Journey across the sea of skies, traverse the light and dark, and make your fortune as best you are able.
Solenia is a resource management game that takes place on a tidally locked planet, where one side is cast in eternal darkness and the other is under the constant gaze of the sun.
Before we dive too deep, here are a few specifics:
- 1-4 players
- 30-40 minutes play time, regardless of the number of players
- Moderate player interaction
Each character is a merchant aboard the same airship making it’s way from the night side of the planet to the day side. The board consists of five sections – one has dusk tiles on one side with dawn tiles on the back and the remaining four sections show day tiles on one side and night tiles on the other. As the airship moves, sections will be removed from the end of the board, flipped to the opposite side, and added to the beginning of the board.
Each board section is made up of five tiles. Each tile will either have a resource (wood, water, wheat, and stone) or a city (represented by a star). Players are also given airship boards that have resource capacity and contract holders. We’ll get to why these are important later.
Players have eighteen cards, each with a value of 0, 1, 2 indicated at the top and a bonus type indicated at the bottom. These bonuses will either be a resource, a tile type, or a number. During the game, players will have a hand of three of these cards and take turns placing these cards on top of tiles. These tiles must be either adjacent to the airship or a card they had personally, previously played. Opponent’s cards do not count for adjacency and, in fact, can get in your way. You can extend your reach if you desire or need, by paying one resource of any type per tile between a currently valid location and where you would like to play. The number on the card played indicates how much of the respective tile’s resource you will receive.
If you place a card on top of a city, the number indicates how many bonus victory points you will receive. However, to place a card over a city, you must be able to complete one of the corresponding contracts available. There will always be three contracts for day cities and three contracts for night cities available for anyone to fulfill. These are the primary way to acquire victory points. To complete a contract, you turn in the resources shown on the contract and then place it on either the top or bottom of your personal airship board in the contract holder slots. Contract victory points (the star value) is counted at the end of the game. Filling a contract holder slot will also give you the associated bonus.
Now, you may be wondering why you would ever play a 0-card given any other choice. Well, 0-cards have a side effect: they move the airship forward. Which, in turn, advances the board: providing different resources, creating access to new cities, and causing any cards on the last tile to fall off. When a card falls off, it provides whatever bonus is listed on it. Cards depicting resources are simple enough, but if the card depicts a tile type, then you receive a victory point for having the card on the indicated tile type when it falls off. If the card bonus only displays a number, then you receive that amount of whatever resource the card was on.
Once each player has played all eighteen of their cards, the game is over. Players count up their victory point tokens, the value on each of their market contracts, and then check to see how many pairs they have of day and night contracts. Players get 1/3/6/10 victory points for having 1/2/3/4 pairs.
Solenia has an easy flow. It’s easy to plan out what you are able to do, down time is almost non-existent, and the rules are straight forward enough that everything makes sense within a few turns. Though the game doesn’t take very long, it is also very hard to back yourself into a corner where you aren’t able to compete. The artwork is consistent and the quality of materials is good. The biggest challenge of the game is trying to figure out when to go to cities since the contracts range from 2 VP to 9 VP. Do you collect as many resources as possible and hope your opponent doesn’t buy out the contracts you were aiming for? Do you try to collect the resources for one specific contract? Do you fulfill the cheapest contracts you possible can to fill up your ship?
The most interesting part of this game for me was the airship/world progression. The airship will move across the world and you’ll constantly be coming back to the same places over and over again, matching the theme. Determining when to move the airship, where and when to play cards to take advantage of their falling bonus, and how to create valid plays to both cut off an opponent’s schemes and advance your own all come together to form fertile ground (ah, erm, airspace) for unintended consequences. Despite all of the planning required, the game moves at a quick pace. The time between your turns will usually be just long enough for you to decide what to do next. All in all, it’s a delight to play.
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