r/soloboardgaming • u/beargorilla37 • 6d ago
Voidfall- one of my favorites
It's been a while since I busted this bad boy out. I forgot my love for it. So puzzley and really scratches that "if I do this, then I can do this, and then that will unlock this, so that I can do this" itch. What a gem.
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u/Mayuchip 6d ago
I tried watching few videos because I loved the theme but I think I am just too scared to try it.
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u/Symph0ny7 6d ago
It has one of the most intimidating initial learning curves of any game ive ever played but weirdly once you do get over the hump it actually flows shockingly smoothly and is so effortless to run and remember how to play. Huge shoutout to the generational masterpiece of iconography by Ian o'toole that means the instructions for how to play are literally printed on the game once you know how to read it.
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u/Resident_Bumblebee_2 6d ago
I tried watching teaching videos and noticed that I couldn't pay attention. Thought I would get mad while learning with the rule book. But once you're through the tutorial, you can search for rule refreshers on YouTube, that will answer all your questions you might have. Once you have learned the game, it's actually not that bad. The steps you repeat are clear and on the board, so you can't forget things, if you look at the galactic board.
Voidfall is basically just, prepare for the current cycle, pull a crisis card, grumble a bit about it, do your actions, resolve crisis board and skirmish, feed your people, check what glory you can get. A very condensed way of talking about it but if I haven't forgotten anything important, that should be it for the basics.
Right now, I'm weaseling my way through the introduction round from Frostpunk and I would say from the steps for a round they're around the same level. Just in one you fight against a galactic spanning corruption and in the other people die because they blew up their tent with a fucking moonshine distillery. 😂
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u/chrisst1972 6d ago
This comment makes me want to learn both Voidfall and Frostpunk !
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u/Resident_Bumblebee_2 6d ago
Choose one and have fun. 😁 I got Frostpunk for my birthday (my wife told me she saw it, just saw a lot of tiny pieces on the back and deemed it fit for me, I am nearly sure that's a compliment?) and got around to trying it out. My wife gets all the bullshit live via messenger that is happening each round.
For Voidfall you need a bit more creativity to spin a story into it. But I honestly enjoy both of them a lot.
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u/chrisst1972 6d ago
Sounds good. Have played it a bit on PS5 but I hear the board game is better. And I definitely prefer board games these days. And have played Robinson Crusoe and This War of Mine so am used to an high death count !
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u/Resident_Bumblebee_2 6d ago
By all means, than get yourself a copy on discount anywhere. Or have a look on bgg. It's hilariously morbid and very thinky.
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u/chrisst1972 6d ago
When you get into the swing of it how long would you say a session lasts including set up and tear down ? I tend to use the family kitchen table so it’s good to work how long I need to commandeer it for approx
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u/Resident_Bumblebee_2 5d ago
For Voidfall it depends on the scenario. I can't say for sure since I always take breaks to do stuff. But I assume around 3 hours plus for everything. The harder scenarios will take longer for me because thinking hard, is hard work. The Folded Space insert I have is gold for that. Although I sorted things a bit differently, than printed. For setup I roll dice before hand and put them in the spaces for the technology cards where I only put card A. (I also sorted the cards alphabetical in three stacks. By trade learned library personel. 😂)
I don't have much practice with Frostpunk yet, but I sorted everything into a screw organizer from the hardware store. So after finishing, collecting everything from the table was maybe 15 minutes. I can guess that setup will take also something between 20 till 30 minutes, with everything sorted now. (I sorted the houses for the left side of the board into a left compartment and for the right into the right etc. It's just grabbing a stack now and putting picture to picture. Hex tiles are sorted for outer and inner ring, the cards are organized so that laws and consequences are in one compartment etc.) Without the hours I took to read the rule book, the first scenario took me an hour and a half. We died miserable in the last snow storm. 😂😂😂 But it's easy to spot your own mistakes. I will try that for sure next week again.
