Welcome to Reckoning [Preview]

• What's Eric Playing?

Base price: $12 on Kickstarter.
1 player.
Play time: 20 – 30 minutes.
BGG | Board Game Atlas
Check it out on Kickstarter!
Logged plays: 2 

Full disclosure: A preview copy of Welcome to Reckoning was provided by Wonderspell. Some art, gameplay, or other aspects of the game may change between this preview and the fulfillment of the Kickstarter, should it fund, as this is a preview of a currently unreleased game. 

Alright, I figured it out: these are going to be the last three games that I write about while I’m in the Bay Area. I had a few preview copies still unreviewed that are launching pretty soon, so might as well make hay while the sun shines, in that sense. Unfortunately, I’ve been burning the candle at both ends lately, so getting some sleep seems like a good idea, as well. We’ll try to get everything done before the move. In the meantime, let’s check out a solo game from Wonderspell: Welcome to Reckoning!

In Welcome to Reckoning, something’s gone wrong in town and you might want to … go. Tentacles are starting to emerge and take over landmarks, things are catching fire, and this weird Dust is starting to get everywhere. You can ingest some of it for some special abilities, but that can’t be long-term healthy for you. Try to get your Wagon and get out with a winning hand before it’s too late. Will you be able to survive what happens to Reckoning? Or will you end up forever changed?

Contents

Setup

First, take your character:

Then, set the Health and Willpower Card to the side.

Each should be set based on your difficulty level:

  • Easy: 6 on each.
  • Standard: 5 on each.
  • Hard: 4 on each.

Place the Location cards in a row, such that they’re all face-up and not on fire. They should be in this order: Blacksmith / Homestead, Saloon / Warehouse, Church / Belltower, Assayer / Mine.

Take a Dust Card and place it above your Willpower card; the remaining Dust should be set to the side.

Now, set the Wagon aside and shuffle the other Event Cards:

Put 15 into a pile, and then shuffle the Wagon into that pile. Place the other Event Cards on top to create the Event Deck. You’ll then draw three cards, and you’re ready to start!

Gameplay

Each round, you’ll work through events to try and escape from the town of Reckoning before it’s too late. To kick a round off, reveal 5 Event Cards from the deck and place them in a row, placing your Character Card below the leftmost card.

During a round, you’ll resolve each Event Card in its entirety, starting with the topmost effect and working your way down. After you resolve them all, discard the card and move your Character one card to the left, repeating this until all Event Cards are discarded.

Before resolving any Event Card, you may consume any Dust you have (moving it into your Corruption pile) to remove a Tentacle from any Location, to discard a Tentacle or a Rider from the Event Row without resolving its effect, or to draw a card. Similarly, you may discard a card from your hand once per round to visit a Location and resolve its effect (as long as it’s not seized by tentacles or on fire) or to put out a fire at a Location. Your Character also has a bonus ability to skip one effect of any event card.

After completing the events, you have to check your losses:

  • Lose 1 Health if any Locations are on fire.
  • Discard down to five cards, maximum.

At some point, you’ll reveal the Wagon! When that happens, place it at the Warehouse and immediately end the round (discarding the rest of the Event row). Shuffle the discard pile into the deck and begin a new round. Once that deck is depleted, the game ends (and you lose).

To win the game, you have to escape Reckoning! To do so, you’ll need the following things:

  • The Wagon must be at the Warehouse.
  • The Warehouse cannot be on fire.
  • The Warehouse cannot be captured by tentacles.
  • You must have 4 of a kind (four cards with the same number) in your hand.
  • Visit the Warehouse (by discarding a card or using an Event Card).

If you can do all that, then you win!

If you lose all of your health, your Willpower falls below the number of cards in your Corruption pile, or you run out of cards in the deck, you lose! Play until you get there.

Player Count Differences

None! This one is a solo game!

