy players, but these are more active and under your control, and without them the board would feel empty. That said, I’d try to introduce new players with a three-player game, so they lose the overhead of trying to run a smuggler as well as their own turn.

Intrigue

At first the insta-lose condition of having the most intrigue left at the end of the game was jarring for me, but it’s something I really enjoy now. Intrigue is like a bad commodity you can spend during the game, you just have to keep an eye on the board and make sure you clear it before the game ends. You get a two round countdown when the end is triggered, so it’s not quite as harsh as it sounds, and you get an opportunity to reduce it with left-over money and scrolls.

Venice is a smart, easy-to-learn Euro, with a nice level of player interactivity. Each time I play it, it feels fresh, and I love the feeling of a sprint finish with the end-game is triggered. If you’re a Euro game fan and there’s space in your collection for something a bit different, I really recommend giving it a try. There’s an official Tabletop Simulator mod here you can try right now!

Review copy kindly provided by Braincrack Games. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

Image credits

¹ Matt @ BoardgameShot
² Ross @ More Games Please

Venice (2021) – Braincrack Games

Designers: Andrei Novac, Dávid Turczi
Publisher: Braincrack Games
Art: Bartlomiej Roczniak
Players: 1-5
Playing time: 70-100 minutes

The post Venice Review appeared first on Punchboard.

What is an automa?

Let’s start at the beginning. What is an automa? You might have seen the term thrown about a lot in the last year or so, as the pandemic forced people to search for solo options. An automa is a simulated opponent for a board game, who the player controls, usually with a deck of cards. The term was coined by the famous automa designer, Morten Monrad Pedersen. While working on the solo mode for Viticulture (a wine-making game set in Italy), someone suggested the name ‘automa’, the Italian word for automaton. The name stuck, and he founded the Automa Factory, a company that board game developers can contract to create solo modes for their games.

Sometimes you’ll hear these solo opponents referred to as AI. Although it means largely the same thing, there’s a small, but subtle difference. In my opinion anyway. An automa tends to be an opponent who doesn’t need, or use, things like resources in games. Their actions more often instruct the player to give the automa some kind of reward from the game (e.g. give place a building on their behalf), but not by collecting and spending the resources. Instead, through clever playtesting, the rate the automa takes these thing to compete with, or impede the human, roughly mirrors a real opponent. AI opponents on the other hand, usually collect and spend resources, just like a real person. It’s a subtle, but important difference.

Automated opponents – What are your options?

Let’s start this off with looking at three of the best automated opponents, and their designers.

Automa Factory

I’ve already mentioned Automa Factory above, so let’s start there. The majority of the titles they’ve worked on are for Stonemaier Games. Automa Factory games work with a deck of cards that are split into two halves. By matching the right-side of the left card to the left-side of the right card when the two are placed side by side, you’re given a prioritised list of things to do. If the automa can do the first thing, do that, if not, read the next one down, and so on. Other parts of the cards often give you other things to do at the end of a round, or symbols may tell you when the automa passes, ready for the next round. For the next turn, the card on the left slides over the one on the right to replace it, and a new one is dealt next to it. Simple.

Automa Factory games are really easy to run, with very little fuss. I don’t think I could pick a single recommendation, because a lot of it comes down to the theme of the game you want to play. If you want a traditional ‘turn one thing into another thing’ euro, go for Viticulture: Essential Edition. If you want something with a bit more theme, look to the smash hit, alternate history, Euro-in-mechs-clothing Scythe. And if you want something a bit ‘friendlier’ on the table, check out the bird-attracting, tableau-building, eggcellent (sorry) Wingspan. My own personal favourite Automa Factory game is Gaia Project, which is a fantastic game of space exploration and empire-building which I really need to review (note to self).

The Automa Factory games provide a really good opponent, and the scores, turns and interactions really duplicate the feel of playing against a human. It’s already at the stage where spotting their logo on a game is almost a guarantee of a good solo version.

Garphill Games

In a lot of Garphill games there’s a solo mode, and more often than not, it’s against an excellent automated opponent. The West Kingdom games in particular, really manage to capture the feel of playing against a human opponent. Shem and Sam work together in an iterative process to refine the solo mode, until we get the finished product in the box. I’ve made no secret of the fact that I love both Paladins of the West Kingdom and Viscounts of the West Kingdom. Solo play in these games is similar to Automa Factory, in as much as the opponent’s actions are determined by flipping a card. Things get more clever from here though.

