Optional Rules For Solo Including Ranged and Sentinel

I will not be making any rule changes for my Against the Shadow series, but I did want to touch on a couple of rule ideas that I occasionally play with for the Ranged and Sentinel keywords, as those abilities are a fun part of the game, but have no place in true solo, since you need 2 or more players for them to work. There's also a fun 4 Hero solo variant presented.

Optional Range Rule in Solo

For Ranged in solo, my optional rule is as follows:

During the Combat Phase, when enemy attacks have resolved and player attacks may begin, a character with the Ranged keyword may exhaust to declare an attack against multiple enemies that are engaged with you. When doing so, subtract x from your attack score, where x is the number of enemies targeted. Each enemy targeted in this way by the Ranged character may be attacked alone, or may join with an attack by another character. For example, the player is engaged with a Dol Guldur Orcs and a Hill Troll. Legolas uses his ranged attack to target both the Orcs and the Troll. Legolas has 2 Gondolin Blades attached, so he will get +2 attack strength vs. the Orcs, but only his normal 3 attack strength vs. the Troll. Since he is targeting 2 enemies, he makes each attack at -2 attack strength. The player is also having Aragorn attack the Troll with his 3 attack strength. The attack Legolas makes against the Troll can be combined with Aragorn's attack, for a total attack strength of 4, while the Orcs, which Legolas is attacking alone, would be for an attack strength of 3. You would only use this ability if Legolas was unable to ready after attacking, because if he was able to ready, he would make each attack at full value, so there would be no advantage to using the Ranged ability in that case. The rule that says a character can only attack an enemy once per round still applies.

Optional Sentinel Rule in Solo

My optional rule for Sentinel in solo is as follows:

A character with Sentinel can defend an attack that becomes undefended due to a shadow card effect. If the Sentinel character is exhausted, that character's defense strength gets -1; if the Sentinel character exhausts to defend such an attack, no penalty is applied to their defense strength. As an example, if an ally is defending an attack and a shadow card removes the defending ally from play, which would make the attack undefended, Aragorn, a Hero with Sentinel, may be declared as a new defender, in the action window that occurs after a shadow card is resolved and before damage is dealt. When combat damage is determined, if he exhausts, Aragorn applies his normal 2 defense strength against the attack, taking damage from an attack (less his defensive strength as normal), and thus preventing undefended damage to a Hero. If Aragorn is exhausted prior to using this Sentinel ability, he may still defend the attack, but his defense strength would only be 1 (after applying the -1 defense strength penalty).

There you have it...my optional rules for Ranged and Sentinel. Again, I won't be using them for my Against the Shadow series, but I thought it would be nice to have those optional rules in solo for those who want to use those keywords.

4 Hero Solo Variant

Another variant I have been experimenting with in solo is one that I call the "4 Hero Splash". In this variant, you must have 1 Hero from each Sphere. For your starting Threat, add together the Threat Cost of the Heroes with the 3 highest Threat Cost, and then add half of the Threat Cost of the 4th Hero (rounded up). For example, Aragorn, Legolas, Eowyn, and Denethor would be 34 (12+9+9+(8/2)). Maximum Threat is still capped at 50, and deck size and card draw remain the same. On every 3rd round (starting with Round 3), draw an extra card from the Encounter Deck during Staging as you would in a 2 player game. While it's fun to have instant access to all 4 Spheres, and you get another actionable Hero each turn, who is generating more resources, this also means you will Threat out more quickly and engage dangerous enemies sooner, so be prepared! I'm still tweaking this and will have more regarding this variant in a future post...