Drillers solo play - One Stop Co-Op Shop
Transcript
Hey everybody, this is Mike with the Onetop Co-op Shop. And today I'm doing a solo playthrough of Drillers. And disclaimer that I got a review copy of this one. And if you like the content on the OneTop Co-op Shop, consider supporting us through Patreon. You get early access to our videos and exclusive videos every month you can't see anywhere else. You can also listen to our weekly podcast with reviews and design discussions, or join the conversation and say hi on our Discord. So, this is the newest game from Czech Game Edition. It's a competitive deck builder where you're trying to move down into these mines, mine as much minerals as you can and try to end up with the most victory points. And it's got a solo mode. I'll be controlling the red bot. And I won my last game against the twostar difficulty bot. There are four difficulty levels uh pretty easily, although I might have cheated a little bit. Uh so I'm going against a three star bot this time, which is the hardest I have faced. We'll see how that goes.
And to talk through some of the things you've got going on. So, you've got this vertical board that's showing the levels you can move down into. You start out up here at the shop. Uh, when you move down one, you go into level one, which has nothing to do in it. But going down further, you get to levels 2, three, four, and eventually five and six. Only level two is open at the beginning. Somebody needs to drill a bunch to open up the lower levels that have better rewards available to them. Uh, each level randomly has a card assigned to it. You can only see the level two one at first. It's going to change up the abilities there game to game. They also each have corridors you can drill to get more minerals to come out. These are also worth victory points to you and they can speed up the endame as you collect more of these tiles. And each one also has different bonuses you can get. Like this one gives you three credits at the cost of losing some of its victory point rewards. So here it would go from four to two if you took advantage of getting those three credits. When you go back up to base, you can spend those credits, especially from selling minerals to upgrade your deck and also to call cards out of your deck. The cost of each card is up here.
Cards come in four types. You've got ones that are focused on drilling, ones that are focused on movement, kind of utility ones with varied abilities, and then these ones require special batteries to unlock, which you only get from drilling corridors and new levels, but they're the strongest cards in the game. Each player has a little board that tracks everything for them. They've got their max fuel set at 10 at first and whenever you go up to the surface you'll regain 10 fuel. Uh the cards you can play from your hand will generally cost fuel to activate. You can also use fuel, although it's expensive to do movement and drilling actions without a card. Over here is where I can hold the resources that I drill. I can spend credits when I go back up to increase my capacity there. When I sell minerals, they go up here and that tells me how many credits I get. I also get different numbers of victory points for each mineral that I mine. If I don't have enough room, they go up here to my overflow area. And I had mentioned putting those corridor tiles over here.
They move to the right. If you get minerals in this overflow area, they move to the left. And when they meet, or when somebody just completely fills their top row, that triggers the end of the game. Every other player besides the one who triggered it gets a final turn. And that's it. You're done. There's also some divider areas over here. when they get crossed over by those tiles at the top, you get these milestone tiles that are worth victory points, but they give every other player some bonuses when somebody else gets them. And finally, these spots here are just kind of optional spots to track the number of drilling and movement actions, the two main things you can do because even when you play a card for a bunch of moving or a bunch of drilling, you don't have to use it right away. So, you could play a whole bunch of stuff and then kind of mix and match the actions you take. And you just look at a card more closely. In the upper left is the amount of fuel you can discard it for if you don't want to play it or if you need to get some more fuel for other effects. And then all the stuff in the left going to the bottom left is the fuel cost in red there and what actions it gives you. Sometimes it's a choice like for this basic torso card. You can either drill or move.
Every player starts with the exact same deck of eight cards plus one damage card. Uh some of the cards have negative victory points if they stay in your deck, but like I said, there's lots of ways to potentially call cards out. And that should be enough to get started. I also have this little token here that I can use to refresh the market when I'm buying stuff uh once per game, but then it becomes worth zero victory points instead of one. I've also got drones, one active at first, and I can use these during my turn when I'm down in the mine to either sell a mineral or to buy a card if I have money from the supply. So, it kind of lets me do a little bit of the stuff I would usually do when I get back up to the surface. And yeah, that's kind of it. I'll go into a bit more nuance as I play, but let's jump right into drillers. So, the human player always goes first. I start out with two credits and three cards in my hand. The torso card is always on top. And that can give me either two movement or one drill. And right now, I'm not in the mine. So, I'm certainly going to play that one first for the two movement and not for the drill. Costing me one fuel there out of my 10. And like many deck builders, cards you play go into your played area until the end of your turn. So, that gave me two uh moves. Let's go ahead and play the grabber as well for four more to get me two drills. And then what the hey, I'll use the vintage drill to get one more. So, I've got three drills total. But, as it says here, you remove this card from the game when you use it, which means I won't have it anymore for that three fuel game, which is pretty nice. So, that's gone. But, I've got two moves and three drills. Let's see what we want to do. So, the two moves is
pretty obvious. One, two, down to here. And I've got a few options for my three drills. I've got two gray cubes here. the cheapest minerals we can get. Each drill lets you drill a single rock. So, I could get both of those and have one drill left over. Uh for two drills, I can drill a corridor here, which would get me some victory points, some money, and would place a gold mineral and another gray there. And the gold is worth more, so I might want to do that. Or I could spend all three to just go ahead and go down the next level. Don't want to do that one, though, because that's just going to open it up for the bot to come in and get the blue and yellow, which are more valuable. So, I think for my first two drills, I'll go and drill the corridor. So, this adding a gray and gold to the floor. Then for my one remaining drill, let's get the one gold. If the bot comes in and takes some gray, so be it. And that's the end of what's called the operations phase.