Both of those games use one of the player boards, flipped over, for the special AI modes. Paladins gives three different setups, for easy, medium and hard difficulty levels, which is great. Viscounts on the other hand, has four different AI boards, each of which concentrates its efforts on one of the main scoring mechanisms in the game. It really feels like playing against different personalities. It also has to collect and spend resources, just like I do, and this makes things feel fair. I’m not too proud to admit I’ve had a few ‘Ha! Screw you!” moments when the AI hasn’t been able to afford something really good.

The scores are comparable to playing against a person, and the gameplay feels like playing against someone. Importantly, they are very easy to run. Once you’ve played against them once, you won’t need the rule book to play solo again. That’s especially important in a game as heavy as these, as you need your brain to work out what the heck you’re going to do, never mind running a complex opponent too.

Dávid Turczi

Dávid’s been brought in to create solo modes in a lot of different games over the years, as well as creating a few games that are completely of his own design. I’ve covered one of each of these, in my Teotihuacan and Tawantinsuyu reviews, respectively. His solo designs are unique, and I really like how they work.

If we take a look at Anachrony and Tawatinsuyu (both completely his own design), the opponents really are AIs. They even have names! In Anachrony you square-off against Chronobot (now being replaced with Chronossus in an expansion), and in Tawantinsuyu you fight for victory against Axomamma. In both, the AI has a custom player board, numbered tokens, and a special die. You roll the die, find the numbered token that matches, carry out the action, and then move the token along. In both games though, the AI needs to gain and spend the resources to carry out its actions. It’s a really clever way of running things, and shows how much work must go into development, balancing the mathematics of chance with the die rolls.

Both of those examples look far more intimidating when you first set them up, than they actually are to run. Thanks to clear rules and good iconography, you won’t need the rule book again to figure out what they’re doing. Much like with the Garphill Games, this is really important, as these games are heavy enough at the best of times.

Worth getting just to play by yourself?

If you’re asking about any of the games I mentioned above, then yes, absolutely. Every game I’ve mentioned so far is an excellent option for solo gamers, and I either have, or would, pay just to play them alone. The reasons the first two systems above work so well, is because although they make you step down through a series of priorities on each turn of a card, the actions are always easy to carry out. There’s very little in the way of calculation or deduction to do, so the automa’s turns pass quickly.

Things aren’t always so good though, and I think it’s worth highlighting what makes for a disappointing solo opponent, in my opinion. I’ve not played against an automated opponent yet that’s outright bad, but there’s one thing that can really sour things for me, and that’s making the automa’s turn take longer than mine.

The culprits

I should preface this section by saying that this is entirely my opinion, and that in both cases I absolutely love both of the games below. Seriously, they’re very good games. The issue for me is the amount of time I need to spend referring to rule books, or performing mental arithmetic during the AI’s turns. As I mentioned above, when you’re playing a game which requires strategy, planning, and thought, the last thing you need to be doing is two things at once. I speak from experience as a parent who’s spent a lot of time in the last year trying to do a demanding full-time job, and home-school an eight-year-old at the same time.

Clans of Caledonia

Clans of Caledonia is a fantastic game. There’s a reason why it sits so high in the BGG rankings, and why it gets recommended to Euro game fans all of the time. Out-of-the-box, Clans comes with a beat-your-own-score mode which is functional, but nothing special. In a game about expanding your control over a shared map, and influencing market prices between players, it doesn’t really do it justice. A special automa was brought out after release, which players can download and print for free (there’s also a digital version). The problem with it though is how tricky it is to run.

Some actions it carries out are pretty easy, but others feel like a test. I challenge anyone to resolve its Expand action without thinking about it. The same goes with certain market actions, the calculations you have to carry out to see how much money the automa takes, if any, are like school homework. It doesn’t mean the solo mode is bad, far from it, the scoring and interaction is very good. It’s just very high maintenance, and in my experience I spent longer carrying out its turns than my own. It should be the opposite.