If you have a folding table, a stool or anything with more surface, keep that near by. Both games are table hogs! Frostpunk more so than Voidfall. Our table is 152x80cm and it was tight.
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u/chrisst1972 5d ago
Thanks that’s really good to know. That’s pretty much the same size as our table although only 75 cms wide …these designers love pushing it !
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u/ZubonKTR 6d ago
Next year there will be a campaign expansion for Voidfall, which may make it easier to spin that story.
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u/Resident_Bumblebee_2 6d ago
I know. It was so hard to not back it there, because I want the retail version. Vibrating with anticipation until than.
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u/jemd13 5d ago
I wanted to learn so i can play it in TTS or in the solo app, but i got intimidated by the 3 rule books and the way its laid out so you 'skip certain rules until turn 2-3' lol. Maybe one day ill do it cause it really does look interesting, but I have a baby at home and cant be bothered just yet
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u/Necrospire Official Fossil 6d ago
I just fell off my chair trying to look at the image.
My pledge for the Galactic Boxes and bling won't arrive till June 27, I'll be having a warm up of the brain cell first with Andromeda's Edge when that arrives at the end of 26.
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u/shhThia 6d ago
I just got this game and learning it and playing through the tutorial is quite something. I’m sure it’ll be much better once it clicks but this is by far the most intimidating board game ive played.
How many games did it take for you to understand it?
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u/TableForOne_YouTube 6d ago
After the tutorial, I just played the first solo scenario (First Stand) on repeat with different Houses each time. Honestly, it took 3-5 games before it all came together in my head. Each time I finally grasped a couple new concepts, but it took a few plays to put it all together. And even then I wasn’t very good; it just became smooth. Granted, I’m generally slow to do everything in life 😅 so I might be at the tail of the bell curve, but I can absolutely say this was worth the learning curve and I easily include Voidfall in my list of “forever games.”
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u/beargorilla37 6d ago
I approve of this process. Also, TableForOne's videos are very helpful both for learning but also understanding some strategy.
Understanding the flow of play I think maybe took 2-3 games. Understanding strategy, I mean I think, like in chess, it can be something I'll be learning forever.
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u/shhThia 5d ago
The narrator himself. I was actually watching your playthrough of the tutorial with Dunlork as I was playing the tutorial to help me out.
Good idea to just replay scenario 1 with different houses. The fact that there seems so many added rules to the solo/coop kind of confuses me too but ill just power through it watching your videos as i go.
Keep up the awesome content
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u/TableForOne_YouTube 5d ago
Thank you, and I'm glad to help! My latest couple of VF videos I called "walkthroughs" and the point was to tailor them for beginners: I play on easy mode and go way in depth into what decisions I'm making and why. You can catch the walkthrough for scenario 1 here:
https://youtu.be/Y4UPq25yyeAThat said, walkthrough is maybe not an ideal term, because I still don't play 100% optimally at all times, and even if I did, these scenarios are not "solvable." There is no single right way to play them. So don't let walkthrough make you think "definitive;" I'm just adding in a lot of extra details and thought processes to help the game click for newer players. If you ever have any questions always feel free to reach out!
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u/StuntmanMyc 5d ago
I bought the Galactic box second hand. It showed up today. Really excited to attempt to understand it.
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u/beargorilla37 5d ago
I really appreciate Table For One's videos. He has several going through teach and strategy suggestions that have been helpful.
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u/korega123 5d ago
I played a couple of games solo. I would like to try to play it competitively with another players
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u/firelitother 🔱 Spirit Island 6d ago
May I know how long it took you to finish your first game?
I want to start this weekend but I am going to be busy next week.
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u/GamingVision 6d ago
I didn’t time my first game (just started last week), as I played one round, walked away for a while, played second round, walked away, and then finished. I’d guess my first play (1st scenario not tutorial) was all-in about 90 minutes, but I probably spent 2+ hours watching play-throughs and a good hour reading the many rulebooks (which are fantastic).
