Lone Token

There are multiple pathe to victory but the one wich a have a better success is to
1) reserve the best spot
2) get the Mosais and the headdresses to the same hex in the intersection of their path and use to same path to bring them to their building spot.

1- Krank: don’t let him get too much tech cards

2- Bama: reduce his health the more you can with the gun cards, when he is gone, it’s easier to get rid of the road riders

3- Bama: reduce his health the more you can with gun cards, and get a lot of dice cards because you need a natural 6 to engage

4- Puke: just keep the montrosities to a low level and finsh him

To bump your own worker you need an equal or higher dice value.

To replace antoher player worker you also need an equal or higher dice value

So when you decide to bump your worker to get back a dice you get rid of a die that can gives you more ressource and make it also easier for the other players to bump you

I play this game almost only with 2 players so I made 2 minor setup changes to make the game more different from one to the other.

I draw 4 random star houses (instead of using them all) and make only 3 quests available.

There are 2 cards in the game that when they are use together gives a player almost an instant win (I say almost because if you play with non gamers they might not see it).

The star house that gives you 2pts/adventurer and the house that allows to automatically “ready” a new adventurer make a killing combo that is hard to counter.

The combo goes like this: you buy a new adventurer with a quill, put it in your ready zone, use this new quill adventurer to buy another adventurer and so on. Also, if your are able to get your hand on a +quill adventurer or trophy it’s even better.

You can easily end the game with 10 adventurers

All the games I played are pretty tight in term of scoring but when someone use this combo he wins by more than 15-20 points.

I removed the auto-ready card form the game.

Setup the game for 2 players but put all the robot dice in his population and put the meeple on the 0$

Get 1 extra dice for the robot (+ the one for the 2 player dummy)

Roll your dice and plan your action then roll 1 dice for the robot, flip the action tile and put de dice on it. Roll the dummy dice and flip the action but leave de dice near the tile.

Then do the robot action as followed:

– Explore:
you have 2 actions. Each construct pile can have a maximum of 2 tiles. Every tiles that you cannot place is transfered into money (advance the meeple on the money track). So you can take 2 tiles and place them on the highest value side in the required construction pile or you take one tile and avdvance 1$ on the money track or you advance 2$ on the money track

Develop / Settle: place 2 dice on the tile and place it on the robot tableau if it meets the required number of dice. Every extra dice can be place on the next tile. No tile, transfer it into money

Produce: put a dice in all your world that have none. All your world is full: +1$

Ship: sell 1 dice for 3VP. No dice to sell: +1$

Then do the other player selected actions (the dummy and yours)

Explore: same as above but only 1 action
Develop/settle: dame as above but only 1 dice
Produce: put a dice on 1 world only. all world full: nothing
Ship: sell a dice for 2VP. No dice to sell : nothing

When the money track of the robot gets to 10$, take 5vp. If the money track gets to 10$ again the game is over and you have lost

If not the end game condition are the same. Count the robot VP taking into account the 6+ development tile. Add 1 extra VP/$

Good luck

When you get color dice it’s normal to want to use them but each color has a different action ratio so choose your dice according to the action you want to priorize

Also try to not use the dice with the * (joker) to develop or settle because it will reduce your dice pool flexibility

The first step is to settle a few planets to get a dice pool of a min off dice

Then max your money with explore (2$/tile) or by sending ressource

Then buy all you dice

The strategy is to resist the tentation of using all your dice try to always leave in your cup 3 or more dice.

That way it always give you more options and its easier to get more money to buy back your dice

Build a Bastion on the players objectif token planet. That way, no bombarding will defeat your defending troop.

Solo variant
The goal of the official solo variant is to beat your own score with a neutral player that tries to slow you down but without opposing a big resistance

My solo variant plays almost the same as the official variant but make it a little more challenging

1) Add a 2nd neutral player and 7 dice (like for 3 players)

2) Use 3 turn order markers and determine the turn order as per the solo rule

3) Only use 2 craft markers by building (if you are the last to fill row you get the Vp but no marker)

4) Set up the rest of the game as per the solo rules

5) For the roof markers, the number available depends of your turn order : if you are first you can choose between 3 markers, 1 marker if you are the last player

6)In revenue phase, remove the dice as per the solo rules
-If the neutral player removes a 5 dice, he advance two steps on the siesta track
-If the neutral player removes a 6 dice he makes a delivery (see step 9)

7) Choose your donkey marker first and for the neutral players, take one hidden marker in his pool.

