Solo play

By Jenkins, in Elder Sign


Played a solo game with Mandy the Researcher. Took about 2 hours since I was learning the game and won with only 5 doom tokens on Hastur. The mythos cards I drew were lucky and Mandy is uber, but I can see how solo play will be easier than group play.



The one investigator got all of the resources and only had Midnight every four turns. In a 4 player game a person typically gets just one turn per Midnight and you spread out the resources each "day".



With the one player it was worth my turn to buy trophies several times in a row to prepare for an adventure and get it done before Midnight. Can't do that with more than 2 players.


yep, i pretty much agree. I have played 2 solo games and a few 3 player games.

the first solo game i got my butt kicked. was a lot of bad luck mostly though ( i could not roll a skull to save my life the whole game). Was constantly getting monsters too.

the other solo game I kicked butt and it seemed easy. You definately feel less guilty for taking some time to heal/buy trophies.

I've only played a partial solo game once to learn the rules and teach to my group. I'm looking forward to trying it again, but my first impression is that it's not as fun solo-wise as Lord of the Rings LCG is, but playing with bigger groups is better and quicker than LotR LCG can be. We played a six player game, and it felt tense and quick. I'd love to see a single player focused expansion for the game that makes it a little more dynamic for solo play.

pwvogt said:

I've only played a partial solo game once to learn the rules and teach to my group. I'm looking forward to trying it again, but my first impression is that it's not as fun solo-wise as Lord of the Rings LCG is, but playing with bigger groups is better and quicker than LotR LCG can be. We played a six player game, and it felt tense and quick. I'd love to see a single player focused expansion for the game that makes it a little more dynamic for solo play.

Are we both playing the same game here? Uhm i can beat every scenario in LoTR LCG solo with one deck that is unbeatable. With the random factor in this game EVERY game is different and is a great deal of fun. I cannot wait to see what they have planned for expansions to this game.

Group play is also very good and scales very well. So far this weekened we got in about 20 games with varied groups and everyone had a blast.

This is the wrong forum for this, but I'd love to see your decklist.

I agree. I play LoTR LCG solo at least once a week and I haven't been able to beat every adventure or quest with the same deck. I would love to get his deck list to compare with what I am doing. since it seems like you have to have specific decks for some of the quest. oh well, as you said, this is a question for the LoTR LCG forum and not here.

I've been playing Elder Sign solo more or less every day for a week and a half now.
And if you have complaints about ease, here's how you fix it.

2 Characters. Advance the Clock 6 Hours. That's it. Your win percentage will plummit.

Certain character/Ancient One combinations should be avoided in solo games. If you get a combination of something like Carolyn Fern/Hastur, you should re-draw. Mandy probably shouldn't be used in a solo game unless you're still learning the game. Also, you can change the setup order so the Ancient One is drawn after characters are chosen, so you can't prepare (though you could still get lucky). Make the game interesting and challenging. Otherwise, why bother?

I have played solo games with 4 investigators a few times. I had really bad pulls for the adventures. I have been close but never won yet.