Rio Grande GamesFriday

This game is highly recommended. I spend most of my game-time playing solo, so I was pleased to see that this little box contained a "solo adventure" and also that many reviews indicated that it was quite challenging. I will confirm that this game is not for the faint of heart. It took me several plays to beat the first of the four difficulties indicated in the instructions. With a little experience, however, I was able to figure out a strategy that seems to work well in most cases and I have been very successful with achieving victory even on the fourth difficulty level.If you want to know that strategy, you can find it easily on-line, and my experience has been that the general principals of the most common strategy found on-line will help you prevail. Bad news if you want a perpetual challenge, but good news if you want a winnable game that doesn't beat you up 9 out of 10 tries and make you feel despondent. More good news - you can always start with fewer life points of modify the card sets to create ever increasing levels of difficulty. There is certainly a point where luck of the draw will start to be more important than strategy as you design brutal challenges to combat your own success, but I am finding that playing the game just a wee bit harder than the fourth scenario in the instructions provides a good level of difficulty.If you like to play solo, this is an essential purchase. It is sleek in its design, engaging to play, has high replayability due to the potential to fine tune the difficulty) and it is a reasonably inexpensive game.PS. The components are not elaborate, but they are well made. I have played my set 20 times without any fatigue at all. I am careful with my game components, but all but the most careless people should find this set lasting for years and years.

Really enjoyed this game. It's a solo game that is easy to set up. Use your resources to deal with threats and defeat the pirates in the end. One downside: it becomes hard at times to keep track of everything. Would have been nice if there was a system or maybe tokens to give you some visual aid as to what card you used on what...etc.

This is an excellent rules-light solo game. However, if you take a step back, you'll notice that this is just a version of a modern solitaire 52 card deck game with a new coat of paint.It's a great little game. but if you want to save some money, a search for "Isaludo" might get you a similar experience with the cards you already own.Still, as a published game, you kinda can't go wrong at this price. It's easy to learn, replayable, and super difficult to beat.

I've had this game a few months but not sure how many times I've played it but at least a couple dozen at the basic level and once at the highest level. I'm not really good at figuring out stuff by reading - guess it's impatience or laziness but this one I read through and still refer back to the instructions and realize I was doing something wrong! I'm not overly impressed with the artwork ( I tend to go for cutesy) but it does look nice and fits the theme. At first the setup seemed to take forever but I've gotten a lot faster. It does take up a bit of table space but it has 3 small square 'boards' marked for each deck. there are 22 life points that are good quality IMO - wood painted green - and lots of sorting cards at the end (as you win the hazards they mix in with the fighting cards since the other end of the card has a fightng value and/or special ability) and you have cards you destroy in another stack and some of these are the starting fighting cards and aging cards. To begin the game you need to shuffle the pirate cards and randomnly pick 2 that you will fight at the end(if you get that far!). you also separate the aging cards - the first level you can leave out one of the regular hazards cards but the others(and that one) you shuffle then you shuffle the 3 white haired ones(really bad ones) - these 3 white ones go under the regular aging cards and go on one board(I put mine to the left). the fighting cards are shuffled and put facedown on the middle board. Over on the right you shuffle the hazard cards. there are also 3 cards - green, yellow, and red that go by these so you can keep track of which level you're fighting.I found this a bit overwhelming at first but the more I've played I find it nice to lose myself in a game! I recently played the hardest level for the first time and ran out of lifepoints so many times - I was down to 2 or none while fighting the yellow and red hazards(got more from the special abiltiies fighting cards and promptly used them). I fought the pirates starting with no life points - won against the first but lost the 2nd - it was an exciting game!