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The unpopular diet, card-bonated version of the esteemed board game has one advantage in being several orders of magnitude cheaper than its parent. I was tempted by an unloved eBay listing for several months until it eventually dropped to a desperate enough price to be worth a try.
It's no 7 Wonders Duel, but it's convoluted enough to be an engrossing contest of wits, fortune and risks, though admittedly less risky when you're playing against yourself and have a rough idea of whether the other you has any reds or not. To solve this, I came up with a moderately engaging solo bot:
- The player sets up and takes their turns as normal. Catastrophe cards are not used.
- Place the opponent's kings on the even-numbered treasure cards at the start, in any order. They will never move to another kingdom. The opponent has no hand.
- On the opponent's turn, they draw 6 cards (easy), 7 cards (normal) or 8 cards (hard). They play ALL matching pairs (one card to the kingdom under the matching leader, one to their victory pile) and discard any leftovers.
- If the player instigates a challenge, the opponent draws 6, 7 or 8 cards in response (depending on difficulty) and plays all red cards drawn as defence, discarding the rest. This does not count as its turn.
- If an opponent's king is dethroned, it will use all red cards drawn on subsequent turns to try to reclaim its former kingdom until successful, playing and discarding other colours as normal.
- If the opponent plays 4 blue cards in a row, the player chooses their ship.
- The game ends when any kingdom reaches its maximum size or when the deck runs out.
- I think that's everything. Make up the rest or tweak it yourself.