8) In turn order, advance the siesta tokens as normal and determine the new turn order as per the standard rules

9)Make the delivery in turn order
-For each neutral player delivery donkey, roll a dice and put a marker in the corresponding craft building. If the building is closed, nothing happens (3 donkeys = 3 dice roll)
-If the craft building row is full, remove the craft marker from the game and any VP if the neutral player is the first one to fill the row.

10) The first neutral player (even if he his 2nd in turn order) draws a card and place one of his marker on the market as per the solo rules.

11) At the end of the 6th turn, count your Vp and try to beat your score

Playing with 5 Civbot requires to shuffle the action deck a lot.

Instead I lay down the 6 actions cards and use a D6

First place the player cube on a territory. For the Civbot, use a D12 to choose the territory on the map

In the solo rules, the turn order is the player first and then the Civbots. Civbots plays by level and form left to right on the Civbot level card. So the turnorder wont change for the entire game and that might advantage the first Civbot.

The player always go first. The Civbot with the lowest VP is the second, and other Civbots follow in Turn order in increasing VP. In case of a tie, precedence is given to the Civbot with the highest level.

When playing solo, the Scars cards are only use as an endgame trigger (5 cards = loosing the game)

Instead, I apply the effect of each cards, turning mutant little by little. I think it’s more thematic for the solo game since it doesn’t remove all the mutant aspect of the game

To add a little more unknown for the bidding in a 2 players game we cover the first and the 2 last spot of the bidding track and use a D4 to simulate a third player bidding

when we put down the last tile of the third pile the game is suppose to end but instead after the third round scoring we play one last move each.

When playing with 4 we still add the Bot Dice like we do for the 2 and 3 players game.

We find that it add an unpredictable opponent

One of the first thing I do is playing the card “What are your demands” to reveal the abductor demand because almost all the Terror cards add a +1 on the terror track if the abductor demand is not revealed.

Don’t forget that you can play a card facedown to get +1 on the conversation track.

Sometimes I skip a turn or only play one card in order to maximize my conversation point by playing facedown cards. This way I’m able to buy the 6+ conversation cards

On the first year I always sell my 5gold field in summer and train a worker in winter. Then on the second year I choose the extra worker bonus (#7)and now you have a great work force to start the game strong

The official solo rule can be found on BGG

https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/119818/official-promo-rules-ophir

In the official solo rules, you compete against the Temple boat that moves around the board, stops to buy gold/silver and build the temple without considering influence. With that rule, it is really hard to catchup with the Temple boat.

Instead, I do apply the influence when moving the Temple boat. When rolling the influence die at the start of the turn, the Temple boat moves the number of hexes and stops if it has not enough influence.

The turn after, you need to roll enough influence to move the Temple boat and reduce the influence die of the other boat as by the standard rule

This way, you can use the Rival boat to slow down the Temple boat in his crusade.

The official rules requires that every time you need to suffle your discard pile, you have to remove a card, acting like a kind of timer but the truth is that it does’nt put enough pressure on the player who has enough time to build the best deck.

Instead, I take the removed card and add it to one of the skirmish decks making them harder to beat the longer the game takes.

Also if you lose a skirmish, instead of removing only 1 card you remove a number of cards coresponding to the fighting force difference

The game plays in 12 rounds or 9 rounds if you use the 3 round tokens.

We find that 9 round is to short so we dont use the last token and play 4 round for the last season for a total of 10 round.

We like playing this extra round because there is usually more actions on the board.

With three players there is less action on the board so less chance to awake a titans.

So we change the rule so that we awake 1 titans each time we move the monsters tokens from the Threat Queue to the Threat pile instead of when we can’t respendish the threat pile.