Merv

Yep, the same Merv I reviewed and really like. The solo mode is really good, and very tough to beat, but I found myself keeping the rulebook open on the solo rules to work out its choices and placements over and over again. In a game with only 12 turns each, it felt like a lot. I really like the solo mode, but it definitely needs a something to make it smoother.

If you’ve not read the review yet, each turn takes place in a specific order, and as well as moving yourself and the Corrupt Magistrate (your opponent), you also both control a third player, called the High Courtier. It’s like some kind of messy divorce, with you and the Magistrate saying “well this time I’m placing him, you can have your turn next time”. There’s a tricky set of rules of precedence to decide where the automa places his and the High Courtier’s buildings, and I end up checking the rules for it every, single, turn.

Of course, that might just say more about me than the game, but I think it could really have done with some kind of player aid or reference for it. If there was a good player aid on a board, I don’t know if this game would even have been included here.

Just to reiterate that neither of the games above are bad. Far from it. The solo opponents both play a very good game too but for players new to solo games, the experience could be off-putting compared to something like an Automa Factory game.

Solo gaming – a summary

Hopefully you know a little more about what makes an automa tick now. I can’t begin to understand how people can create them, but I’m extremely grateful that they have. Between these and beat-your-own-score modes, there are a lot of really good solo options out there now which don’t feel like a disappointing compromise.

There’s a growing list of people whose names alone are enough to convince me the solo mode will be worth playing, and it’s already becoming an expectation among the board game community that a solo mode should be in a new game. I’m already seeing complaints in Kickstarter campaigns when big-name games are being funded without a solo mode. Solo mode designers even have their own section on a game’s credits on BGG now.

Some games will never work for solo. Social deduction, auction games, take-that mechanics, party games – there’s a big list where it just isn’t viable. But there’s enough good stuff out there now, and far more on the way, to make solo board gaming an excellent hobby to take up. I’ve seen some people turn their nose up at it, scoff, and ask “what’s the point of a solo board game? It won’t be any good. I can just play a video game“. Yes, you can. I do too. However, a lot of the strategy games that people will spend years of their lives playing on a computer are just running the same branching decisions and algorithms that we’ve got in board games now. But with a board game we have the added bonus of being able to look away from a screen, to play with something tactile, warm, and personal. It’s not a compromise, it’s a choice.

If you have any questions or comments, please just leave a message below, or scroll to the top of the page and find me on social media. I’ll be more than happy to talk to you (exhaustively!) about solo games.

The post Solo Modes In Board Games – Part Two (Automa) appeared first on Punchboard.

Interview

Me: Hi, thanks for taking the time to talk to me. For starters, who are you, what do you do at Plastic Soldier Company, and which game is currently on your table the most?

Mark: I’m Mark Cooke, Operations Director for PSC Games. Day to day, I’m mainly overseeing the project management and production of our games, and working with publishing partners to produce our games in multiple languages. Unfortunately due to the current situation I’m not really playing many games on a table! I’ve been playing a few prototypes online though, including Prison Architect.

Me: For anyone reading this, who may not know much about Plastic Soldier Company and PSC Games, can you give us a quick summary of who they are, and what they make?

Mark: Plastic Soldier Company formed about 15 years ago and focused on making historic miniatures. PSC Games was formed about 5 years ago to publish board games with a historical or combat theme.

Me: I’ve noticed PSC Games seem to be moving into more mainstream-style games, in addition to their traditional war games. Is this part of a new direction for the company?

Mark: Yes, it has been quite organic though, as PSC Games built up a reputation for quality, fun, games, we’ve had more designers submitting games and other organisations wanting to partner with us. This has led to some exciting upcoming projects that I’m really looking forward to working on.

Me: Has the success of the Rome and Roll: Gladiators Kickstarter surprised you at all?

Mark: It’s always a bit nerve-wracking launching a new Kickstarter, you just never know how it’s going to do on the day, or what competition you might be going up against! But we were confident with this one, as it’s got a fabulous design team behind it, and there’s a lot of love for the base game.

Me: Are there any plans for more Rome and Roll expansions?

Mark: Dávid and Nick are always planning! We haven’t scheduled anything in yet, but that’s not to say there won’t be any.

Me: The announcement for Prison Architect: Cardboard County Penitentiary came out of the blue. It seems like a big coup, how did the partnership come about?

