Solo: The Rival Family

The Big Box’s official opponent and expansion adjustments.

Setup

Use the two-player setup and expansion-combination card. You always start. The rival takes no coins, time marker or score marker and does not collect goods or prestige.

Give the rival 11 villagers, or 12 with [Marriage]. Keep generations 1 and 2 beside the rival board; put the four generation-3 and generation-4 villagers on the church building. Cover unused action symbols on the rival board. Put its disc beside the front available customer.

Separate the six fate tiles into two three-tile sets, each with exactly one quill. Shuffle each separately face down and put three above and three below the rival board. Use the solo Mass aid.

After your cube

After you take a cube, the rival takes another:

1. Same colour, same action area if possible.
2. Otherwise same colour from the next area clockwise that has one.
3. If that colour is absent everywhere, choose any cube in the area you used.
4. If that area is empty, choose any cube in the next nonempty area clockwise.

Put its first cube beside the council symbol on its board. Continue clockwise through its recessed spaces for later cubes. After your Well action, the rival takes no cube and has no reaction; it is your turn again.

Fate and deaths

When placing a cube crosses a fate tile, immediately reveal it. A blank does nothing. A quill kills the rival’s oldest villager. Its cube’s action area determines the chronicle profession; if no matching space is free, or the cube came from Market, use the graveyard.

Once all three tiles in one top/bottom set have been revealed, shuffle that set and return it face down. Repeat whenever a set is exhausted; do not shuffle early after its first quill.

Use generation 1 and 2 villagers first, then remaining villagers on the church building (3 before 4), then villagers on the church track from left to right.

Rival reactions

The rival does not normally perform the action whose cube it took. It reacts only to:

• Market: serve the front available customer without paying; it never serves more than one per market day. If you served that customer first, it takes the next one.
• Church: put the lowest-numbered rival villager from the church building into the black bag for free. Once none remains on the building, skip this reaction for the rest of the game.

Mass and a new round

Draw as usual. Each drawn rival villager enters the first church stage from the left not already occupied by another rival villager: at most one rival villager per stage. Its presence can deny your majority points.

Before the new round, clear its collected cubes except the last one, which preserves its position. Refill action cubes normally and continue clockwise from that last cube.

In solo, the claimed next-starting-player ring may be spent like a coin. Return it to its council position when preparing the next round, whether claimed or spent.

Expansions

• [Inn] A quill from the Inn action causes a graveyard burial; the rival never takes character cards.
• [Port] A travel-related death follows sea-burial rules when the travel chronicle is full, including its end trigger.
• [Marriage] Add a third pink villager and the solo wedding aid. Roll twice at weddings. A Marriage-action death uses the farm category; a Smuggler death uses the graveyard. Two pink spouses return to the supply.

End and result

Use the normal end rules and score your family. The rival has no score to beat. The German publisher table groups results into 0–39, 40–49, 50–59, 60–69, 70–79 and 80+ prestige.