With Rob Sadler

The difficulty is I’m on Planet Isolation and don’t have any other crew members, so I went through my boardgame stash looking for a one-player game, and there like a shining beacon is Firefly. Firefly was one of my first boardgame playtests with the Battlefront/Gale Force 9 Team and we would have play-tested this back around 2012/2013, it was my first glimpse into the Serenity/Firefly ‘Verse’ and I couldn’t believe that there weren’t multiple series of this show!!
 
One of my isolation tasks is to learn the great games I have and in post isolation teach them to others. I needed a fresh recap of the rules and then set it up and give it a crack. I decided I may need some in-game changes to replicate the tricks other players may play on me and to not make it too easy.

The first thing I modified was the movement of the Alliance Cruiser and the Reaver Cutter. I decided that a random movement was appropriate. I numbered the spaces they could go and randomly rolled (if this was more than 6 then I used two dice with the first space being a two on the dice). This seemed to work, but in my next game I will change this to move towards my ship where possible to make it a bit more cutthroat.
 
The next idea I had was when I choose to ‘Mosey Along’ (you can move one space to conserve fuel and there is no Nav Card drawn), so any time I Mosey Along I roll a 1D6. If I score a six then I have to flip over a Nav Card just like during other movement. This added a small element of risk and discouraged taking the easy route.
 
Like any game I haven’t picked-up in a while I was bound to get some rules wrong, or I needed to have a good read thus slowing the first play through down a little. I am sure when I have another run I will find I was doing something wrong, but hey, lets just call that a variation!!

With Joe Kepler

Joe is a regular contributor back to the design team, as well as in our Facebook group. We asked him, as a solo player, to explain what makes Brigands and Browncoats so engaging.
 
Firefly Adventures as a Solo game is also fun and exciting, but for me it's different than just a race against the clock. The entire game is already set up as a race against the time track, but the aspect of Solo play feels different than Firefly the Game. It is much more immersive, with the different characters all working towards the common goal. The Role-play factor (for me) is much more pronounced than the 'race the clock' aspect. Depending on which crew you choose for the mission is also a huge factor in how you play because different crew abilities can drastically change how you play the scenario. Even the Scenario's themselves have elements in them which makes the job different every time, so much like the show, you just don't know what twist of fate things might take. These twists and turns bring an exciting element to the game play which adds to the game replay value. The different jobs, mixed with a different crew, mixed with the overall strategy of that crew to accomplish the mission make the game exciting as a Solo play adventure.

In short, Solo games for Firefly Adventures are not only about beating the mission, but about enjoying the story that gets told and getting immersed in that story for a couple of hours. That probably sounds goofy, but that's how I roll!
 
Practically speaking, I randomize a lot. If I'm playing a campaign, I randomly draw the jobs and randomly draw the crew. Solo games take roughly two hours each job. I'm constantly interrupted with family things, so I tend to leave the board set up in the 'game room' so I can go sneak off and play a couple of turns in-between the crazy times. I use all the official and fan made scenarios when I'm picking a job (we have 23 total jobs now), so it is rare to run the same job twice in a row.