Red Rising - Solo vs "Tull Au Toma"

After dinner, as I mentioned in my post a couple hours ago 🤗, I have just finished my first game against the Red Rising Automa; "Tull Au Toma". Here's what it looks like (well not quite all, but most)...

Unfortunately, the lights in this room are preventing you from seeing the face side of the Automa deck (second pile - top left above the board). Just trust me, as always Stonemaier games Automa system is great! Let me break it down a bit:

The Automa card has three sections on it; Deploy, Gain and Extra. When it's the Automa's turn you draw 2-cards. You play the first card...

1) Deploy - Take a card from the top of the facedown character pile on the board and put it at the location shown in the deploy section of the Automa card drawn.

2) Gain - Gain the top card from the location shown in the gain section of the Automa card. Place that card on the Automa's face-down character pile (their hand).

3) Extra - Some cards have the bonus action, some have a banish action and some have nothing. If it's a bonus action (star symbol) the Automa takes the bonus of the location where it's "gain card" was taken. If it's a banish symbol shown, the Automa banishes the card on the bottom of her character deck. If nothing is shown... Well, I think you can figure that part out. 😉

This game actually took me 3-attempts believe it or not. The rules and Automa system (in particular because I'm used to systems like the Scythe Automa and the monsters in Gloomhaven) are straight forward. Sometimes you just have to slow down for a second to be sure. However, I was missing some things in the rules that aren't hard to figure out; IF YOU WATCH THE WORDING.

My first attempt, I wasn't drawing 2-Automa cards per Automa turn. Basically, "Tull Au Toma" takes 2-turns to your one. I caught the missed rule, and refreshed the game to a restart.

My second attempt, I was playing the Automa turn as I was supposed to... Or so I thought! A bit into the game, the Automa had no cards in her character deck. HUH!?!? How did this happen? I reviewed the Automa turn order (deploy, gain and extra). That was being done right. I checked the rules for what happens if the Automa runs out of cards... Nothing. Not even a mention. Guess why???

It's impossible!!! 🤣🤣

Again, it came down to the wording and paying attention to how things are written in the rules (like all games really). Plain as day in the rules: "When the Automa deploys, take the top face-down card from the character deck (not the Automa's hand) and deploy it to the appropriate location".

DUH!!!! 🤣 So.... Let's restart again.

My third attempt, I made it through. Now it was down to the scoring, which is slightly different but not an issue. Having said that, Red Rising scores are high!!! It says in the rules that a score of 300+ is a good score. 😮

I won to my surprise 324 to 268 on the "normal" difficulty (second easiest). What I like is there are 6-7 difficulty levels you can choose from. Awesome!

I noticed near the end of the game, I was also doing the "Scout" action slightly wrong so I just made that adjustment after making the mistake a couple times. No biggie there.

As always, Stonemaier's Automa system is fantastic.

The game is fun.

The art is amazing.

The production quality never is anything but excellent with Stonemaier games.

😁