Explorers - "Courage, Carrots and... Cats?" - Table For 1

there's also special rules for solo play which i'll leave for you to discover on your own or you could discover it right now with me here at the table for one [Music] finally we've found it a new world just waiting to be explored and oh boy explore it we will maybe we'll even become the greatest explorer of all time that's what we're hoping for at least in the game explorers designed by phil walker harding and published by robinsburger who helped sponsor this episode now if you want the full rules explanation for explorers you can of course check out rodney's how to play video which is linked in the description below but i'm going to be taking us through the solo mode today and i'll be explaining the little differences between the multiplayer version and the solo mode while we play loon is also here if you have your own copy of explorers i'd love it if you would play along with me and then let me know in the comments below what your score ends up being and with all that being said i guess we'll dive in and start exploring wish me luck so here we are all set up for the game i've chosen this side of the player board which is your basic starting side i've also got the basic scoring tiles up here for provisions villages and gyms and then i've randomly selected and placed these four map tiles in my player board now if you're playing along with me you're going to need map tile three two seven and eight and you'll want to set up your map so that it looks exactly like this so maybe pause the video right now set that up and then come back when you're ready do you want to play explorers luna yeah are you gonna hang out are you gonna be a distraction so today i've decided we are not playing on expert mode but we are going to use some of the achievements to spice up the game a little bit now when you're playing this in the multiplayer version you'd all have different achievements but for the solo mode these are the achievements we're going to use if you're playing along so the first one is we will score a point at the end of the game for every x in the longest single diagonal line we will earn points for the number of apples we collect during the game and then we will also earn 10 points if we can mark off a space in every water section of the game oh this is nice because this actually connects we need an x somewhere in here one here here here here here and here if we can get an x in all these water sections we'll earn ten points so the last thing we need to do to be totally set up and ready to play is to mark our starting village now this is the village that is the closest to the center of the map and that looks to me like it's going to be village number eight here which is one two three four spaces away from the center which is certainly fewer spaces than seven three and two so eight is our starting village and if you're playing along you also should mark eight now this is the only time we'll be marking a village on the map otherwise you have to mark around the village but you can't go through it we will now pick one terrain type to mark with three x's to get us going now if you're playing along we can all pick a different terrain what terrain do i want i might want to go on and start working on my my water achievement here so maybe i'll mark this x this x and this one so those are my three spaces i'm going to start the game with okay with that done i think we're ready to flip over our first exploration card and see what kind of terrain we have to go with for this first turn so we need to mix these up remove one randomly we'll set that aside there that's the one we won't have this round and now we have seven left and we'll flip one over each turn and once we get to the bottom of this pile of seven that's the end of the round all right let's see in a solo game i flip this once it's flipped i cannot change its orientation and the terrain facing me so this one is the terrain that is the active terrain this term so that means we can mark three x's of the train facing us prairie or if we want we can do two x's of the train facing away from us which in this case is mountains ah i want apples for scoring i want x's and rivers and i want to make a diagonal line at some point i also really want to go after gyms i think i'm actually going to do two of the mountain on this turn i'm going to do one here which gets me a gem which i will mark off there then i'm going to do one here i basically just want to work my way over to this apple i think okay so we'll take the ones we've already used i'm just going to stack them over here in a discard pile next explorer tile so this is a wild this means we can split our three x's between water or desert or we can split two x's between mountain and prairie i think it's probably gonna make sense to do water in desert so i think what we'll do here is i'm gonna do two water one two i wanna get that gem and then is do i wanna put one in a desert somewhere i could put one here if i do that that's that starts to contribute to a diagonal line here which is kind of nice so i will do that okay that's our three x's put that in our discard pile flip over the next explorer card three mountain or two desert i'm gonna do three mountain i'm gonna start to work my way up into this map tile to one two three which gets me another gem great discard that one flip over the next one i'd really like to start working my way down towards some keys because the sooner i can unlock some temples the more points i'm going to get for them three prairie or two desert oh prairie will get me an apple which i like i do like that and then i can start to work my way over this way toward this temple so i'm going to do the three prairie i'm going to do one apple which will mark off right here i'll do