Harvest the power of the dying star Sol to propel yourself away before being consumed by the looming supernova.
Designer(s): Ryan Spangler, Sean Spangler, Jodi Sweetman
Artist(s): Jon Mietling
Publisher: Elephant Laboratories
Welcome to Sol. The star that once provided the civilizations with a source of energy has become unstable. Your goal is to gain enough energy to propel yourself away from the dying star and the person who can launch themselves the farthest will just escape the supernova while the other civilizations will be engulfed by the flames.
Sol is an interesting resource management game by Ryan Spangler and Elephant Laboratories. Players must oversee their smaller ships, create gates and stations, and activate those structure to gain energy. This is a balance act where position on the board matters as well as spending energy to gain energy and momentum. Classic “you have to spend money to make money” mentality.
What makes Sol unique is that your home base (or mothership) is constantly moving in orbit around the sun. Also, players can activate structures that do not belong to them as the cost of giving the structures owner resources.
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Gameplay Overview
This is a general overview to provide context for the review, not an in-depth how to play. Some rules may be glossed over or missing.
I have played Sol many times at player counts ranging from 3 to 5 players. I do not have an opinion on how many players is best for this game, but BoardGameGeek has a best player count of 4. There is one side of the board that is played for 1-4 players and another side that is played for 5 players.
The Game Flow of Sol
Sol is played over several players turns as does not have an upkeep phase during the game. The end condition of the game is when the 13th solar flare is drawn (more on this in concepts: instability cards), there will be one final activation before the game immediately ends. This means that players might not get an equal number of turns.
Setup
The set up for Sol is relatively easy as not many objects start on the player board. Each player will place their ark on 0 momentum and take all the pieces related to their chosen color. A few small ships (sundivers) will be placed in their hold, their movement will be set to 3, and the remaining pieces are placed in reserve.
The mothership at then placed on the board between the inner and outer orbit. The motherships should be equidistant from each other. The instability deck is created, and the instability effects are assigned.
Player Turns
There are three phases in a player turn: (1) take an action, (2) draw instability cards, (3) orbit your mothership. The action step is the main portion of a player turn and the instability cards drawn will be in direct correlation to the actions taken.
There are three actions that a player can choose from on their turn: move, convert, or activate.
Action: Move
Move is the easiest action. Using movement, players can launch sundivers from the mothership, fly them around the board, or hurl them into the sun. They are sundivers after all. Sundivers launched from the mothership must come a players hold and not their reserve.
Each movement action allows a player to do one of the above. At the start of the game, each player has 3 movement points which means they can launch three ships, or launch one and move it twice, or so on. These actions can be done in any combination.
The limitation to movement is that sundivers need gates to fly through to move across the barriers indicated by the thick black lines of the 3 inner layers. Hurling is also limited. A sundiver will have to be adjacent to the sun (the center) to dive into the sun and sacrifice themselves for momentum (the sundiver is removed from the game and put back in the box).
Action: Convert
Convert is a more difficult action that relies on sundivers position to create structures. If the sundivers are placed correctly on the board, a player can build a solar gate, energy node, sundiver foundry, or transmit tower of their color. The sundivers that are used to build these structures are placed in a player’s reserve.
Solar gates allow players to move through the barriers or the inner layers. Energy nodes will give players energy, sundiver foundries will allows a player to convert X energy to move X sundivers from the reserve to the hold and Transmit towers will allow a player to convert X energy into X momentum. However, none of these actions happen upon building the structures, they will need to be activated.
Action: Activate
To activate a structure, a player will need to have a sundiver in the space with structure and the energy required by the building. Each level of the board has a base and bonus energy (often shown as Base / Bonus). The outer most layer is 1/0, the next layer in is 1/1, then 2/1, then 3/2, and then 5/3 on the layer closest to the sun.
Anyone can activate the structure to get the base amount produced (i.e., energy, sundivers, momentum) and the owner will then have the option to do the bonus amount. If the owner declines the bonus, the activator can take the bonus instead.
I have not seen many cases where the owner refuses the bonus action (unless they do not have the energy to take the action) as refusing free actions is not the best idea. Actions are a limited resource so having other players activate your structures is a good strategy.