Mark: Mats at Paradox heads up their partnerships and licensing, and is always on the lookout for opportunities. He’s also an avid board gamer, and is a fan of some of PSC Games’ titles. At Essen Spiel a couple of years ago, he swung by the booth and got chatting to Will Townshend (owner of PSC Games), and a relationship developed from there. Some of the designers we work with are massive fans of their games so it seemed like a natural fit.

Me: I saw Dávid Turczi was playing a prototype of Prison Architect before Christmas, so how long has it been in development?

Mark: It’s been quite a while, coming up on a year. The initial stages of designing the bones of the game were relatively straightforward, but we were struggling to make it feel fun. After many months of iterations and hair-pulling, it became a really fun and clever game. There’s still some of that original design evident in its current form, but it’s also changed dramatically too!

Me: How closely are you working with Paradox Interactive / Double Eleven to create a physical version of their game?

Mark: We are working really closely with the Prison Architect team at Paradox. A lot of them are board gamers, so are really keen for us to make this game! They have also been really helpful in advising on what could be quite a sensitive topic in some countries, and sharing how they’ve approached this. We have regular meetings with them, and a Slack channel that we’re all able to communicate together on.

Me: How difficult a challenge is it to keep the same feel and aesthetic of Prison Architect, but come up with a game which works on tabletop instead of a screen?

Mark: The main challenge of pairing down a video game to be a fun board game is choosing what to include and what not to, as video games can be quite expansive compared to what you’re able to include in a box. The initial designs for the board game were taking over 4 hours to play! However, through playtesting and refining, we were able to bring some of that down, cut some stuff out without it losing the feel of Prison Architect, and make it a fun and enjoyable 90-120 minute time.

Me: What do you think will be the biggest potential hurdle to overcome in making Prison Architect a hit?

Mark: It will likely be the public perception of incarceration around the globe. This has been addressed in the game though with a twisted mirror effect, as a player you get to decide how you run your prison, “evil money grab” vs “happy rehabilitation”. Caring for the prisoners’ comfort and hygiene is very much a central mechanism that is directly rewarded in the game. However, the game is cartoony and caricature-like enough so that if you don’t wish to wrestle with the ethical dilemma of imprisonment, you don’t have to and can just enjoy the exciting auctions and tile laying aspects.

Me: Speaking of this perception of incarceration, what are PSC Games doing to make sure they approach the game with due sensitivity and research?

Mark: One of the ways we’re doing this is through working with a consultant who was previously incarcerated in the US, who then became a professor of humane architecture for prisons, and is now an architect.

Me: There seems to be a growing trend in bringing video games to the Tabletop. Frostpunk, Kingdom Rush, Stellaris, Stardew Valley to name just a few from recent memory. Do you think this is here to stay?

Mark: I think there’s a wealth of fun and interesting themes and stories within video games that would work well as board games. With the development in mechanics, game design and production techniques, and the growing interest in board games, I think we will continue to see big licences coming in cardboard form!

Me: Do you have anything in the planning stages you can tell us about? If not, are you working on anything you CAN’T tell us about?

Mark: At this stage all eyes are on fulfilling Procyon III, which will be coming to retail soon, as well as a new edition of Blitzkrieg! that combines the expansion in to the base game. We then have Rome & Roll: Gladiators, followed by Prison Architect in May. We have some other stuff lined up (we’re booked up well into 2022 now!), but can’t really talk about it at this stage.

Thanks again to Mark and PSC for talking to me, I’m really looking forward to seeing how both The Defence of Procyon III and Prison Architect turn out. You can be sure you’ll know as soon as I do.

Adam

The post Interview with Mark Cooke from PSC Games appeared first on Punchboard.

Dávid Turczi is the brains behind Tawantinsuyu, the same mind that brought us Anachrony. It’s a game about raising a team of workers in the shadow of the Sun Temple, at the site of the ancient terraced Incan capital, Cusco. Along the way you’ll be constructing buildings and statues, weaving tapestries, harvesting corn and potatoes, and even going to war. But, as you might expect from a heavy Euro, the theme is only skin-deep, so lets get into the bit we’re all here for – the game!

