Tinners' Trail is live (Mine, all mine)
Update: Tinners' Trail is live on Kickstarter, and the campaign will run for 24 days. You may pledge for either the standard (retail) edition, or the expanded edition that includes the Arsenic and Emigration mini expansions.
In the solo mode, you are competing against the Lord Wallace AI. The AI comes with its own deck of cards which determine the actions it will be taking every turn, depending also on the number of work points it has left. The solo mode is compatible with both expansions.
Our preview post below was published on January 8.
In Tinners' Trail by Martin Wallace you play as a mining conglomerate in 19th century Cornwall, buying land, mining for ore, building developments and investing in other industries. A new edition will launch on Kickstarter on January 11, along with two new mini expansions.
Originally a 3-4 player game, it will now be for 1-5 players. New elements are the use of tiles instead of dice rolls for putting resources on the board during set up, and dual use cards to enhance taking actions. The new expansions introduce a new resource and emigration options for the miners.
At this moment no more is known about the new gameplay or the solo mode.
According to the campaign, it looks as if they made several notable improvements to the original game. Especially, as you noted JW, the player count.