Rise up through the ranks
Red Rising is a 1- 6 player hand management game inspired by the novel by Pierce Brown. You are playing as a low caste character, trying to infiltrate elite ranks in a futuristic dystopian world. Pre-orders from Stonemaier Games' website will open tomorrow, March 3.
In the solo mode, you are playing against an automa. You will set up the game as in multiplayer mode: first shuffle all the character cards and place them at the center of the board, then deal two characters in each of the four columns: Jupiter, Mars, Luna, and The Institute. You start with a hand of 5 characters drawn from the main deck, as well as a House card that gives you a special ability.
On your turn, you can either Lead or Scout. Lead means that you play a card from your hand to any column and activate its effect. Then, you take the top card from any other column into your hand and gain the bonus of its location, or if you don't want any of these cards, you draw a card from the main deck and roll the die to gain the bonus you rolled. If you choose to Scout, you draw a card from the main deck, place it in any of the columns, and gain the bonus of that location.
On the automa's turn, you draw two cards from her deck and execute their steps. The automa cards dictate which column she adds characters to, whether she gains any characters, and which location bonus she earns. You win the game if you have a higher score at the end.
Those cards in the 2nd photo are interesting. Kind of a minimalistic look, but I like 'em.