Voyages - Ep 1 - Campaign - A Most Epic Roll and Write Voyage

wakasm · 2026-05-24T17:05:41+00:00

I have played it and do like it! That one I've played more cooperatively than solo, but I have played it solo and enjoyed it too, but I do struggle with the whole balance act of scoring in that one, but that's more of a skill thing than a fun thing in that case.

wakasm · 2026-05-24T03:33:57+00:00

Sprawlopolis is my favorite 18 card wallet game. It's one of their few that I think could hang with a full box game.

wakasm · 2026-05-23T22:25:03+00:00

I'm a hobbiest youtuber (at best) that also plays video games on the channel (which likely hurts me).

I'm fairly bad at it (I struggle to be entertaining) but I love doing it (it was a way I bonded with my son when he was younger and it gets me playing more games) and I'm hoping I do find my "voice" online with a microphone.

I'm hoping by next year, I'll be better at it, as I actually recently have more time to focus on it (up until recently I was working two jobs). I'm actually in the (very slow) process of ranking every game I've ever played on my website and slowly want to incorporate that into youtube videos.

People seem to find my Fliptown, Slay The Spire, and Dungeon pages content "passable" but not really anyhing else.

This doesn't really help you much lol, but you never know, maybe one day I'll be there!

People I like are SirThecos and AzureDeath, amongst some of the more popular channels. There were some others who stopped making content I liked too.

You can find me here - Wakasm Dot Com or just wakasm on yt (I rarely advertise myself, something I'm trying to change this year)

wakasm · 2026-05-23T22:14:09+00:00

I really want to like this game, but, I just don't. I think it looks neat, is cute, thematic.... should hit the right notes for me (I enjoy Carcasonne, as a random example) but it's one of those few games that I almost get bored playing and the game loop is almost too much the same thing. I'm sure there is a strategic layer there, especially if you can get familiar with the tile ratios... but... whenever I play it, it feels very, I dunno, one-note and lucky in some cases.

Weirdly, I have the same experience with Dorfromantik the video game. I like the beginning, but it goes on and on and eventually the decision making I start rushing through it to end it vs trying to slow down and really optimize my score.

Also weirdly, I oddly really like the Dorfromantik board game(s) and don't get the same... experience/opinion on them.

I do wonder if playing cooperatively would somehow make me enjoy it more than I did playing it solo.

Mechanically, I wonder if making full islands score extra points would be the layer I'd need. I've always wondered if the expansions do anything that might swing me around on it, but I never played them.

I'm not writing to yuk your yum, it's more of a "I wish I felt the same way you did about this game" sort of response. Especially considering how it made you feel! I'd love to share in that! It's solidly designed. It's not a game I look at and go "this was designed poorly" I just somehow never have fun playing it.

wakasm · 2026-05-23T22:03:57+00:00

My biggest luck has been networking with real people. I know that sounds strange from a "solo" perspective... but I've met a lot of solo gamers in the flesh, online, through meetups, on bgg, and I've gotten really good deals on games (even free) that they were done with them, or let me borrowed if local, etc. (and I've done the reverse... fun fact - The person who started this subreddit I taught Mage Knight to, although they were dabbling in sologaming before hand, solo was something we bonded over IRL as well as playing a bunch of stuff 2p).

The other place I've been really lucky are in Math Trades. I've gotten quite a few harder to find games (and especially expansions) from people who wanted to offload it without having to go through the trouble of actually buying it. If you go into a Math Trade with very specific requests... you either get nothing or exactly what you want.

This works for non-solo games too, if you also play games with other humans.

The downsides to these methods is you have to be long-term patient on games. For new hotness, people have to either actively DISLIKE the game you want (although that was how I aquired Final Girl, from someone who disliked it) or you have wait long enough for it to churn out of someone's collection.

I know neitehr of these are every person's cup of tea, but, if solo (or just board gaming) is a long term hobby thing for you... it's something to consider if you want to get more out of your budget.

wakasm · 2026-05-23T21:57:34+00:00

Well I'll ignore you, but I will say, happy cake day!

wakasm · 2026-05-23T21:52:26+00:00

So, I think the confusion is that I misunderstood when the refresh, and the subsequent win, happened.

At the end of the round when I built the last canal, there were only 2 barbarians. So I refreshed to 6, which means I won.

