Solo Chronicles – Arctic Scavengers

One of the best parts of the board gaming experience is finding a fun group of people with whom to play! Sometimes, though, coordinating a game night is easier said than done. We all must occasionally forego the group experience and face the world as the Lonely Only. But fear not! The world of solo-play is a vast and exciting realm! What follows is a chronicle of my journey into the solo-playing world – notes on gameplay, mechanics, rules, difficulty, and overall experience with solo variations of commonly multiplayer games! I hope this will provide some insight as you continue to grow your collection, or explore your already owned games!

Welcome to the Ice Age. No, not the animated movie. I’m talking about the real deal. Arctic Scavengers is set in a post-apocalyptic ice age where the cold is deadly and the resources are scarce. Any surviving humans have banded together to form ‘tribes’ that are competing for dominance in this frigid tundra. Can you and your tribe outwit your competitors to become the most powerful group? Or will a bigger and more menacing tribe overpower you and jeopardize your survival?

Disclaimer: The solo variant is only addressed in the Recon Expansion rules. There IS another expansion – HQ – but I have not used that content in my solo plays. This review only encompasses the Base Game and Recon Expansion.

Arctic Scavengers is a deck-building game where players are recruiting mercenaries to their tribes, searching for general resources, and battling other tribes for contested resources. Each turn has two main phases – Resource Gathering and Skirmish. During Resource Gathering, you play cards from your hand to either recruit new mercenaries or search the junkyard for general resources. Any remaining cards in your hand are then used during the Skirmish phase – where the player with the highest ‘fight’ value wins the contested resource for that round. At the end of the game, the player with the biggest tribe wins!

The solo variant has some minor differences, but is played essentially the same way. In a solo game, the contested resource cards are divided into 7 skirmishes to be encountered throughout the game. You can decide when to engage in a skirmish – it is not a requirement to encounter one each turn. After each skirmish, you either win and earn a contested resource, or lose and must permanently discard a card from your losing hand. The game ends when all 7 skirmishes have been encountered. The other difference is that each time you have to re-shuffle your discard pile, you must permanently remove the top card of your new deck from the game. Beyond those changes, the game remains the same. At the end of the game, all cards in your tribe are worth certain numbers of points – the goal is to beat your own personal best score.

In theory, this game sounds super cool! But when I actually got to play it solo, I was seriously underwhelmed. The game feels stagnant in the sense that there is no tension or urgency in your strategy. Since YOU get to decide when to engage in a skirmish, it is possible to just while away the time building up your deck until you have enough cards to beat every skirmish. Yes, you permanently discard a card each time you re-shuffle your discard pile, but if you are able to recruit one or two new cards each turn, it negates the penalty of discarding a card. The ability to choose when to engage in skirmishes is seriously over-powered because there is nothing stopping you from ignoring skirmishes and amassing cards for end-game scoring.

The other grievance I have with the game is regarding the Junkyard – the deck of cards where you ‘search’ for resources. The solo rules do not explicitly address setting up the Junkyard deck at all. So do you use one or not? Not having the Junkyard deck can be a serious hinderance – certain mercenaries cannot be recruited without certain resources. If you DO play with the Junkyard, how many cards do you use? Do you use the corresponding cards from the Base game and BOTH expansions? Only Base game and one expansion? Again, not explicitly addressed. I’ve tried using all of the Junkyard cards and that is difficult – there are just too many cards in that deck. I have gone entire games without coming across a necessary resource just because the size of the deck is too large (and I’m apparently a poor card-shuffler). The simple solution to this ambiguity would have been to just address it in the rulebook. But it’s not there, so I’m left guessing as to how I should set it up every time.

I really like the idea of this game. I really don’t like the solo variant though. Not having forced skirmishes makes the game extremely boring for me – I don’t really need a strategy since I can just recruit cards until I can draw a powerful hand. If there was a timeline for skirmishes – maybe something like “You must encounter one skirmish every other turn” – the game would be vastly different. I would actually need to strategize what cards to recruit and how I should delegate my cards on turns with a skirmish. In most games, I will reach a certain point where I choose to encounter a skirmish (that I know I will lose) just because I am starting to get bored. I appreciate the sentiment of including a solo variant, but this one just does not work.

Arctic Scavengers requires decent strategy and it offers good player interaction in group games. In a solo game, however, it is just imbalanced and boring. This is one solo variant that I would not recommend that you try, unless you are including drastic house rules.