At the end of the game when you do the scoring, start with the 3rd assignement then the second and finish by with the first. This way, you will have to wait until the end of the three assignements scoring before eliminating players and knowing who is the winner.

you still do the elemination phase in order form 1 to 3

It add more tension to the endgame

When you use the reaction chart try to choose a reaction according to your advance skill tokens and/or your highest skill level because you it can lead you to automatically pass the encounter test (advance skill token) or be in a better position if you have to make a test (skill level).

The game asks to place the die on the barrel in order to remember that it exploded.

but during the game, when we reduce or increase the fire level we manage to move the dice and we loose track on which barrels have exploded.

Instead, when the barrel exploses we put a token on it.

Would have been nice if the game had included some barrels tokens for that purpose

We like to make the race a little longer. To do that, we take the first tiles after the passage of animals and we put them at the end of the track. We found that 4 more tiles gives a perfect race lenght

My winning strategy is to place my 2 bets on the same animal. If you get first you will get 10points.

Soloing Dead of Winter is not as good as playing with others but I’ve seen worst and I still enjoing it.

I play the 2 players coop variant (No traitor, no hidden objective and the difficult group objective.

For the Crossroad card, before looking at the card I say what I will do. If the Crossroad card meets the actual status of the survivors or the status of my planned actions, I apply the card like it’s suppose to be.

If the cards have a different trigger conditions that what I have planned I dont use it.

If for any reasons I feel that the crossroad cards could have an influence on my current actions or decisions, I roll a die to choose the Crossroad options

The key is to not cheating youself 🙂

Love this solo variant…the goal is to find the most gold in a pirate cave. The deeper you explore, the more gold you will find.

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/965815/cave-solo-variant-pirates-cave-search-gold

the thing that we have most problem with is the status cards because there is no maximum and you can end up easily with more than 10 cards in your hands. There is a lot of thext on these cards and it become really hard to keep track of every thing.

So we decided to put a maximum of 4 active status cards. (we can keep more if it’s a passive status like sex-change or Beast

We have to keep the 5th card and discard the one that have less effect on the game/adventure

When playing the solo variant each time I draw encounter cards I alternate with the time token

first draw of 2 cards : morning
second draw of 2 cards : noon
third draw of 2 cards : Night ……and so on

I gives a better sense on time passing by during the adventure

When playing the solo variant I add 3 NPC on the board (Africa, Asia and Europe) in order to be able to use the status cards that requires other player

If you want to adventure alone, ZMan Games has an official solo variant for the game

http://zmangames.com/product-details.php?id=949

This game is all about stealing and attacking other ships

Try to protect your merchant ships with your pirate ship and with the 2 naval ships by placing them in the narrow spot of the board so that your opponent cannot get to you

You can also use this strategy to slow down opponents and make them take a longer route

1) Be the second player so you dont start at the end of the train
2) Try to stay at the center on the train, its easier to move back and forth and mix the other players or escape
2) Get all the jewels that you can first and then the purses. Dont focus on the strongbox, only get it if it happens
3) Use face down turn to move since other players wont know where you will be
4) shoot-shoot-shoot…it worth 1000$ to be the best shooter

I played with all caracters but the one which I can be more strategic is Ghost since he can always plays his first card down. It really gives you a heads up against the other players since they dont know what you will do on your first turn….use it to move

This game is so much fun that we play with all the round cards instead of the required 4 to make the game longer

To choose on which locations to put the wooded tokens, I pick 6 gems (2 orange, 2 blue and 2 green) that I shuffle and drop on the locations

I love this solo variant of the game

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1096944/variant-reviews-uriels-robe-fantastiqa-solo-player

I really like this 2 player variant.

Each player controls 2 colors (2 merchants and 2 pirates ship)but on your turn, you decide which merchant you move and wich of your pirate you move since it does need to same color.

this is the greyelephant gaming variant

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb4ELOO31uk

To introduce my non gamer friends to this amazing game I remove, for the first game only, the upgrade cards and the sea fortune cards.

Its easier to get the game mechanics as you only focus on moving ships. The objective is to be the first one to get 50gold.

This variant is also very good for kids

There is only a few titles that allows getting green meeples so if you have a chance get them all.