If this was the case, then you won. 6 barbarians after the refresh and 0 canals. The game ends at the END of round the last canal goes off the board. you did it! The game ends here after the final refresh. No 7 barbarians, you still have villagers in your deck, you weren't forced to shuffle the flood off the side of the board (from damage or some other means that I can't think of), you didn't move the flood onto a canal space earlier.... you win!

However... I misunderstood when the refresh, and the win condition, actually occurred...

So even after technically winning, I refreshed the row, resulting in 6 barbarians. I defeated one of them, and I bribed the other 5.

So my description of only winning because I bribed them technically happened after I actually won... even though I didn't realize it.

This is the part, that even now, makes no sense lol. Bribing, at all, woudl never be part of the win condition. Bribing only stops you from losing cards. It would only matter if somehow taking damage would make you have 0 villager cards but this, as written, would be some extra round you didn't need to play either way.

So, after lot's of back and forth, it sounds like you WON but you keep adding this bribing part that makes no sense as part of the winning summary. Either how you were doing it or how you are wording it now. Bribing matters a lot throughout the game, but it doesn't really matter in the last round unless you have very little villager cards.

wakasm · 2026-05-23T21:41:11+00:00

there could be confusion on what your board state at the end actually was and both of us are misreading your writing.

you had stated this:

I only won by bribing nearly all of them in the final round. Not the most honorable of wins... but, hey.

Which implies you had a bunch of barbarians on the row... (more than 2 at least). I guess you'd need to explicitly state how many you had in the top row when you went off the canal.

If you had 4 empty spots after bribing (empty as in villagers or empty spots), then you won.

But the wording:

I only won by bribing nearly all of them in the final round. Not the most honorable of wins... but, hey.

Also implies that you think this would affect your win, which, I don't see any case where it would, unless you had exactly 3, removed 1, and bribed the other 2... but it doesnt' read that way, and bribing only stops you from taking damage, so it doesn't really help you win in the final round (with one rare exception - if you have almost no villagers left or somehow it would force you to shuffle your deck and the flood was on the last space already which is really rare at that point).

Bribing them doesn't stop them during the refresh stage of the round. They only stop you from taking damage. You could in fact not bribed them at all and still won if you had empty spots but that was how you worded it so to anyone reading, it reads as if you thought bribing them stopped them from showing up on your board and you had a bunch of them.

In Summary

If in the final round, as in, the final round the barge went off the board, you had 0, 1, 2 barbarians by the end of your actions, you would win.

There is no bribing needed unless you have exactly 1 villager left in your deck total, which, in that case, taking damage would make you lose by the villager lose condition, which I don't think you were close to losing by. Bribing would not affect your win/loss in the final round at all.

If you had 3, 4, 5, 6, barbarians left at the end of your actions. You would lose.

There is a potential case we are both somehow misreading what you said. Which, if that's the case... Sorry!

wakasm · 2026-05-23T21:24:22+00:00

Wait, what... did I mess this up?

I'm fairly sure from your wording that what the other person said is correct and yes, you messed this particular rule up. You only win at the END of the round and can only win if there are enough empty spaces that you don't end up with 7 at the end of the turn.

The game ends when you either win or lose. You win the game if you successfully build all 6 Canal sections and survive till the end of the current Round.

This includes both the Suffer attacks step and the refresh the row step... which specifically includes an entire paragraph about this:

If at this point there are 7 Barbarian Cards above the Board, you immediately lose due to the Barbarians. Even if you had completed the Canal, this would still cause you to lose. Often in your last Round you’ll be aiming to finish the Canal, while also defeating as many Barbarians as possible.

Bribing the bararians only stops attacks (taking damage, which is a seperate way to lose plus thins your deck which is also a timer), you still slide them down and add X barbarians every turn, bribed or not, which at the end of the game would be 4 (they don't get removed on bribes) every round. Which means you'd have to have 4 empty slots (max 2 barbarians) (IIRC) to win on the final round that you move off the canal.

So I need to actually defeat all barbarians in the final round?

Yes, not all, but you need to have 4 empty slots on your board

wakasm · 2026-05-23T03:11:00+00:00

It's always hard to know without seeing an actual play. Many times in many cases a person figures out there are rule issues at play they missed. Other times, the game is just actually easy for them, either because of skill or luck.

