Solenia (Boardgame)

Players: 1-4

Game Length: 30-40mins

Theme

‘For several millennia, the tiny planet Solenia has lost its day-and-night cycle: Its northern hemisphere is forever plunged into darkness and its southern hemisphere is eternally bathed in sunlight.’

As you play this game you are challenged with collecting much needed resources that are scarce on the opposite hemisphere and deliver them to the cities that need them. The larger the size of the delivery, the greater the reward.

Set Up

A short amount of set-up is required taking about 10 minutes:

• The playing board is created from five staggered connecting strips, that cleverly represents the planets two hemispheres. You have one dusk/dawn tile, which is half night/half day, and two day and two night tiles and they all slot together to make up a world of 25 floating islands. Each island has either the image of a resource produced in that location or a star meaning it is a city that requires a delivery of resources.
• The airship token is placed on the middle island of the central board piece (the dusk/dawn piece at the start of the game). This will dictate where you are able to travel to.
• Set out piles of the four game resources (wheat, wood, rock and water) and gold stars which are earned as rewards throughout the game.
• Two piles of delivery tiles are laid out with several face-up (a different number dependant on players). The face up tiles show a number of resources that players are challenged with delivering as well as the reward they will get for completing the delivery represented by a number in a gold star.
• Each player gets a player board, containing an image of their airship, complete with compartments to hold a limited number of resources and slots to file completed delivery tiles.
• Lastly, each player gets a deck of 16 ‘airship window’ cards with a porthole in the centre. These are shuffled and kept face down.

Game Play

Players take turns to reveal their top ‘window’ card, which shows on it a number from zero to two. They then need to place this card onto one of the islands on the board sticking to the rule that it must be either adjacent to the airship or to another of their previously placed cards.

Placing the card on an island with a resource (you will see the resource through the porthole) will get you the number of that resource dictated by the number on the card – sadly sometimes this is zero. If you play your card onto a city (meaning a star is visible through the porthole) you instead get the corresponding number of stars (these serve as victory points at the end of the game) but at this point you also need to make a delivery – select one of the delivery cards that you can fulfil, give up the resources and claim the delivery tile. Inserting that tile in your ship will earn you an instant bonus and at the end of the game you will get the number of victory points on it, as well as bonus points for the number of pairs of day and night deliveries you achieve.

Playing a zero-value card will cause the airship to move forward one space and at this point the bottom section of the game board is removed, flipped over and moved to the opposite end (meaning that the airship is always in the central spot). At this point any cards sat on the removed section will earn the owner rewards – indicated by a picture at the bottom – usually in the form of extra resources, but sometimes stars.

The game ends when each player has played all 16 of their cards and at this point all victory points and bonus’ are added up to find the winner.

There are two additional developments to the game;

• The player boards can be changed from summer mode to winter mode – in winter mode you have less space for resources, but can get better rewards for completing deliveries.
• You can play it solo – for this variant you use the die to determine where a fictional opponent plays cards. The opponent can’t win, they just exist to affect your game-plan and you are merely aiming to achieve the highest score you can.