Having green meeples in your pool is a big advantage since its hard for the others to bid or use actions on the green meeple tiles

I play this game mostly with my 11yo daughter and the game is much tougher for her

So to give her a chance and balance the game, I add a -1 AP token to all my characters so I need to be even more tactical if I want to win and honestly It helped me getting better

When I play wiht my daughter, the family or new player, I only put on the table the same quantity of race and power as number of player. I then take the time to explain only the available race/power.

During the game, the race/power are picked randomly from the box.

So players don’t have to go throw all the available power/race cards to make a strategic choice…Its simpler for them and makes the game faster.

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We found that Rolling a D6 for King backup was too much since it was reducing the need of getting troops.

Instead, we decide to roll a D3. That way, you have to rely on you troop size if you want to beat a big enemy.

My winning strategy for this game is to not focus on obtaining the construction right, but trying to get as many points cards as possible. The easiest card to get are the four dice with the same value and 5 dice of the same color.

Also, these 2 cards can easily be obtained if you try to get the most valuable building.

Getting these 3 cards in the same round will kill your opponents

To spice up the game a tille we randomly pick the point cards and keep them hidden until the end of the round. The player with the highest score takes the most valuable card.

In a 2 players game it can be 3, 2 or only 1 point
In a 3 and 4 players game it can be 3 or 2 for the first and 2 or 1 for second place.

Being first or second can make a big difference…or not

When you play solo, play with at least 2 characters. It gives you a better feeling of a squad team and it is more strategic. You can position each character and take advantage of the battle field. Playing with only 1 character can become very hard very fast.

When playing my first game I’ve made a mistake and put the Terrible Thing Token face down. We have playded 2 games like that. After re-reading the rules these I found that these tokens should be placed face up so we tried a couple more games this way

Conclusion: we prefer to play with the Terrible Thing Token face down so you never know what you will get if you fail an encounter.

Also, it removes the “Its OK to try beating a big encounter in the beginning of the game since I will get a 0 Terrible Thing Token if I fail”.

After playing a few games in coop with different characters we found that the best combinaison was the Firefighter (3 extra action point to fight fire)with the Rescue specialist (3 extra action for movement)

Its sure that playing the game with the standard rules helps to learn the game but don’t wait too long to play with the advance rules, it makes the game muche more fun and playing a character with a special hability his how the game is ment to be played.

These extra rules are simple to understand and they dont make the game much more difficult.

When the artifact is Worth it, go on the adventure with another player in order to be able to choose which one is taking the test.

Also in a cooperative game, if there is a villain adventuring for the same artifact he will have to remove 2 search dice…less chance for him to steal the artifact right Under your nose

When you play solo its easy cut the corner and play the game as a serie of mechanics forgetting the most important part: you are playing an adventure.

Take the time to read the cards text and make a scenario for the events as you will do if you were playing in a group. Read the card aloud if you have to. Its so more fun.

This game is so good that I wanted to share it with all the family. But since they dont play games very often I made this night an happening, something different for them. This game has so much theme that it was easy to prepare something special.

I send them an invitation with their character sheet, profile and with the game overview and gameplay. They had to be dressed according to their character.

On my side, I was the game master, managing the villains, the events and the game flow but most importantly I was the one who was reading the danger/cliffhanger cards and make a cohesive story around the events.

So they only have to concentrate on the adventure with the Idiana Jones soundtrack playing background. Everyone had a blast including me. At the end of the night I was the winner since they wanted to play it again or other game of that kind.

When you play cooperative, the mob sqad and the outposts can get the villain track up at each turn and becomming a real pain to stop.

I usually try to get rid of an outpost every time a new one gets in play so the vile organisation doesn’t get a extra fortune.

I also only leave the mob squad or an outpost in order to be able to steal an artifact ( almost always the highest one) or be able to reduce the villain track (1-2 or 3 step down).

I found this summary sheet for the action phase.

http://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/83876/round-sequence-crib-sheet

I love this game and since I cannot find people to play this game as much as I wanted to I found a solo variant of this game

http://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/79833/unofficial-expansion-eclipse-solo-and-cooperative

Its more focus on combat but its still fun to play

To simplify the game for kids we decided to go with 1 action card only instead of 3. When you roll the dice you only decide which dice you use for the day and for the night action.

