Just finished my first game, played it solo. Was fun, but how the **** are you supposed to win this thing? I got my four agenda cards eventually, three Security and a One of a Kind , and I’m supposed to get 11 influence points from them? That’s quite an ask.

So, I need to get the Institute 3 ahead of the Railroad, and max out my specials. By the time I’ve got all four agenda cards I’m pretty close to maxing out my specials, but also both factions are fairly close to each other, just past half way down the track.

I manage to max out my specials, which just leaves pushing the Institute down the track so they’re 3 ahead of the Railroad (which will put them at the end, but according to the rules I’d win before they did). There’s a quest option that will do it, but it requires five successes, which is unlikely even with all the specials (it uses three). To make matters worse there’s a level 3 Super Mutant Something on the same square, which I pretty much can’t kill (I don’t have a weapon, so no rerolls on attacks*).

So, I’ve theoreically got three runs through the agenda deck before a faction wins, maybe giving me time to shops a bunch of times so a weapon appears with which I might stand a chance against the Super Mutant, but in reality it’s only one run through, since when the Railroad moves one further down there’s no way to get the Institute 3 ahead, and so no way for me to win.

I feel like I must be missing something here. Looking through the other agenda cards (which seem very rare to pick up, so it’s not like you can pick which ones you get) it seems like getting 11 points on four cards is crazy hard! They all seem to be worth 2 points if you’re lucky, I need 3 from each to get 11!

Not a rant. Like I said, it was fun, until it became clear I couldn’t win, near the end.

Any advice, anything I’ve overlooked or a rule I’ve clearly misinterpreted?

* getting a weapon also seems to be very rare in this game - I had a laser rifle once that broke, the only other weapon I’ve seen in the shop was a sniper rifle I couldn’t afford (I’d have saved up if I knew how rare weapons were, but if that’s what you have to do it makes shopping rather boring, and of course shopping itself isn’t something you can just do whenever you like)

Well all Agenda cards give 1 ? as a base. So with the ones you have here, ?&⭐ at the same level and say 5 SPECIAL tokens you're still at 4 ?.

Then you'd only need to advance ? 2 spaces more than ⭐ and get one more SPECIAL token for another 6+1? for a total of 11 ?.

4 hours ago, Fnoffen said:

Well all Agenda cards give 1 ? as a base . So with the ones you have here, ?&⭐ at the same level and say 5 SPECIAL tokens you're still at 4 ?.

Then you'd only need to advance ? 2 spaces more than ⭐ and get one more SPECIAL token for another 6+1? for a total of 11 ?.

Ah ha, that would be the something I missed! I thought that top icon was just telling me it was an agenda card, not telling me I got an influence point. That makes much more sense!

Thanks dude!

Don't suppose there's something else I've missed that provides a more accessible way of switching out which agenda cards you've got (so I could have gone Railroad instead of Institute)? In a multiplayer game I'd have the possibility of trading some, but in solo there's nobody to trade with.

I made the mistake early on of progressing the Railroad somewhat even though I only had an Institute agenda card, not realising how stuck I'd be with the that faction (though of course it was chance I ended up with two more of the same agenda). I suppose generally you want to wait until later in the game before you progress the main storyline quests?

One other thing, the faction power token doesn't stop at the last spot on the track. So, for example, if they were both tied one space from victory and you managed to get a card that moves one faction three space, you'd still score for all those three spaces even though they are imaginary spaces beyond the bottom of the faction power card. (RR under Faction Power Track)

As to the original point, the game requires the players to juggle two competing goals: Advancing the Faction Power via the main questline and gaining Influence cards via side quests. In a single player game it is generally best to avoid the main quest until you've gotten a decent number of Agenda cards and know which faction you want to push. However, in a multiplayer game, it becomes a contest of juggling the various quests to get those Agenda cards while still not letting your opponents push the wrong faction too far.

Finally, One of a Kind is probably the most difficult of the Agenda cards to score. Other players have suggested that it be changed to +1 for 5 tokens and +2 for 6 or 7 tokens.