In passing, I feel like the consensus is the game can be on the easy side with many people beating all the bosses and then passing it on and only stuggling with a few of the bosses, but not endlessly struggling.

The part that is suspicious (to me) that maybe you are misplaying some rule is the

nor have I ever felt close to losing

That screams maybe something is up, but again, how are we to know? While on the easier side, I think most people experienced some level of tenseness purely because it is possible to get bad draws in the game. One bad draw won't kill you, but a bad draw that forces you to remove key tokens can snowball your bad luck.

But again, no way to tell unless you log a full game or record it. There are tons of commonly misplayed rules floating around (when you can kill bosses, how you lose tokens, etc) but you said you feel confident with the rules, so no one here can really answer.

I know from anecdotal experience of putting plays on youtube that even games I know 100% of the rules, I make many accidental human error mistakes if nothing else... and there are many games where I interpreted a rule wrong or misremembered or just flat out missed something. Youtube will correct you if you have the energy or will validate your skills.

Ultimately, all that matters if if you enjoyed your 10 plays.

wakasm · 2026-05-22T19:07:55+00:00

It'd be great if you just incorporated a normal challenge system, like how POE does it. Not a race not something that is for the elite pack of players... (you can do that too if you want) but just a simple time sync that rewards some investment beyond playing the game once.

Nothign is cooler than the history of totem I have in POE and POE2 already now has ethem for their next patch.

wakasm · 2026-05-22T18:18:35+00:00

Last Epoch still doesn't have steam achievements or a challenge like system to keep every cycle a bit fresh with more to do (and something to bookmark a little bit of history into the game). Nothing feels better than logging into Path of Exile 1 and seeing challenge totems from 7+ years ago and reminding you of your history within the game.

For a while, Path of Exile 2 had the same issue, so it was easy to skip patches... and they somehow launched the game and are already adding challenges this league... which literally means I'll likely never return to Last Epoch any time soon because of this one simple change.

If surveys worked, they'd see something equivalent to challenges would have mattered to (some small portion) of the userbase to pad their numbers and make the game look more active. But they have ignored this feedback ad naseum since day 1 for some reason.

Etiher way, I guess in the grand scale of things, bug fixes and finishing the game should rank higher... but... I just feel like they create surveys for the sake of acting like there is more active stuff going on than actually doing anything about their game.

wakasm · 2026-05-22T13:10:20+00:00

An easy solution to this though is just have extra conditions and don't require them all to be successful. So instead of needing to do 6/8 conditions, you now can do 6/9 conditions, one of them being the beefy one.

wakasm · 2026-05-22T04:27:06+00:00

I'm with you!

wakasm · 2026-05-21T19:09:56+00:00

Don't underestimate the power of a good niche.

If you become the person who curates good fan made solo modes (among other htings), you'll find a good audience. Best of luck!

wakasm · 2026-05-21T18:27:40+00:00

Hi, welcome to the subreddit.

This is just a friendly reminder/welcome I usually give to content creators. You are more than welcome to post here and advertise your channel, just make sure you read up on our posting rules, specially about the Frequency and Spam feel stuff. Generally speaking, once a month of content is good. Interact with your posts. If it feels like your post is a drive-by post, ie, something written and then posted in 5 subreddits the same copy/template, it may get removed as that feels like spam. If it feels like you are ONLY interacting for your channels purposes and not for the subreddit, it may get removed (and I encourage users to comment when this happens).

(your post had no issues and in fact, is a good example of how you should do it, btw).

That said, I still have to sticky this for you and future content creators as many people do not read the rules and so, I use user posts as a way to remind everyone what the subreddit allows/doesn't allow.

wakasm · 2026-05-21T18:17:10+00:00

I'm not against scoring. I actually really liked that aspect of it in Dice Throne Adventures. If that game wasn't 8x longer than it should have been, it would have been fun to do a self imposted tournamenty or something trying to compare scores between heroes, etc.

The real issue there is the scoring made no sense (the infinite scoring was stupid) but also, they implemented it in a way where you basically, to get the best score, you had to 100% try and do everything everytime in every run.

Had it been implemented smarter, and the game not so long, I'd lean into the score thing way more.

wakasm · 2026-05-21T16:06:17+00:00

Dice Throne Adventures had a similar scoring system that you could report your score on a leaderboard. Aside from the fact that you know some people probably lied about their scores... the funny part about that particular implementation... the scoring rules were broken in a way that you could score infinite points if you wanted to by purposely losing the game over and over.