another one here and then for my third prairie i'll connect over here i might not be unlocking any temples this round it's hard it's hard to say oh another wild okay so three split between ocean and mountain or two split between prairie and desert ocean and mountain seems like a pretty good idea because i can actually connect down into here where this key is i like that so i'm gonna do one ocean and two mountain oh this is great because now i'm one away from this key and one away from that key which i think that that's very good so i got another gem starting off with four gems i like that because these are gonna score every round so the more we can get earlier on the more points overall we're gonna get for gems in the game if you've seen my cartographer's video this is a lot like my coin strategy which you know i like all right second to last one three prairie or two ocean prairie yes i think prairie so i'm going to mark off this key for one and i'm going to circle this we now have this key available to us so that we can mark off a temple space if we can get to it then i think i'm also going to go one two to get us closer to that temple space it would be great to get one more food item so that we can score more than two points for provisions this round i mean we did get an apple so we've at least guaranteed us three points at the end of the game last one for the round water oh we could get a fish i think we should do two of these one two to get that fish then where should we put the third one we could start to work our way up here which i think might be a good idea and that gets us an x in this body of water which is one closer to having an x in all of them so i'm going to do my third x here make some progress okay that is the end of the first round of the game which means we need to score up for the first round so the first thing we're going to do is score up for our provisions we've marked off two of the three which means we get five points here this we won't score till the end of the game we have one two three four gems which i will mark right here and now before we start the next round we actually have to mark off because we're in the solo mode the highest value available for each of the temples so now because we didn't find any of them in the first round the most any of them is worth to us is 10 points at the beginning of each round for the rest of the game will mark off the highest value in the temples and that's to motivate you to get to those temples so now we take the tile that we didn't have in our stack before we add it back in and we reshuffle these to make a new exploration deck for round two okay we'll pull this one out is the one we will not be using that's so that this is randomized a little bit every round and let's start round two let's see what we get here mountains how do we get to more temples there's a temple there and a temple there i think we should get the gem and i think we should get the key so we have two keys we need to really push towards some temples this round i think i'm going to start to make my way over to this carrot in this temple i think oh i could get one away from this apple i'm gonna get one away from the apple that's where my third x is gonna go luna you have something you wanna say bye discard that up here flip over the next one so three desert or two mountain oh we could get to this temple i like that so i'm gonna go one two we can unlock that temple with this key so now i'm in a circle we have earned 10 points for temple number c number c letter c so we have one more x we can put i kind of think maybe we put it over here somewhere we could start surrounding this village with x's because that'll earn us points at the end i think that's what we'll do so i'll put one x here all right next turn desert again three desert or we can do two prairie if we'd like [Music] i'm gonna do three here one two three that gives me a scroll now at any time i can mark off an unused circled scroll and instead of using the terrain that i flipped over i can do four x's in any terrain i want so that might come in handy at some point so that's why i put my three x's there next three mountain or two ocean luna's back i think we start to make our way over here so three mountain one two that gets me a gem three gets me closer to this carrot and this temple i would really like a wild exploration card actually i think i would like to start mixing it up i don't feel like i'm collecting enough provisions at all so far in this game okay let's see what this is oh ask and ye shall receive okay so we can do three split between uh desert or prairie or two ocean mountain i think desert and prairie are gonna be the way to go because here's what i can do i can do one desert one prairie that gets me an apple for this round so now i'm gonna have six points for that because i've marked off two in the game i have one more i can go on a prairie or a desert i put it here i can put it here and get no i can't do the other apple because i've already got one for this round okay so we won't be doing that oh i could put it here and be close to that carrot let's do that that's that flip over the next one we have two left these rounds go so fast it's another wild so now our split is between mountains and prairie or for two x's we could do desert and ocean i could do three two mountains and a prairie here get another gym i think i'll do that okay one two three that gets me another gem i'm pretty much going all in on my gym points right now i need to start marking off more water spaces oh no okay last one for the round it's desert or we could do two ocean or we could do four of anything if we want let's think for a minute let's think about what we should do luna what are she doing back there all right let's get this carrot if i do one here that's