I played last night for the first time. I did the Capital Wasteland scenario as a solo player and played for about 2 1/2 hours as the Vault Dweller. I included the New California content in the encounter, loot, asset, and enemy token decks.

The game was a lot of fun. I was on my way to losing though, as I hadn’t advanced either faction relative to each other while holding 3 Freedom agenda cards and 1 Security. I called it quits with both the BoS and Enclave half way through influence level 2.

But I didn’t care.

Running through all the side quests, gaining loot, killing mobs, and exploring the board was a lot of fun. I didn’t advance the main quest much as I kept finding fun side things to do. The game would have been more fun with another player reading the encounter cards, so we could laugh at the write ups (I triggered Wacky Wasteland) and be better at not reading the consequences ahead. Trying to keep the decision consequences secret while playing solo is really hard. Also, having a second brain and eyes to ensure all the monsters activated would be helpful as I know I missed a couple of humanoid activations.

The game strikes me more as a beer and pretzels party game for board gamers than a serious ‘play to win’ game. Just exploring and questing to build a cooperative story seems to work a lot better than trying to win the influence game.

It played like a Fallout video game. I felt more freedom to ignore the main quest though and just have fun.

Thoroughly enjoyed. Will play again.