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Fantastic Factories Solo Rules
Welcome to the Solo Rules for Fantastic Factories! This guide is here to help you navigate the game and have a great solo gaming experience. Are you ready? Let’s dive in!
Setting Up the Game
First things first, let’s set up the game. Start by shuffling the deck of blueprint cards and placing four of them face up in the Blueprint Market. Then, draw two Contractor cards and choose one to keep. Place the chosen Contractor card in front of you and discard the other one. Now, you’re ready to begin!
Your Turn
On your turn, you’ll take actions to build and optimize your factory. You have a number of options:
1. Contract: Spend the required resources to hire a contractor card. Place the card in your tableau. The contractor will give you special abilities or resources.
2. Build: Pay the necessary resources and use a Blueprint card to build a room in your factory. Each room has its own unique abilities and victory points.
3. Develop: Use the Development Die to gain resources or modify dice rolls. You may reroll dice, change the value of a die, or gain resources based on the dice roll.
4. Reorganize: Rearrange the order of your rooms in your factory. This can be helpful to optimize your production and generate the most efficient resources.
You can take any combination of these actions on your turn in any order you choose. The goal is to create the most efficient and productive factory possible.
End of the Round
At the end of each round, you’ll take the following steps:
1. Worker Phase: Pay the salary for your workers. If you don’t have enough money, you’ll lose victory points.
2. Regeneration Phase: Regenerate any used resources on your factory cards and discard any unused Contractor cards.
3. Draw Phase: Draw a new Blueprint card to add to the Blueprint Market. If there are fewer than four cards, simply refill the market to four cards.
4. End of Game
The game ends after the sixth round. At this point, you’ll calculate your final score. Each room in your factory will give you victory points based on its abilities and the goals you’ve accomplished. The player with the highest score wins the game!
Remember, it’s important to plan your actions carefully and optimize your factory to achieve the highest score possible. Have fun and enjoy the fantastic world of Fantastic Factories solo play!
When I play solo, the rules are pretty much the same, but there are a few differences. Instead of competing against real opponents, I go up against a computer opponent called “The Machine.” It’s not as fun as playing against real people, but it’s still a challenge.
Getting Started
To get started, I set up the game just like I would for a regular game. I also have to lay out a few blueprints for The Machine’s starting point. The number of blueprints I lay out depends on how difficult I want the game to be. If I want a medium challenge, I start with 3 blueprints.
| Easy | 2 |
| Medium | 3 |
| Hard | 4 |
| Very Hard | 5 |
If any of the cards I deal are gray Monument cards, I’ll get rid of them and keep dealing until I have the right number of non-Monument cards. I can still build Monument cards later on, but I can’t start the game with any already in play.
The Machine’s Compound: The cards in The Machine’s compound are always organized by type and color (production, utility, training, special, and monument).
Game Play
Your Turn
When it’s your turn, you’ll go through the market phase and the work phase by yourself. After you’ve completed both phases, it will be the opponent’s turn.
Some of the contractors in the game can affect your opponents. However, in the solo game, you can ignore any instructions that give resources or cards to opponents.
The Machine’s Turn
At the beginning of The Machine’s turn, it rolls dice. Grab one die of each color (red, blue, purple, yellow, and green) and roll them all together.
Market Phase
Take a look at the green die to determine what action The Machine will take in the marketplace:
- 1, 2, 3, or 4: The Machine will take the corresponding blueprint (1 = left-most blueprint, 2 = 2nd from the left, and so on) from the marketplace and add it to its compound.
After I execute The Machine’s action, I follow these steps:
1. Look at the top card in the blueprint deck, and add it to my compound. Then, clear out all of the blueprints in the marketplace.
2. Look at the top card in the blueprint deck once again, and add it to my compound. At the same time, remove all the contractors from the marketplace.
Once I have completed The Machine’s action, I need to refill the marketplace.
Moving on to the Work Phase:
I examine the values of the remaining red, blue, purple, and yellow dice to see if The Machine is generating any goods. Each colored die corresponds to a specific type of card.
The red die represents the red Training cards.
The blue die represents the blue Production cards.
The purple die represents the purple Special cards.
Lastly, the yellow die represents the yellow Utility cards.
Let me break it down for you. Whenever I roll a die, I check if the number I rolled is the same or less than the number of cards in The Machine’s compound. If it is, that means The Machine can successfully make a good. And here’s the thing – the more cards The Machine has in its compound, the better the chances of it making goods each time it works.
Here’s what happens during the Example Work Phase: The Machine makes 2 items when the blue and purple dice match or are below the number of cards of that color in The Machine’s facility.
The red and yellow dice won’t score because they exceed the number of cards in those colors.
End of the Game
If you’re a player, you can trigger the end of the game as usual (reminder: 12 items or 10 cards in your facility).
However, the Machine can only trigger the end of the game by making 12 or more items. Once the game end is triggered, one final round is played.
Scoring
For your scoring, it remains the same (reminder: items + prestige). To calculate The Machine’s score, tally up all their items and add 1 point for each card in their facility (regardless of prestige value).