Mixing Mechanisms

Much of Tawantinsuyu revolves around two main mechanisms: worker placement, and a rondel. In the centre of the board, atop the terraced pentagonal hill, players’ High Priests occupy one of five places. One of the two options available to you on your turn is to move your priest one or two steps around, rondel-style. The spaces they occupy let you perform one of the major actions available, such as conquering nearby villages or making your buildings produce resources for you.

Alternatively, you might choose to place one of your recruited workers in one of the spots available on the board. This seems pretty standard fare for anyone who’s played a worker placement game before. Find an empty space, pay any costs associated, get the thing from the space. But Tawantinsuyu spices things up here, and gives you so many things to consider that your brain could melt, in the nicest possible way.

Let’s Get To Work

I’ll try to illustrate just how many things you have to think about every time you place a worker. Workers come in five colours. Some you’ll take at random at the start of the game, the rest you’ll choose. Firstly, every worker space is connected to three possible actions, so there’s the choice of which one of the three you perform. Unless, that is, your worker is adjacent to another worker of the same colour. Then you get an extra action for each adjacent, same-colour worker. So now you might have three actions, so you can perform all three things, hooray.

On the subject of worker colour, each different colour has an associated bonus. White ones, for example, let you take an additional action if you pay one potato. Green and blue workers, when placed on spaces of their own colour, give you an additional action. All of those bonus actions are in addition to the adjacency bonuses mentioned above, so a clever placement can net you five actions from placing one worker.

But wait, there’s more! Each worker space has a symbol on it, and to place someone on this symbol, you need to discard a God Card with that symbol on it, or some gold. Oh, and you need to pay food if the space is on a lower terrace of the hill, and again if the space is on a different side of the hill to your High Priest.

So you see, the simple action of placing a meeple on a space on the board needs a lot of thought behind it, if you want to be efficient.

Controlling The Pace

If you read my review of Viscounts of the West Kingdom, you’ll remember that one of things I really liked about it was not having a set number of turns. Plenty of Euro games dictate that you’ll take a certain number of actions, then it’s game over. Tawantinsuyu is another of those that doesn’t do this, and it’s something I find myself enjoying more and more.

There is a set number of rounds in the game, but the triggering of the end of the round is done by the players. When the last worker from the village area is claimed by a player, it triggers a festival, and end of round scoring. But you don’t have to take that worker. Workers cost food to take, and there’s a second space to collect Nomad workers from. Or you could place a red warrior worker, which lets you take an adjacent worker from the board and claim them to use on a later turn. You don’t even have to place a worker, you could take a High Priest action instead.

This all leads to a really tense game of cat and mouse when the village is down to its last worker. You might avoid taking it, to try and get another action somewhere else, or you might take it just to stop an opponent doing the same thing. It’s another layer in this stack of complexity pancakes, and it just makes the whole thing more delicious, and even more to chew on.

Choosing A Path

Like Teotihuacan before it, there are a lot of ways to score points in Tawantinsuyu. What I appreciate in the design of this game is the ability to change your chosen route to victory partway through the game. Some games can feel quite punishing if you change strategy, leaving you unable to catch someone who chose well at the start of the game. If you’ve ever played 7 Wonders: Duel before, and decided to try to chase a military victory halfway through the game, you’ll know what I mean.

Tawantinsuyu doesn’t do this. I’ve played games where I’ve abandoned my quest to become the tapestry magnate of Cusco, choosing to become a bloodthirsty warmonger instead, and still won the game. The trick to this game is about using actions efficiently. After a couple of games, placing a worker and only getting one action from it feels deflating, like you’ve made a mistake. You haven’t done anything wrong really, but you’ve probably missed something that could have gained you more, and your own brain will beat you up for it.

If you want to play well, you need to have your wits about you, have an open mind, and be aware of what’s going on at all times. Which spaces are available? How many potatoes has your opponent got? Can their High Priest get to the rejuvenate action and revive his army before you start a conquest and mop up all the points? These thoughts and considerations, these are what make a game heavy, not the complexity or thickness of its rule book.

Does Heavy Equal Fun?

For some people, probably not. My wife for example, doesn’t like any game that feels like hard work, mentally. For people like me though, this game is Fun with a capital F. That abundance of choices is wonderful, and the clever ways interactions work in the game aren’t blatant, but are satisfying all the same.

