The Lonely Boardgamer, Episode 1: Luna (Solo)

Things get lonely sometimes for a boardgamer.  Friends move away, and while there are ways to play games online or via Skype (still need to try the latter, by the way), options are limited.  Both because because there aren't many games available online and playing  via webcam doesn't lend itself to games with hidden information or a lot of piece manipulation. 

It makes me sad.  Sometimes it gets so bad that I start hearing voices, though it's usually just my stuffed panda talking to himself so no real worries there.

Sure, there are other things to do.  But you can't play guitar when you've sliced your finger wide open with a surprisingly sharp ceramic knife (seriously, I still can't get over how sharp these things are.  It's a gift and apparently also a curse).  And you can only play Resident Evil 4 on your computer in the dark for so long before you're convinced that there are zombies clawing at your front door and have to stop and turn the lights back on.

Because of these setbacks, I decided to play Luna solo tonight.

Yeah, some board games have solo versions, and they are always welcome.

Moon Priestess.  Lives by the sea.  Has a magic staff.  Dyes her hair white.

Luna is one of Stefan Feld's more thematic games.  It's also been out of print for a while, but I found a reasonably priced copy a while back and snagged it, mostly because out of print games call to me in a very enticing fashion.
In Luna, players control acolytes trying to make their way into positions in the temple while following the beautiful moon priestess around like puppies trying to win her blessings.  Or something like that.

The game comes with a pretty neat board that fits together like a puzzle.

 

The assembled board consists of a central temple area and an outer ring of Holy Isles that your acolytes travel to and from to activate different actions.  The positioning of the islands is random every game, as are the tiles placed in the temple and the starting positions of some of the pieces, adding a bit of random variety to the game on setup.

A Holy Isle.

Acolyte meeples have robes. Or dresses.  Or maybe ghost tails.

I've played this one 2-players a couple of times with some enjoyment.  However, the game instructions also come with a solo variant that I thought I'd give a try.  So here we go:

Step 1 to playing boardgames solo is music choice.  There's no one else at the table to talk to and no one to get distracted by the sound, so blast the music all you want.  Something really heavy, face-melting, awesome ...

She's everywhere to me...

With the mood set, it was time to get into the game.  Solo Luna pits you against an AI who follows a few set rules every turn.  I don't like the idea of playing a faceless opponent though, so I gave it a familiar face...

Mozzie is back with a new hat and a new drink.

Today Mozzie is sporting a thermal beanie, because it's very cold and snowy outside, and a Stone IPA.  I hate IPAs, so he's the only one who will drink them now.  He's also discovered that airline pillows make great seat cushions.

Now back to the game.  On each turn, you use active acolytes to carry out actions.  These consist of a a few options, including moving acolytes from isle to isle, placing them in the temple, picking up action tiles that give you special actions, gaining more acolytes to work with, moving up in position in the temple council, building shrines...you know, just a few options.
Summarized on this super easy to read, not confusing at all player aid:

Once the acolytes are used, they are spent for the turn and apparently have to lie down in the ocean.

Besides the acolytes, there are a few more characters at play.
There's the Master Builder.  If you have a shrine action tile and acolytes on the same space as him, you can build a shrine.  Shrines count as free acolytes for performing some actions, help with area majority on islands, and are worth 4 points a piece at endgame.

You can tell he's a Master because of the beard.

Shrine.

There's the temple guard.  He shows you what temple spaces are available to sit in each round and how many points putting acolytes there is worth.  Placing acolytes in the temple scores a point per at the end of each round, plus an additional amount upon placement depending on the round, with these values diminishing as the game progresses.

Temple Guard

 
There's the apostate.  He whispers sweet nothings into the ears of any acolytes near him, turning them to the dark side and making you lose points.

Severus Snape

When I played this 2-player with my brother, we decided apostate was too hard to say.  So we called him "the prostate."
This then led to 30 straight minutes of prostate related humor.

"The role of the prostate in this game is a bit enlarged."
"Yeah, the prostate really restricts the flow of the game."

We had a million of 'em.

Finally, there is the Moon Priestess herself.  Whoever has a majority of active acolytes on the isle she is on at the end of the turn wins her favor and scores a bunch of points.

Moon priestess.

The three characters move from isle to isle at the end of each turn.  So part of your time is spent running your acolytes away from the prostate and toward the builder and priestess.


So you score points from the Moon Priestess, having shrines, and placing acolytes in the temples.

You also get points by bumping people out of the temple by sitting down next to them with a higher numbered tile.  Unless of course they are protected by a Book of Knowledge, then they are too smart to get kicked out.

And if you don't use all your action tiles, you score a point for each unused one at the end of the game.

Herb tile.  Normally used to revive passed out acolytes.  That's some good herb.

Finally, you score endgame points for your position in the temple council.

The seats get squishier the higher you go.

So in the solo game, the AI does stuff and you try your best to also do stuff and hinder the AI from doing his stuff.  Your final score is the difference between your points and the AI points.
The instructions come with 3 levels of difficulty.  I played at Level 2 because easy level seems lame and Level 3 was brutal last time I attempted this game solo.  Basically, the difficulty levels affect what the AI does and what you are allowed to do, with Level 3 being very restrictive (basically freezing all actions on the island occupied by the prostate with no option to move him.  That makes the game hard).

Here was my stack of points at the end of the game.  There's no point track, so you just stack these things up.

Favor tokens

Final temple status.

At the end of the game, the temple was pretty segregated, with everyone kicked out along the border of conflict.  Our acolytes didn't like each other.

I had more than the AI by a score of 88 to 73, so a score of 15.  I don't know if this is good or not, but the game didn't seem particularly tense so I'm going to say Level 2 is too easy.

Overall, the game is pretty decent with multiple players, and just kinda okay solo.  I'd play it again for something to do, but even with all the action options it just doesn't seem brain-burning enough to be a great solo game.  Maybe at Level 3 I'll have to think a little harder.

It is a really pretty game though with some cool pieces.  So there's that.

Oh, and in the end Mozzie refused to accept defeat.  He even made his own trophy.