Hadrian's Wall - Punchboard Reviews

In Hadrian’s Wall, you are a Roman general, tasked with...

Read more...

So . . . just marking boxes? I don’t mean that as a knock on the game, more of an attempt to understand how it plays. Cards? Dice? Action Points? Is there anything that rattles your plans?

So how many sheets does it have? 'Cause I ain't playing a game unless I can get at LEAST 100 plays out of it

A couple of years back some of those roll n'write solo games made the rounds here and I really enjoyed them. You are absolutely correct that there is some sort of undeniable satisfaction to physically marking off stuff versus pushing a cube higher on a track or whatever. And the very light setup footprint is nothing to scoff at either.

Great review.

Edit: it's a roll and write, Sag, so generally those are about an initial roll and the distributing and/or manipulating those dice to accomplish goals.

Sagrilarus wrote: So . . . just marking boxes? I don’t mean that as a knock on the game, more of an attempt to understand how it plays. Cards? Dice? Action Points? Is there anything that rattles your plans?

It's a flip and write, so each round you flip two cards. One gives you resources (people and stones to spend, to tick off boxes), the other gets added to your player board to give you a goal to score towards.

I think I mention that under the photo of the cards, but in fairness maybe I should have explained a bit better.

The thing which rattles you are the attacks after each round. Part of what you're doing is building defences, and after each round some cards are flipped (the number depends on your difficulty level) , and you suffer penalties if you can't defend them all.

jason10mm wrote: So how many sheets does it have? 'Cause I ain't playing a game unless I can get at LEAST 100 plays out of it

A couple of years back some of those roll n'write solo games made the rounds here and I really enjoyed them. You are absolutely correct that there is some sort of undeniable satisfaction to physically marking off stuff versus pushing a cube higher on a track or whatever. And the very light setup footprint is nothing to scoff at either.

As it happens, there are exactly 100 sheets in each pad

Crossing out boxes is a very personal thing for some reason. I cross that box out, which means that I can cross this box out, then I get these bonuses.

adamr wrote:

Sagrilarus wrote: So . . . just marking boxes? I don’t mean that as a knock on the game, more of an attempt to understand how it plays. Cards? Dice? Action Points? Is there anything that rattles your plans?

It's a flip and write, so each round you flip two cards. One gives you resources (people and stones to spend, to tick off boxes), the other gets added to your player board to give you a goal to score towards.

I think I mention that under the photo of the cards, but in fairness maybe I should have explained a bit better.

The thing which rattles you are the attacks after each round. Part of what you're doing is building defences, and after each round some cards are flipped (the number depends on your difficulty level) , and you suffer penalties if you can't defend them all.

Thank you! And do all players take their turns simultaneously?

Sagrilarus wrote: Thank you! And do all players take their turns simultaneously?

They do, yes. When you use the market spaces, you can actually pass resources to your neighbours, and they can use them in that turn. In solo play there's a deck that just has fresh cards flipped each round, and the traded good adds another invader at the end of the round.

Well there you go, I was wrong as hell.

Gary Sax wrote: Well there you go, I was wrong as hell.

Not really, just a step removed. Instead of the dice saying what you can do, the card says 'take 1 black, 2 purple, 1 yellow, 2 blue and a stone', then you spend those crossing them off.

Some of the things you've crossed off might give you extra things at the start of each round too.

The principle is the same, it's just a card flip instead of a dice roll.