Snow Tails Solo

First off I must apologise for the lack of miniatures games on this blog recently. I'm just enjoying boardgames more at the moment so I'm not getting my toy soldiers out at home as much.

Anyway yesterday afternoon, whilst my wife was doing some cake decorating for my son and grandson's birthdays, I fancied running a race game. However my copy of Flamme Rouge is currently tied up with our Tour de France (we keep exhaustion cards from previous races in the decks for a quick setup), so I wasn't keen on getting that out and messing it up. Instead I opted for Snow Tails, which I blogged about HERE last year. I'd printed off some dice-based solo rules for running bot sleds and wanted to give them a proper try.

I played one sled (the red one) and let the bot system run the others. Their movement is more unpredictable (although not completely so, thanks to a clever catchup mechanism), but they don't take any damage so drive more recklessly. I have to steer my sled and can lose it if I take too many risks.

Here we are at the start. I moved last.

I included all of the possible obstacles, as I wanted to try them all out. First up were the sapling. If you hit them then you take damage, but they sapling is then removed. I followed other sleds and let them do the impromptu horticulture.

My sled display, as a reminder of what they look like. The two cards at the front are added up to show the sleds base speed. The number at the back is how much braking is being applied. The difference between the two cards is how much the sled must drift. It drifts towards the higher of the two cards.

So in this case my base speed in 4+5=9. With 3 on the brakes I actually for 6 spaces. With a difference of 1 between the cards one space of my movement must be a drift to the right (the side with the 5).

When you play cards from your hand you can add up to three (one for each dog and one for the brake). But they must all be the same value. so you have to think ahead when planning turns and safe speeds for corners.

Anyway, after that digression you can see that we're all pretty much dealt with the first hairpin turn. Yellow and Black are in the lead and I am in a distant third. Blue got into a mess on the corner.

Through the trees and I'm still third, but still undamaged. Black and Yellow were taking the corner wide.

That cost them. Blue, Green and, of course, myself, slipped round on the inside and got ahead. We were able to get ahead of black through the chasm.

There's one last gentle curve before the finish and then a snowdrift to avoid. The option here is go wide n the corner but be set up to avoid the drift, of go round faster on the inside and then have to drift the other way to get past it. We all kind of went down the middle. I was in fourth place now.

Blue got stuck on the corner and Green and Yellow slowed. I caught up!

I had a clear line to the finish and managed to balance my sled for a fast run. A win!

My sled at the end. If both of your dogs are pulling at the same speed your sled is balanced. This means that you are allowed to apply a bonus move at the end of your turn; you get to move forward a number of spaces equal to your position in the race at the start of the turn. I was third, so I got to move 8 for the sled (5+5-2 (brake)), plus an extra 3 for being balanced. Eleven spaces was enough for the win.

Catherine and I might need to try a series of linked races of this once we have finished Flamme Rouge.