another that will be three x's by our starting village which is going to be worth seven points at the end i think i'll do one here and then my third x here so now we have one by number seven village so that's three points guaranteed there all right that's the end let's count up our round two points we again had two provisions of the three so we get five points for that we now have seven gems so we'll mark that there and we now mark off the next highest value left on all of our undiscovered temples values are getting pretty low there let's reset our exploration deck add this tile back in and do some shuffling let's pull this one in the middle out that's the one we won't be using round three halfway through the game okay so we get to start off with three ocean or two mountain we should mark some ocean because we really need to get x's and more of these areas of water i'm just going to try and get myself closer to some things i could manage to use so i think i will mark one x here which gets me one away from the gem one x here which gets me one away from the temple and one x here which gets me one away from this key so now with other terrain when it comes up i am closer to achieving some things hopefully that's an okay strategy okay oh a wild tile that's good so ocean in desert for three or mountain and prairie for two okay i'm gonna do one of the ocean here to get this gem that i set up for myself last turn then i'm gonna do one desert and one ocean now i'm one away from this fish which is great and also i have an x in this body of water which is good for this so now what do i have left i have an x here an x here here here and this one's all connected so that should count for this whole thing here so this is the last body of water i need to get an x in in order to earn 10 points i think that was pretty decent i need to remember i can use this scroll to give myself just four of something which honestly could be really great i could chain that with a horse because a horse gets me an extra x anywhere as long as it's next to an x i've already placed okay let's see what this is oh it's another wild okay oh my gosh that cat cannot come in here because he will be a disaster shepard go away oh this is great okay so i'm going to spend one of these to unlock this temple using this key so we now get eight points for temple b which is good then i have two more x's to place i think one should be this apple i have one more and i think i think it's gonna be this horse i'm going to finally use a horse which gets me an additional x i can place anywhere adjacent to an x i've already placed so i have a couple of options here i could get this fish i could set myself up to get this carrot i could get closer to this gem which gets me closer to this key i could go here which would give me another point of an x around a village i've got a lot of options that could be good i'm going to set myself up for this carrot i think so i'm going to mark off a mountain space there next tile prairie well i'll do one here so now we have that x by that village i think i'll do one here to get closer to this gem and then i'm going to do one here to start to get closer to that temple so i was real spread out that time all right next one ocean i'm so close to being able to get to this and i just can't quite do it yet i could put one here and get the fish okay let's do one here so i'm almost surrounded this village which is going to be really good for points at the end of the day so that's one of my three here's a fish so that's two of my three i can't quite get into here yet so i'm just going to come up here to start to try and make my way up into more into this tile from a way that's not just those x's let's see oh we only have two more left this round prairie or we could do two desert it might be worth doing the two desert honestly because we need to start connecting to some of these other things and that'll get me a carrot which is worth five points because if i get three of these this round then i have ten points instead of just five i think i'm going to do two or i could use my scroll and do four prairie i'm gonna do that i'm gonna choose prairie but because i'm using my scroll i could technically name any landscape but i'm gonna stick with prairie i'm gonna do four of them so i'm gonna do one carat one gem one x here so now i can start to get into this water area and then i'm going to do one more x here that allows me to now be closer to being able to put x's around this village hopefully that was worth it okay it's the last explore tile of the third round and it's prairie or two mountain all right let's get the key for one now i have two more i'm gonna do them here so now i'm close to this fish but i'm also close to a horse which might come in handy in the last round time to score for round three so we found all three provisions this round which is great that's going to be worth 10 points we have 789 gems and we now mark off the highest value left for our undiscovered temples which is just a and d and we're ready to go to round four the last round of the game luna are you ready for the last round of the game pulling that one out so this round if we want ten points we absolutely need to get an x into this water and this water desert you get this carrot with two of those okay yeah i'll do two x's one two that gets me a carrot here in the last round and then i'm gonna use my third x right here and that gets me one x adjacent to village number three so that's good that'll score me three points we don't have anything by village two yet but maybe we can make something happen this round more desert or we could do mountain i could just get up to village two or i could do two mountain and get i'm gonna do this i'm gonna get the gym i don't know if that's a good idea or not but i'm gonna