There has been so much said already about The Old King’s Crown since it’s release that I’m not going to go into too much detail about the release in general. There are countless reviews, forum threads and opinions about the game to last a lifetime, or a play through of Twilight Imperium, whichever comes first.
I would say opinions have been mostly positive, some gushingly so, with most praising the endeavour in itself from the writer and creator Pablo Clarke for the theme, concepts and artwork delivered after many years. The board and cards display fantastic artwork and the clan boards are clear and colourful depicting various tactics and traits that enable you to boost actions or basically slap your opponents.
What to Expect
And here’s the thing with this game - it isn’t for everyone, it will slap you in the face a bit. It’s not as brutal as Arcs can be which was just a bit too invidious for my tastes and it has been said that The Old Kings Crown is similar in that your carefully laid plans and placements can be usurped at the turn of a card and you will be powerless to respond - and this is most certainly true. You might succumb to these tactics at some point during the game, but you will get your chance. Your cards and abilities will pull the rug out from under your opponents in a later round - which is why I always recommend at least the 5 round game to just give you that chance. Four rounds just feels too short to be able to bring your plan to fruition and it is most satisfying to see your opponents floundering and unable to protect their court cards or defend a deadly attack that you saved just for that reason. This is a game that gets better with repeated plays - understanding more about the asymmetry of the Factions, the kingdom cards and your elite cards increases with more plays. Honestly, who knew what was going on the first time they played Root?
Given all of that, if bluffing, bidding and general sneakery are essential in this game how can a solo version of the same game deliver anything like that?
Solo Mode
Enter the Simulacrum (Sim for short - I don’t like abbreviating it as its such a great word but it will make this easier to read I’m sure). The Sim is, in my opinion a work of genius. Evidently an enormous amount of effort has gone into the creation and testing of this solo mode - it was co-developed by Richard Wilkins (Ricky Royal - Renegade, Deckers, John Company) and it really shows.
Managing the Sim is pretty straight forward after a few games, I do keep referring back to the one pager guide for clash rewards for the Sim and it is really important to manage it properly in terms of timing of card reveals to maintain the suspense, the manual for the main game and the solo mode are exemplar.
Set-up and Gameplay
In set up, the Sim takes two main decks, these indicate its primary intention (ambition) for regional clash focus, Highlands, Lowlands etc and indicates priority in placing heralds and winning opening bids for kingdom cards. The Sim doesn’t use the kingdom cards but is granted rewards for the symbol for each card held per round, and, it can steal your kingdom cards if the ambition card indicates and has a higher blind bid than you.
Sometimes playing against an automa can feel a bit, well, passive.Like you are playing against the game and you have 10 turns and if you get past a certain point on the VP track then you win. This is anything but passive - the ambition cards sometimes lie, they sometimes steal your kingdom cards, even the faction cards once revealed belie their presentation - Sim faction cards are marked Gold, silver and bronze on their reverse to give an indication of their strength, and are used when placing them into clashes. So you might think a gold card will be strong, I’ll meet that strength accordingly only to find on being flipped it was a Ruse! The same can be said of silver cards that turn out to be far more powerful than you expected. This is what gives the Sim its competitiveness - it would be just too straightforward if all the cards said what they appeared like they were going to say, just like a real opponent trying to bluff you, this solo mode is bluffing great!
At the same time as you are trying to deal with Sim fakery and sneakery, it also has fog cards and Scheme cards - the former indicate which regions some Sim advantage or player disadvantage will strike, you know this in advance so it will “help” shape your thinking when you place your faction cards but for the most part, gives the Sim an advantage. The Scheme cards, again are intended to give you an indication of the regional prioritisation when placing supporters and faction cards (gold, silver, bronze) in strength order of priority placement and clash order markers if required, but again a proportion are also false on reveal.
All this is pre-clash. Then we turn the cards over. Then you realise whether you have been payed or you planned your ambush or retreat wisely. It sometimes makes you laugh out loud that you take care in placing your herald and your supporters to then flip over a deadly card and you didn’t use a faction ability when you should or you took the wrong kingdom card. It happens.
Resolving clashes works in the same way as the full game, influence is gained or lost, the Sim generates rewards for winning clashes differently to you and in most cases takes influence and lore and then in Autumn takes more lore when Governing or Journeying or taking benefits from the Council - the sim is very strong straight out of the box. After a dozen or so games I have only beaten the Sim with two factions (Clans and Nobility) so as a challenge its brilliant, you won’t walk over the Sim and more than likely in initial games it will walk over you - by the end of round two, it will, on average have more influence than you and control a council and have already taken one of its higher power cards from its Seat of Power.
Thankfully, at least until you get more familiar with your clan abilities or how the sim scores most of its points, you can modify the difficulty and create a customised opponent by using The Forge. These are a set of cards that either increase or decrease the strength of the Sim (make it hotter or cooler in TOKC parlance) to give you a chance to test yourself at different levels of heat - the cards are double sided and might decrease the amount of influence it takes at certain triggers or stop the Sim from taking a second fog card or trigger its kingdoms’ favour (this is really bad) or to increase its rewards from clashes - all this is designed to make your solo experience even more involved and more or less challenging. There are suggestions for Forge set ups in the manual and scoring reference guides for your game at different level of Heat from the Forge cards.
I’ll repeat that - your solo experience. The fact that the designers and creators have given this part of the game so much credence and design thought is remarkable. When I first got into gaming the concept of playing solo mode was for me, honestly, less than an afterthought. Fast forward 15 years and there is now more emphasis on not only whether a game has a solo mode but whether it has a good solo mode.
Final Thoughts
Before I tried the solo mode in this game my benchmark was probably Dune Imperium Uprising - manage two rivals, flip cards, place agents, put cubes into combat, take victory points. The Old King’s Crown solo is levels above that. It is hands down, the best solo mode I’ve played in any game and shows what really can be done. I love the base game anyway, it isn’t for everyone and that’s fine, I don’t like racing games and I’m okay with that, my partner and fellow gamer isn’t particularly a fan of TOKC so I get to play it solo and here’s the thing, its not a compromise. Its not like, oh you don’t want to play I’ll have to play solo then. I want to play this solo. I want the challenge and I want a bunch of cards and the result of endless play tests, thoughts and imagination to occasionally slap me in the face, and not only will I sit there and take it, I will laugh and enjoy it.
Would I buy this game purely on the basis of its solo mode? Now that I have played it, do you know what, I probably would. Its almost like getting two games in one - a brilliant, beautiful 1-4 player game and a brilliant solo mode, who wouldn’t want that, and with fully adaptable expansions on the horizon - it can only get better - its already a 10, so with a nod to a famous rock music movie parody, with the incoming expansions it could go all the way up to 11.
Sign me up.
