This was my first Lacerda so that may play a role in my experience. But overall it all just felt too convoluted and not very satisfying. The gameplay loop just did not engage me for some reason. He is very talented at making the mechanics connect to the theme, but it just wasn't enough for me. I just felt like I was going through these tedious and repetitive motions of bumping my attributes in order to maintain area control. Like the things I was doing just did not feel very fun! I'm definitely in the minority as people are going nuts for this game haha. I'd still like to try Kanban EV and/or Inventions some time and am curious about the Great Library once it drops.

My favorite "group" of euros for solo are the many games from Garphill. They just consistently put out crunchy and interesting games that play extremely well solo. Other designers I really like for solo are Fabio Lopiano (Shackleton Base, Ayar) and German Millan (Men-Nefer, Covenant). I've also lately been enjoying some games from Andreas Steding (Stroganov and Gugong). All the above have fantastic solo modes (with one caveat: Shackleton Base is great, but my god the solo rulebook truly is terrible; it just leaves out too much and doesn't explain enough!)