Ovation solo rules
One book to rule them all: week June 19 - June 25
Ovation puts you in the role of a composer trying to create a legacy worth remembering. Let’s hope it’s easier than the composer’s real life.
Summed up
Game starts with four maestro (goal) cards and ends when there are only two left. You’ll race against an AI to acquire them and score the most legacy points at the same time. AI is first player.
The AI is governed by nine cards, one is always on top of discard as the “decision” card. Some actions require this decision, otherwise the rulebook explains AI preference. The AI doesn’t have any “special treatment”, needs to pay for everything the same as you do.
On your turn, you choose one of four possible main actions:
Seek inspiration - gain two inspiration (either move one two spaces, or two one space)
Seek fortune - pay inspiration for any of the display fortune cards; these upgrade your basic actions, you slide the card behind the corresponding action
Seek patronage - pay inspiration for one of the display patron cards; there are two types, legacy gives you points and financiers improve your seek fortune action
Perform - pay inspiration to perform chamber or concert music; for concert you need to meet requirements of music you performed before; you get points for performances; additionally: Gain additional music token (you start with one) - used to activate bonus actions and free abilities
The AI can attend your performance - decision card is used to determine this; you gain tickets (they provide inspiration) and AI inspiration for doing this.
To activate bonuses on actions (that you acquire with fortune and patron cards), you need to spend music tokens. Some have prerequisites you need to fulfill first.
Free actions you can always do:
Exchange tickets for inspiration - two matching tickets for one inspiration
Refresh display - spend one music token to refresh a row of cards (you lose the music token)
Take maestro card - if you fulfill requirements, you can take matching maestro card if available
After each turn you refill card displays. The game ends when only two maestro cards remain available. You need to score more points than AI (AI doesn’t score negative points).
My thoughts are revealed
Rulebook
Well laid out and worded generously. Rules are very simple, but they provide quite a few examples and explanations, which helps internalize them. The solo rules require you to know the multiplayer rules.
Overall
I’ve watched this game ever since Zerbique mentioned it in his Freshly Added to BGG series. I love music and this game has quite a few thematic elements. You perform music, you use tones tracked on a piano keyboard… It's quite charming. Also it uses simple rules, but seems to add quite a bit of variety due to the abundance of cards. Each composer also has a unique ability. The only thing that trips me up is scoring against AI. Still need to think on this one.
Ovation has launched on Kickstarter and the campaign will run for 20 more days. Print and play (including STL files) and physical versions are available.
Just chiming in to let you know there won't be any summary for the week 26.6. to 2.7., the games I was interested in were all cancelled or postponed, so no reason to post about them.