This variant change a light strategy game to a fully luck based and chaotic game….

Not for all the games but when you play 2 or 3 games in a row changes are welcomed

This game is really not hard but chances that you play this one with kids are high. And sometimes kids have difficulty to choose or make strategies.

We change the rule that you now roll a dice for the day action and after you draw the dice for the night action (or use 2 different color dice and roll them together). This way the only decision is to choose the card to play.

We even use this rule when playing the game with 6 no-gamer adults in order to speed up each player turn.

When you play solo, play with “Friday” and the dog, they can help you survive on the Island giving you extra pawn for your actions

Choose your caracter according to the goal of the scenario but the Carpenter is the one I think is better to play solo:
– he can use 3 determinations token to get a extra Brown pawn for construction.
– he can use 2 determination token to reduce the Wood cost

So with the dog green pawn and the extra Brown pawn your survival chance are a bit better for almost most scenario

Try to explore the tiles to the center of the Island (3 tiles right) in the firsts round. From there it’s easier for every one to explore without having to spend a 3rd extra action.

Be sure that you put your camp on a tile that both have food and wood

The game is not hard but there are a lot of little details that are easy to forget. I found a well made summary sheet. It just missing a few thing or two but it helps a lot and eliminate the need of the rulebook

http://www.headlesshollow.com/downloads/games/FortuneandGlory_v1.1.pdf

My daughter loves games, especially the ones with scenarios (story) and characters that she can rely to and that she make progress. When a game have miniatures she choose one and it becomes her character.

I know that these game are expensive but its nothing compared to the time we share together painting the miniatures. They are not perfect but it is hers….and soon enough I’m sure that they will be better than mines 🙂

Spend good hobby time with your family has no price

If you are playing with kids chances are that you will be the Keeper.

For the keeper :
1) do not choose your monster but instead go randomly (with a dice) for each class of monsters that you can have according to the scenario

2)you are forced to move your monster towards the heroes…no immobile blocking

3) No need for victory.. you are playing with kids, if they stop playing this game because you are too hard on them you will end up playing alone…and you cannot play this game alone. Just make it challengful enough for them.

When I play with my young daugther I add the rule that Jack cannot escape the city until he has been discovered so she can concentrate on the deduction portion of the game. It’s then more a cat and mouse type of game and it still fun to play

The game have enough round and time to not try to hit a homerun.
The best strategy for the inspector is to cut by half the total of character that are visible or not visible each round. Jack’s gonna make a mistake…. Also at the beginning of game it’s a good option to take a character card using Sherlock ability.

For Jack the best strategy is to keep the status of his character the same as the larger group and to place more character near the sewer and exit in order to foul the inspector. Also the use of Sir William Gull that can switch 2 character is always welcome to escape the city

This game is made for 2 to 6 players but actually in a 2 players game, the first one getting in Tokyo wins the game most of the time.

A 2 player game is less strategy, less special cards, less battle and less fun.

This game is at is best with 4-5-6 player game.

If your only 2 I suggest to play another game

We are playing mostly 2 players game. The rules demand to put the green cards on top of the Brown cards. After playing several games we have notice that we dont use the brown cards that often and begin to see the same grenn card again and again….so we try to shuffle all the cards and we have a blast…more diversity … more cahos….more fun

I have played around 10 games pushing my luck and going for the furthest valuable artifacts and I only won once…my chicken daugther is always hunting treasure in lowest part of the central room , ready to get out in time and she is always kicking my butt….the stats are speaking for themselve. No need to push your luck to the extreme to win….or its because my butt is too fat to run fast enough to get out the pyramid in time

Do not underestimate the power of noise.

Since the zombies will walk to any hero that is line of sight…if the zombies see 2 heroes they will walk where there is the much noise even if the zombies are adjacent to the hero…taking an action to make some noise is a great diversion when zombies are just about to eat your brain…..

Since an error during setup can broke the game and the immersive experience I reccomend that the keeper (most of the time the one owning the game) prepare the game before getting people around the table. So the 30-45min set up time wont be addd to the gaming time and the keeper will reduce setup error.