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This is only the third game I’ve tried solo. It feels far too indulgent under normal circumstances but I found myself an excuse (research for this blog). The Grand Carnival is in my top three games. It has been since I first played it. I never get bored with it. I just always get that feeling that one more go would have been all I needed for perfection, but even so, when things go well it’s super satisfying!
Set-up is fairly quick and easy. Simply prepare your player board and the railyard board as normal, and pile tickets and guests nearby. For a one player game, you only need three carnival barkers and three attractions of each size. Three Tricks of the Trade cards are dealt face up, as for a normal game.
While you are playing, the rules are pretty much the same as usual, the only difference to each round being that you must clear and replenish the railyard each time you start a new day at the carnival.
It does feel different while you’re playing though. No longer are you desperately hoping your opponent hasn’t noticed which attraction you are building foundations for. There’s no need to grab it before anyone else does. Nor are you trying to keep up with your opponents as they work towards completing the tricks of the trade. The opportunity to gain the benefits these offer is limited though. The left-most trick is removed if you haven’t achieved it at the end of the second round, the middle one is unobtainable after the third round, and the right hand one must be achieved by the end of the fourth round, or not at all. But there is a nice relaxed feeling to this game solo. You can take your time, nobody else is trying to scupper your plans!
Scoring is very different, but easy to understand and easy to add up at the end: you get a point for each carnival barker, each trick of the trade completed and each guest in the big top. If you manage to build any sets of three attractions of the same size, each set is worth a point, as long as they all have tickets. You also score a point for every attraction that has two or more tickets.
Doesn’t sound too difficult. But wait – you lose a point for every construction site showing. You must also strive to build at least two attractions of each size and get tickets on them. If you only manage one ticketed attraction of a particular size, you lose two points. If you haven’t even got one, lose four points.
Might be a challenge then but it all seemed fairly straightforward so I launched into my first game feeling like I had a good chance of a middling score at least. The designers suggest you have ‘won’ if you score more than zero but there are ascending categories of up to 12 + points.
The Tricks of the Trade I drew were:
‘Practise your Ballyhoo’, which allows you to move guests diagonally. This is a useful ability but it’s not easy to get two guests past the halfway point in the first two rounds, so I gave up on that quite quickly.
‘The Big Draw’. This allows you to move on construction sites but it’s not one of my favoured abilities and I intended to cover up construction sites so I deemed it less useful.
‘Posters Around Town’. This allows you to peek at the topmost face-down tiles, effectively giving you an extra two to choose from. This is one of my preferred tricks of the trade so I resolved to achieve it as soon as possible.
I found it easy to play the solo game. I didn’t have to check the rulebook once, which isn’t always the case in solo modes, even when you know the multi-player really well. There were only my own turns to worry about – no invisible opponent or automa to make moves for. There are no confusing rules and I didn’t lose track of what I was doing or which turn I was on once (which can easily happen to me!)
At the end of my first game, I had scored:
2 for 2 barkers
1 for the Trick of the Trade I achieved
0 for guests in the big top
1 for a group of three same-sized attractions
4 for attractions with at least 2 tickets
-2 for construction sites showing.
So, a total of 6. On the designers table of how-well-you-did, I had scraped into a lower middling category. Hmmn. Not terrible for a first attempt but surely I could do better – this is a game I play all the time!
I looked again at the scoring criteria and realised there were some lessons to be learned. I’d been prioritising objectives that weren’t as important as they are in the multi-player game. I won’t spoil your learning experience by telling you how I changed strategy for the next time.
I decided to use the same Tricks of the Trade because I think the advantages these offer you can make a big difference and I wanted to beat my below average score under the same conditions. This time I got 9 points, which promoted me to the ‘revered’ rather than ‘honoured’ category.
By now I couldn’t really justify a third game – I had enough experience for this article but I was enjoying myself and so I dealt three new Tricks of the Trade and tried again. Another score of 9. It still feels like I’m a long way from ‘Legendary’, which requires a score of 12 or more.
Conclusion - as in the multi-player game, the balance in terms of difficulty is perfect. The scoring is very different, and this requires you to employ new strategies to maximise your points. At the end of the game you feel satisfied as you survey your fairground creation, and yet there’s always the sneaking suspicion you could have done a bit better. Hence why I played three times rather than once before starting on this article. And now I’m going to have another go!