Strategy

  • Don’t let any particular location get too messed up. If it gets overrun with tentacles and set on fire, you’re going to be in a pretty bad way. You should try to regularly clean things up. Plus, you lose health every round for having any locations on fire, so it might be worth investing early to make sure that you don’t take the penalties later.
  • Going for four of a kind too early might lead you to overcommitting. This is a problem I run into pretty frequently, actually. You may end up with a few cards in hand that are pretty close to a four of a kind, and in sticking to those and searching for the final cards you might pass by some otherwise-valid sets that cycle into the discard pile and can’t be used. Try to stay a bit flexible for as long as you can, and go for the four once you actually have the ability to get all four.
  • If you do go for the four of a kind, make sure you have it before the Wagon appears and reshuffles the deck. This is one risk for both waiting too long and committing too early. If you’re looking for one specific missing card and it comes out at the wrong time, the Wagon will reshuffle it into the entire deck and you’ll have to look for it again. Even if you survive that long, you run the risk of running out of time and losing the game that way.
  • Be discerning about what you want to use your Character ability on. It’s a once-per-round thing, so if you blow it early on something relatively minor, you’re going to be feeling that pain later on. Think to make sure you’re using it to get rid of the thing that’s going to absolutely mess you up if you can.
  • Try to make sure you have Dust in your inventory, but be warned! A few cards explicitly punish you for having it. It’s fuel for some of the more useful abilities in the game, but also adds to your Corruption.
  • Use Dust, but be mindful of your Corruption! Like I said, using Dust is good, but you lose as soon as your Corruption exceeds your Willpower, and plenty of cards will be taking you down a peg on that front. Just be careful.
  • Having an extra card in your hand gives you a bit of flexibility, but it’s also worth holding a few of the worst cards in the game in your hand so that they can’t get back to the Event Deck. Eventually, cards have a way of returning to the Event Deck to cause you even more problems. Holding on to some of the particularly nasty ones in your hand means that they won’t come back around so quickly, and having extra cards in hand means you usually have the flexibility to go after the four-of-a-kind that you will need. Generally a good idea to have five cards at all times.

Pros, Mehs, and Cons

Pros

  • The art style is fun for this one! It’s almost a bit comic-booky in nature, which fits the game perfectly. It’s a fictional and supernatural Western-themed game, so it all works out.
  • There seems to be an opportunity to mix in a wider variety of characters beyond the one I got to try. This seems like the kind of game where you can play with a variety of characters and difficulty levels; I’ll be interested to see if there’s some expansion there.
  • The strategy of it all is pretty interesting. I really like having to manage all the various problems and calamities that come up while also still managing my Health and Willpower. Figuring out what I want to let happen and what I want to prevent / undo are interesting things to think about.
  • Plays pretty quickly, too. Just learning the game for the first time, I got two games in in under an hour, which is pretty solid. It helps that setting the game up is pretty fast. You don’t need to change the locations between the games; you just need to reshuffle the deck and reset the Wagon. And, I suppose, return the Locations to their not-on-fire position.
  • The portability of the game is pretty good, too. It’s just a deck of cards, so, this can pretty easily pop in a Quiver or some other way to transport cards. I’d kind of like to see a small deck box for this kind of thing. I’m not really a fan of tuck boxes, though I know they keep costs lower than your standard telescoping box.
  • Wouldn’t be a Western-themed game without some kind of poker mechanic, but I appreciate it. Some people don’t like that! They think it’s overdone. I think it’s cute, like the connective tissue that binds all Western-themed games together.

Mehs

  • Only having one character isn’t my favorite, though. I was a bit disappointed that only one character made it into the preview, though I’m not sure what other abilities I would expect to see. Maybe more will pop up during crowdfunding? Unclear.

Cons

  • There are some pretty “feels bad” moments if you get particularly unlucky, so be careful to avoid those. I think the worst one for me was watching the last card I needed to escape get shuffled back into the deck because the Wagon came out at an unexpected time before I could swap it into my hand. That also led to a loss, which didn’t feel great. There’s not much for it (I should have played better), but that doesn’t always matter to the player in the moment. Just be careful!

Overall: 7.75 / 10

Overall, Welcome to Reckoning is a fun and nifty solo game! I’m usually a bit loathe to play solo games, these days, since I’ll just end up playing Wobbledogs or Tears of the Kingdom instead, but when I can slow down and try one (read: I have to try one for a review), I’m generally liking the ones I get to see! This one does a great job with the Weird West theme, combining tentacles and horror and strange dust with the legally-mandated “if your game takes place in a Western-themed game, you must have a poker mechanic of some kind”. I find that consistency comforting. This is a tough solo game, partially because it’s the “survive every bad thing thrown at you” type of game, which can be rough, and also because I mean, strategically, it’s not easy. You can slip up and lose Health or Willpower, and as goes one of those, so follows the game. Thankfully, it’s a very quick reset to play again. I was a bit disappointed by there only being one character in the preview, so I’m hoping they figure out a way to include more later in the full game. Similarly, as a player, there are a few things you can do that feel “not great” when they happen, like drawing the Wagon when you have three of a kind and the fourth one in the discard pile and then having to shuffle the entire discard pile back into the deck, losing your chance to get to that card quickly. Not ideal. You can strategy around that, though; it just feels bad when it happens. If you’re a fan of Western-themed games with a bit more weird to them, you really want to collect four of a kind, or you’re looking for a fun and challenging solo experience, I’d suggest checking out Welcome to Reckoning! I’ve solidly enjoyed it.

If you enjoyed this review and would like to support What’s Eric Playing? in the future, please check out my Patreon. Thanks for reading!

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