Take stairs, for example. Any player can construct stairs as an action, and then they can place a cute little set of stairs on the board between the terraces. Stairs decrease the food cost for placing a worker on a lower tier. But if you use someone else’s stairs to do this, they get 1 VP for it. If you build steps on a lower tier, and your opponent built the steps on the tier above, they get 2 VPs for it. These don’t sound like big numbers, but games of Tawantinsuyu can swing on these small gains.

Considerations like these are what makes a game heavy for me. The actions you perform aren’t difficult, and there are no overly confusing rules or conditions, but choosing from the wealth of viable options is tricky.

Solo Mode

I’m a huge fan of Dávid’s solo modes in games, and Tawantinsuyu is no exception. Anybody who’s played against the Chronobot in Anachrony will spot the similarities. The Axomamma automa player has its own special player board, rules and die to roll. It’s really simple to run, following a set of priorities, and moving some tokens around on its board.

Axomamma plays a good game, and like all the best solo opponents, it does two things really well. Firstly, it has varying difficulty levels, which means you can start on the easiest settings and work up. This is great, as there’s something very dispiriting about getting hammered by a piece of cardboard or a few cards. Secondly, and the most important thing for me, is that it feels like playing against a human opponent. Axomamma earns resources and spends them, just like you do, and it really makes a difference to the experience of playing solo.

Final Thoughts

Tawantinsuyu is a masterclass in heavy, mechanical, Euro game design. The board isn’t going to win any illustration awards, but as an exercise in graphic design, it’s great. The iconography is clean and consistent, and once you get the hang of the game, the only time you’ll need to refer to rule book is to look up a passive building you haven’t used before. Thematically, I never really get the feeling I’m developing an Incan tribe, but that’s not what most people buying this game will be looking for.

This game is ridiculously satisfying, every single turn is like being a kid in a sweet shop – you don’t know where to start, because you want to try everything. I love the feeling of placing a worker in the perfect spot and getting a ton of stuff from the four or five actions it gives you. There are some parts of the game which – understandably – feel influenced by Teotihuacan, most notably when each round ends with a special round of scoring. In Teotihuacan you have to pay cocoa for workers in your possession, and in Tawantinsuyu you need to pay potatoes for every God card you’ve got. The big difference though is potatoes never feel as hard to come by as cocoa did. It’s maybe a small detail, but it means I can enjoy the game more.

While I was writing drafts for this review, I was trying to make sure I covered any negatives in the game, and honestly, I really struggled. I think the only thing I’d say is that it takes up a lot of table, so if space is an issue for you, be careful.

If you like a heavy game, and you like worker placement, buy Tawantinsuyu. That’s how much I like this game. I haven’t been paid to say that, I wasn’t even provided with a review copy of the game. I bought it with my own money – which is affordable at the time of writing, at around £40 – and I’d buy it again in a heartbeat.

The post Tawantinsuyu Review appeared first on Punchboard.

If you answered “not many” to the question above, then I agree with you. Games normally use tiles or cards to represent buildings. but Teotihuacan lets you build a pyramid out of chunky tiles, and even decorate it too. Right there on your very own table! Is there more to the game than a gimmick and eye candy though? Read on, and find out.

A Pyramid Scheme?

Players represent noble families constructing the Aztec city of Teotihuacan. To win the game you have to accrue the most victory points through constructing the great pyramid, advancing along the impressive, and real, Avenue of the Dead, and advancing favour with the gods at the various temples. To do this you need to place workers around the city’s sites, competing with the other players for resources, technologies, and making sure you have enough of the currency of the day, cocoa.

What’s In The Box?

As well as those gloriously chunky and satisfying pyramid tiles I mentioned above, there’s a lot of stuff in the box. The game plays up to four players, and each player has four dice which act as workers, so there’s 16 coloured dice in there. There are some nice wooden resource pieces for wood, stone and gold, although the wood feels a bit small and thin compared to the others. The board is like the one in Nemo’s War, it unfolds to six times its folded size.

Other than that there are a lot of cardboard tiles for all kinds of things; discovery tiles which are picked up all around the board for bonuses, decoration tiles to add to the pyramid for VPs, and starting tiles which give the players a choice of what to start each game with. Then there are action boards, technology tiles, royal tiles and temple tiles, all of which are optional but increase the longevity of the game. More on this later. The rule book is really clearly written and isn’t too long, so it’s nice and easy to jump around to reference sections of it.