While it is hard to build structures on the inner levels of the board, they give more resource conversion potential. However, these structures are all or nothing. A player must do the full base or bonus amount, or they are not able to do the action at all. If you cannot do an action fully, you cannot do the action at all. So, build at your own risk.
If a player has multiple sundivers in different spaces that contain the same type of structure, they can activate as many of these stations as they wish. This is again a chance for action condensation. The opportunity should be taken advantage of where it makes sense, but I would not prioritize this if other opportunities are majorly inhibited.
Instability Cards and Orbiting
If a player converts or activates in one of the three inner layers, they will be required to draw instability cards. One for activating in the convective layer (outermost inner layer), two for activating in the radiative layer (middle layer), and three for activating in the core layer (innermost layer). Hurling sundivers into the sun will also cause a player to draw instability cards, one per ship hurled.
These instability cards will have a range of different effects. The number of effects will be one more than the number of players. These will be represented by suits with 13 solar flare cards mixed in. For each solar flare drawn, the instability marker will move one space closer to 0,. All players with 13 or more energy cubes will lose half (rounded down). And all station in the outer orbit (the outermost ring) may be activated by their owners.
The activated structures do not need a sundiver present but will still require energy for foundries and towers. The player than picks one of the revealed cards to keep in their hold for future turns. On your turn, a player can use these instability cards in addition to their actions.
The last step of a player turn is orbiting the mothership. This means moving your mothership one space counterclockwise around the board.
Concept: Instability Cards
The instability cards give a variability to Sol. There are 30 potential instability effects that can be randomly chosen. They can be played when a player moves, converts, activates, draws, or at any time (as indicated by the card). Blue and Green cards have simple effects, yellow cards have complex effects, and red cards have attack or negative effects.
Who Will Like it?
Sol is a great game for management resource and figuring out how to get the most gain without benefiting other players too much. The constant rotation of the mothership makes the game have another layer of depth as no player has a set section. The instability deck changes can also warp the game to be more of a player’s taste if people want more options in certain categories.
What I Think
What did I like?
I really love the fact that players don’t have a section of the board assigned to them. The board is not just split by the number of players because the motherships are constantly moving. There can be building clusters, but the potential for clusters on different portions of the map is great. The ability to activate other players building is also a major positive at it can allow players to really condense actions and take advantage of all sections of the board.
The variability of the instability cards is another major positive. Some of the effects are better than others but the variability allows each game to feel unique and replayability is always a big factor for me.
What didn’t I like?
I am not good at this game. Let’s just get that out there. I feel like I am decent at resource management games but this one always has me struggling. That being said, my biggest complaint is there are not enough red instability cards.
When I am doing worse than other players, I want a way to attack them and close that gap by pulling them backwards. But there are only a couple of red cards. Yea… I know I am a bit more aggressive than others might be. The only other way to impact other players is by building as slots can only have one building and borders between two spaces can only have one gate. Building in key areas for other players is the main way to get in the way of other players. But I want something a little more direct.
My Take
Sol is a great resource management game with a small amount of player interaction. It is very much about building up your engine and taking advantage of other people’s engines where it makes sense. The instability cards can give a good amount of variability between games which makes Sol more replayable and a new puzzle to solve with each game.
Breakdown
Rulebook/Learning the Game
The Sol rulebook is very well laid out and explains concepts very neatly. I do like the visual examples that can be found throughout the rulebook. These examples make it very easy to understand each action and how they interact with various pieces. I also appreciate the flavor text and personality that can be found throughout the rulebook.
First Play
As I said before, I struggle with this game and my first play was by far my worst. While understanding the concepts is simple, being able to read and maneuver the board was an entirely different thing.
Subsequent Plays
Even with subsequent plays, I got more familiar with the core mechanics, but the instability abilities always threw a wrench in whatever plans I could come up with. I do not think experienced players necessarily have an advantage over beginner plays, but there still is a learning curve.
Rating
7/10
I really like playing Sol but there is a lack of interaction for me which puts it a little lower than I would have liked. There have been rumors of an expansion and I am hoping for some more red cards to make games more aggressive. I don’t have down the basics, so I want even more to think about.
*See my rating scale Here
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