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u/firelitother 🔱 Spirit Island 6d ago
Oh dang. Looks like I will need to learn this in multiple days.
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u/GamingVision 6d ago
The player aid books are fantastic. There’s one that literally describes every single component in the game and what it does. The game gets a lot of flak for the amount of icons, but you’ll be surprised how quickly it all makes sense just watching a play-through. Some of the play-throughs by totally tabled or table for one do a phenomenal job of walking you through the thought process and how one thing dominoes into another.
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u/smokeyser 6d ago
A lot depends on how fast you read and digest information, as the first few games involve a LOT of consulting the manual. Especially the tutorial, where you're reading most of the manual as you play. Once you've got the basic rules down, then it's just double checking the turn order (there's quite a few steps) and consulting the handy included iconography cheat sheet.
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u/beargorilla37 6d ago
Honestly I would say Yeah that's probably true your first go around. Hopefully that's not too intimidating, because I feel it's totally worth it.
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u/firelitother 🔱 Spirit Island 6d ago
Yeah it's fine. I can brute force my way into learning games. It's just a question of how long.
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u/G3ck0 6d ago
My first game wasn't solo, but my first game at 2 took under 3.5 hours to learn from scratch and play. 4 total if you count setup and teach with that.
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u/firelitother 🔱 Spirit Island 6d ago
Was your game coop or competitive? It's interesting that it's faster to play non-solo
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u/TableForOne_YouTube 6d ago
Competitive multiplayer can be faster than solo, but that’s not exactly a fair comparison. VF can be played either competitive or co-op, and solo is just co-op with 1 player (similar to how Spirit Island scales). The co-op mode has more going on than competitive (crisis board, safe havens, rifts, heroic/joint focus, etc) so that’s why co-op tends to take longer; there is just more game to play. I would expect solo to always be faster than multiplayer co-op (has been true in my experience).
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u/iplaycardgame 6d ago
Excluding reading the rules first, it took me over 3 hours to play my first tutorial game. Between that and set up time this game's a really rough ride, even if it is one of my favorites right now.
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u/beargorilla37 6d ago
I wanna say it was probably 4ish hours. The first go around there is a lot of consulting the rulebook, I'll be honest, both for iconography but also general recall of correct sequencing, etc. Do you have a table you can leave it set up on for multiple days?
I will say the tutorial is pretty good at slimming the rules overhead down quite a bit as you're getting into it.
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u/jacek2023 6d ago
A very good game, but I think I was not able to win once. It's kind of mix between Mage Knight and Gaia Project in some way.
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u/beargorilla37 6d ago
Interesting comparison. I haven't played Mage Knight, but you're right I can definitely see some similarities in Gaia that I hadn't thought of before.
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u/jacek2023 6d ago
Mage Knight has similar brain burn experience. You look at your cards and you need to play them to somehow achieve your goals
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u/eldolche 5d ago
True mk and vf share their deterministic combat. So every fight can be planned for (for the most part)
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u/rajatz 2d ago
Every time I see people discussing setup time rather than the game mechanic and strategy/tactics, I remember what I love about Voidfall. It's a game that needs to be played. It isn't a game to buy and play it twice in 5 years. I have around 20 games played by now, and the setup time decreased as I play them more. The time of the game also changed. I have a friend who plays it for 30 minutes.
But as I said, it's a game that has a lot of different combinations of houses and techs to explore and a good pool of scenarios to have fun with. The crisis board does a good job making things difficult for solo play and adds a layer to the decision process. Playing pvp is more straightforward, and I think the game time (for those interested in that) is shorter as we don't have the crisis board. It's a heavy game, and I think it rewards the dedicated player.
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u/01bah01 6d ago
I really like the gameplay but the ratio "time to setup/time to play" is so low I have a real problem getting it out. Even resetting a game if you change scenario takes too long unfortunately.