How To Play

Teotihuacan is undoubtedly a Eurogame. There’s almost no interaction with other players other than taking tiles they might want, or forcing them to spend more cocoa than they’d like on an action. You collect resources and spend them on things to earn you victory points. It’s pretty unique in how strong the theme is, but it ticks all the Eurogame boxes. Normally when you look at a Euro though it’s pretty easy to say ‘that’s a worker placement game’, or ‘this is a card drafting game’. With Teotihuacan though, it’s not that simple, as we’ll soon see.

Getting Started

To start with the board is setup as per the rulebook, and all players draft a couple of starting tiles. These starting tiles show them which resources or advancements they’ll start with, and which areas their workers begin in. All players then take three dice, and these dice act as their workers.

So it’s a worker placement game then, right?

Yes, well, no. Kind of. In a normal worker placement game, players take turns choosing where to place workers, sometimes sharing a space, sometimes blocking it, but they can normally place them wherever they want. In Teotihuacan, in order to place a worker in a space to take an action, you take them from wherever they currently are, and move them between one and three spaces clockwise around the board, like a rondel.

Ah, so it’s a rondel game.

Again, yes and no. Normally in a game where a rondel determines your actions, what you get as a reward is fairly obvious. In Teotihuacan, things are different. Your workers start with the 1 pip on the die facing upwards, showing them as a level one worker. When they carry out a main action, they power up, and you rotate the die so that the next number is face-up. On every action space there’s a table of information which explains what you can do and what you get for carrying out that action.

Production

Let’s take the Forest space for example.

What this table tells me, is that looking at the top row, if I have a level one worker who carries out an action, I get a cocoa. If it’s level two or three, I get a piece of wood. And it the worker is level four or five, I get two pieces of wood. So far so good. But what happens if I already have a worker in that space?

In that example, I look at the second row down, and when choose which column I’m looking at, I pick the value of my lowest worker there Think of it like training the new guy. So if I have a five and a one, I still get the reward from the first column, in this case just one wood. So you can see, planning who will be where is a really important strategy.

After your worker(s) take an action, one or more of them level-up, depending on how many were in the space, and if they reach level six, they ascend. “What’s an ascension?” I hear you ask. Although it’s never explained explicitly in the rules, it’s essentially a worker dying and being replaced (or maybe reincarnated) with a new worker. They rotate back to 1 pip on the die and are placed on the Palace area of the board. With that ascension you gain a reward from the ascension wheel on the board, which could be some VPs, movement up a temple track, cocoa, or even an additional worker. You also move your marker up one space on the Avenue of the Dead, which was a miles-long road in the real city of Teotihuacan, but in this game is one of the tracks to advance up.

Tracks

Lots of games have a track or two to progress along in search of riches and victory points. Teotihaucan boasts no less than six of them. Six!

Firstly there’s the Avenue of the Dead. One of your markers advances up the avenue every time you place a building on the Nobles area of the board, or one of your workers ascends. There are discovery tiles alone the way as rewards for getting there first, and at each eclipse, which act as round ends, players score based on their position.

Right next to the Avenue of the Dead there’s the calendar track. The white marker moves towards the black one at the end of each full turn, and trigger eclipses when they move past it.

Next there’s the pyramid track. Players move along the track one space for every tile or decoration tile they add to the pyramid. The player furthest ahead at the end of the round gets a bonus, everyone multiplies their position by an amount, and the positions on the track reset.

Finally we have the three temple tracks: blue, red and green. Certain discoveries and actions reward you with movement up one of the temples. You get a reward for every step, and along the way there are bonus discovery tiles to claim. Players who make it to the top of a track can expect big bonuses at the end of the game.

Cocoa

Cocoa is the currency of choice in Teotihuacan. The richest player will have chocolate pouring out of their pockets, probably. Cocoa is spent on certain discoveries, paying for actions, and paying your workers during an eclipse. Why you pay them in an eclipse I’m not sure, maybe direct sunlight spoils the cocoa?

If you want to take an action and other players are there, you pay one cocoa per different colour dice in that space. So if there were two black and one yellow dice there, my red worker would have to pay two cocoa. During an eclipse you have to pay your workers to the tune of one cocoa each, and one additional for every worker at level four or above. If you don’t have enough to pay them, it’s bad news, and it’s a three VP penalty per cocoa you can’t afford.