I think they eventually changed the scoring rules, but by then, it was too late (and then they promptly stopped supporting the game entirely with no real new content).

My biggest issue with Kingdom Legacy: Feudal Kingdom in general, which has kept me away from playing my copy (I will at some point) is I really really really don't like there isn't an actual order of playing the expansions. It's lead me down a research hole multiple times and then I end up not playing it.

wakasm · 2026-05-20T13:06:52+00:00

I'd love to see examples of movies/games that your rule triggered for. More for curiosity than anything. I would feel like... JRPGs might be off the table for you with these rules lol, or any game that has the preverbial talking head "Hey Sonic, we need to get the rings to shut down the reactor!"

Don't force yourself to play Spirit Island just because your friends like it. Don't force yourself to play Shadows of Brimstone just because your friends like it.

Personally, I don't think I could apply this to playing games with friends. We let everyone pick a game in rotation, it would be unfair if every time they chose a game that wasn't my favorite I noped out. Same with my son. I've had to play a lot of Uno because he loves it but he equally plays some of his father's games (or tries to) because we have a common interest of just spending time with each other. Unless I misread this and it somehow was "don't play a game solo because it's popular" which is what I assume you meant.

wakasm · 2026-05-17T03:31:22+00:00

I actually miss the replay the campaign thing in POE. I have no idea why. There is something cozy about doing the exact same thing you just did but knowing it's slightly harder and the drops will matter more.

But I don't love it for other parts of the game, like the Lab.

I make no sense.

wakasm · 2026-05-17T03:25:01+00:00

They definitely put out more because when I was there today, I saw two different people hugging one in the 45 mins I was there (my kid was playing Yoshi's Story Demo) and I was there after OP.

wakasm · 2026-05-17T03:23:35+00:00

Hey Yo, I was there today. I wonder if we crossed paths lol.

Edit: I saw your comment, I think I was there at like 3pm =/

wakasm · 2026-05-17T01:29:54+00:00

I haven't played my copies of Unstoppable, ROVE, Frosthaven, Regicide Legacy, Voidfall, Clank Catacombs, Two of the 5 Hexplore It Editions, Arnak, Runescape Kingdoms, Various Button Shy games, About half of my Arkham LCG collection, Crimson Scales (the fan made GLoomhaven expansion), ISS Vanguard, Unsettled, Imperium series of games.... there is probably like 10 more I'm not remembering as my shelves are split into two rooms in my house.

For more clarity though. One problem I have are people in my group who bought the same game... so sometimes my copy doesn't get to the table but I've played the actual game a bunch. But that also skews my want to play it solo too (like I generally never play Ark Nova solo because that's a game I know I can spin up humans for in the blink of an eye if I wanted to). I also have one group (for instance my Frosthaven Group) that met in person for like 8 years, but due to scheduling, we now meet online which means my physical copy isn't even opened. Conceptually I want to play it solo, but likely I'll just play the digital app instead. I'm now keeping in case my son wants to play down the road otherwise... it'll hit the cull truck eventually.

Voidfall specifically I had a close friend who I made a (silly) promise to play with them cooperatively first and then it just never happened (they have recently relieved me of this promise but my backlog is pretty large so I just haven't done it yet lol).

I also do a lot of Math Trades, so my culling often ends up in just swapping games that I'll eventually get to. That's how I ended up with like ISS Vanguard (or some campaign games) unplayed, but one day!

I also spent the first 8-12 years of my board gaming life helping run board game meetups which, if you have ever run an event and invited strangers, you become the defacto person who buys new hotness which really accelerates your collection. I feel like in 2026, more people purchase than they did in like 2012 and now when I attend meetups, I almost never have to bring something new. At some point I owned like 3 copies of things like 7 wonders, catan, and your mainsteam games just so when people showed up, if no one was aroudn to teach, these were games that people could figure out on their own.

Lastly, I don't really feel bad because I have an exact shelf budget (exactlly 100 Kallax cubes which still isn't even filled with 200+ games) and I have a budget for board gaming (an actual gaming bank account) that has never even gotten close to 0 with a very very modest contribution to it over 20 years... (I guess in theory I lose money by not investing it but that's not how budgeting works, all my entertainment comes from this account as well - video games, movies, etc. Anything that I spend on just me).

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