do two mountain i'm gonna get this gem oh now we have mountains or two water i think we should do the two water because it's gonna let us unlock this temple here so i will i'm gonna do two water one two that also gets us an x in this body of water we just need to get into this one now we will mark off this key and now we have discovered temple d that's sex points alrighty what's next more mountains okay let's do one two that gets us a horse which i'm going to put here and then for my third x i'm gonna put it here so we now have two x's adjacent to village number three all right that was my three three desert or two ocean should we do the two ocean i just don't know will ocean come up again we only have two left i don't normally do so many of the two terrain i normally almost always use the three terrain but i just i really want to get into this ocean so i'm going to do one two in the ocean so now we have an x in every body of water we're going to get 10 points and we're one away from this key which we weren't before so two more in the whole game oh it's a wild okay so we can do mountain or prairie boy okay here's what i'm gonna do i'm gonna do two mountain spaces one two that gets me a squirrel then i'm gonna do one prairie right here now i think unless something really really great flips over for this last tile i'm gonna use that scroll in my last turn to do four prairie and get that last apple but let's see what flips over unless there's something amazing with mountain and ocean we don't i was like oh we could get to this last temple but we don't have a key to open it up so we actually can't i think my original plan is good i am going to use my scroll i'm going to declare that i'm using it for prairie so let me mark this off and then i get to mark four x's i'm gonna do one two three four this is good because it gets me another provision for scoring i now have four apples which is going to get me 15 points at the end of the game and i was able to mark another x by village number three which means it's gonna be worth seven points now i feel like that was a decent way to go with it that's also the end of round four let's see what was our uh removed terrain tile oh it would have been prairie or but we would have flipped it like this so it could have been ocean we got x's and all the bodies of water right yes luckily this this does count because it's connected because you can see here in the example that this is connected across tiles and one x fulfills it let's count up our score for round four we have two provisions which is five points we have i think ten gyms and that's that so now we're going to score for everything on our board for in-game scoring and then we'll score for our achievements okay so let's total all of this up 5 10 20 25.

for our provisions now let's look at our villages first we look at village a right here so that has one two three x's and the spaces adjacent to it so that means it's worth seven points in our village b we have nothing adjacent to it so that's a big fat zero c we have one two three so that's seven more points and d which is right here we have one two three which is seven more points so that is 21 points for villages now we add up our gems we have 11 and 10 is 21 and 9 is 30.

i feel pretty good about that okay we'll add up our temple points we didn't get anything for a we got 10 for c 8 for b and 6 for d which is 18 19 21 22 23 24 points for temples do these make anyone else this makes me think of like a computer like almost like a word processor type computer that's especially here look at that doesn't that look like a symbol for a computer anyway okay 24 points yeah and now we're going to calculate for our achievements so first let's find our longest diagonal line we'll get one point for every x in that this is going to take me a second okay i think my longest diagonal line is right here let me draw a line through it one two three four five six so that's six points for that we got 15 points because we ended up getting an apple every round so that's all for apples and then i think we get 10 points for this because we have an x in every body of water which we worked very hard to do so that's 25 and 6 is 31.

i think we had a really good game 100 131 points y'all now of course this is a solo game so we got to see how we rank based on our score 131. now here is the solo explorer rankings now you're supposed to add 10 points to each of these categories for each achievement used in the game we used three achievements so we need to buff all of these up by 30 to get our actual ranking or what we could do is just subtract 30 points from our score and see where we fall 101.

ah here we are right here alexander von humboldt would be proud of you we basically just made it into this category that's not bad we got lots of room to grow but we we did well enough to feel pretty good about ourselves i think so shepherd outside the room feels good about it too thank you so much for watching this episode of table for one if you played along with me let me know in the comments below what your score ended up being and what you did differently from me that you think maybe affected your score to make it different from mine i'd be really curious about that don't forget you can check out rodney's full how to play video for explorers linked in the description below and if you enjoy game playthroughs like this make sure to check out our game played series hosted by monique and naveen where they go head-to-head in two-player games if you enjoyed the video go on and give it a thumbs up share it with someone who you think might enjoy it and also if you're not subscribed to the channel subscribe why not hit the notification bell and that way you'll always know when i have a new episode out for you and until then thanks for watching