Various technology upgrades can grant you cocoa, and some discovery tiles. You can even take a five cocoa bonus when you ascend, but the usual way to accrue more is with a Collect Cocoa action. If you move your worker to a space with other players’ workers on, you can claim one cocoa per other colour, and one extra. So in the example above with two black and one yellow dice in the space, I would get three cocoa (two colours + one extra).

Worshipping

The final way to use your workers is to worship. Some of the main action spaces have a worhsip space. You can place your worker there to claim the discovery tile that’s there, to advance on the relevant coloured temple for the space you’re in, or pay a cocoa and do both. That worker is then locked. When a worker is locked they cannot move again, and you can’t use them until they are unlocked. To unlock a worker you either spend three cocoa during your turn to unlock all of your locked workers, skip your turn to unlock them for free, or wait for someone else to forcibly evict you from the space, paying you in the process.

Eclipses

The final thing to mention in terms of the flow of the game is the calendar track. At one end there’s a block representing the sun, at the other, one representing the moon. Whenever the last player completes a turn, or a worker ascends, the sun tracker moves down towards the moon. If at any point that movement would take it past, it’s the end of the round and there’s an eclipse scoring phase.

During the eclipse players score for their positions on the pyramid track and the avenue of the dead, and then pay their workers either in cocoa or cold, hard VPs. At the end of the third eclipse, the game ends, and the player with the most VPs when the dust has settled, wins.

Final Thoughts

Game mechanics are a dark art. The very best designers can take a mechanic and create a game that uses that mechanic beautifully, as Uwe Rosenberg does with worker placement (Nusfjord, A Feast For Odin, Fields of Arle). Attempts to mix them can have very mixed results however, as Flotilla proves in my opinion. The combination of hand management, tile placing, pick up and deliver, rondels, asymmetric play and more besides sounds like it could be Eurogame nirvana. Unfortunately it comes across as unwieldly and disjointed. So on the surface, Teotihuacan could have been a mess to play.

Thankfully, it’s a brilliant game. It’s a heavy game, for certain, but a brilliant one at the same time. There is so much going on at any one time, and so many options open to you on every turn, that on your first play you can feel swamped. One of the most basic choices is one of the most important – do you keep your workers close together to get loads of resources, or do you spread them around the board to always be close to a space which can give you what you need elsewhere on the board?

After the first game, when the pieces of the jigsaw start to fit together, it’s absolutely compelling. It takes quite a few more plays before you even get close to seeing the whole picture. I love the fact that with the exception of the piles of discovery tiles (which you can look through and pick from when claiming one), there’s no hidden information in the game. You can see what level each players’ workers are, you can see how many resources everyone has, you can see how close to the next eclipse you are, and where everyone sits on the advancement tracks.

Replay Value

Playing Teotihuacan is playing a big puzzle, one which is constantly changing. In my experience, games can be very close when the scores are totalled, so every VP feels important. When you think you’re getting close to solving that puzzle, finding an optimised way to play, you can open the other bags in the box and change things up a little. There’s a whole set of action boards which can be placed over the originals, which change where things are. This means that your learned routine of ‘start here, get this, then move there’ goes straight in the bin. The same goes for the technology tiles, which are bonuses you can buy with an ongoing effect. And again with the Palace tiles, and the temple tracks. There are so many ways to keep this game fresh without even looking at one of the expansions.

I highly recommend Teotihuacan to anyone with an interest in Eurogames who isn’t scared of spending a game learning how the pieces fit together. Daniele Tascini has created a masterpiece of subtly blending mechanics to deliver a rich, thematic, ever-changing experience.

Solo

Designer Dávid Turczi was brought in to add a solo mode, and it works really well. The execution is even thematic, with the AI player’s moves determined by shifting tiles around in a pyramid shape. The difficulty level is adjustable in small steps if you want to make it slightly easier, or harder. Personally I’ve been using a digital version available here, which just makes the game play slightly faster, without changing it. If you don’t have a fan of heavy Euros nearby, solo is a great option which means you won’t miss out on what is primarily a game of multiplayer solitaire.

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