When I end my operations phase, I check the level I'm currently on and I see if it has one of these uh purple hourglass icons. In this case, the brewery does. I gain one fuel back. So, I have six fuel. I'll definitely be able to do some more stuff before I have to leave again. Next, if I was on the surface, I would go into the surfacing phase. I would get all my fuel back. I would sell my minerals. I could buy cards. All that good stuff. But here, of course, that doesn't apply. And then finally, I go into upkeep. If I had one card left in my hand, I could keep it for free. If I had more than one card and I wanted to hang on to them, because I'm going to draw three cards no matter what. So hanging on to cards can give you like a big comboastic turn. But for each card you hang on to beyond the first, it costs one extra fuel. I mean, here I have no cards, but just explaining how it works. Okay. Okay, then all the cards I played go to my discard pile. And then finally, I draw three cards. And by the way, you might notice that my deck is face up. In the actual game, when you're not filming from overhead, you have one of these little holders, so you can always see what the topmost card of your deck is, but the other players can't.
And some effects even let you interact with this card. But yeah, I'm just going to keep it face up for here. Okay, so I got a damage card, which is uh pretty much only good for uh drawing cards or getting fuel. I got a claw to dig. And good, I got a spider leg to get home. That's really what I needed. And if my deck is ever emptied, I immediately reshuffle so I can always see the topmost card in my deck. All right. And with that, we get to the first bot turn. And the bot takes two types of turns. If they're at the top of the mine, like they are right now, they take an action turn, which is where they're going to do a bunch of stuff. If they're instead down in the mine, which only happens when they take certain types of action turns, they'll take a reset turn where they grab a few minerals and then head back to base. So, it sort of approximates what a real player does. I mean, kind of. All right. So, what I do is I flip their card and I ignore everything. They, by the way, have the exact same deck as I do. The eight starting cards plus one damage card, but they never buy or sell or change anything. And the only thing we pay attention to is the cost of the action here, which is one. So, then we find the row that matches that cost, which is right here, the one. And we find the first column that has empty spaces for minerals here. So, right now, we're going to be right here in this spot. But if they had filled this, they'd be taking an action here. If they had filled this, they'd be taking an action here. You get the idea. And then you just resolve the things from left to right. So if they show a number and drills, then the bot is going to try to drill the most valuable thing that they can afford and that's available in the current mine with the number of drills they have. So here they're doing a single drill, and this is the priority of what they want to do. The very first
thing they want to do if they have enough drills is open up a new level. That would cost them three drills right now. That's impossible. And to be clear, they sort of count as being anywhere in the mine they want to be. Like in actuality, they need to be in this room if they were a player to drill down to the next level. But uh here it doesn't matter. Then the next thing they would want to do is drill the most valuable corridor in the sixth level. No. Then get a red mineral, which is worth a ton. Then the fifth level corridor. Then a green mineral. Fourth level corridor. Blue mineral. You get the idea. Now, here at the moment, the only things that are available to them is drilling to level three. Nope. is uh spending two drills to open up a level two corridor like I just did. Nope, they only have one drill uh to get a gold mineral, which they don't, or to get a gray mineral. And this one is a default. Even if there are no minerals available in the entire mine, they will still be able to do that. But just like a human player, they can't do anything except on open levels. So, all they can get, this is why this is all I left them, is a gray mineral. And they're going to be putting minerals on these little spaces here. They earn victory points for the bot just like they do for the human player. And as you already saw, they also level up what the bot can do. The more spaces they've filled, the nastier effects they get to for their turns.
Now, each of these little columns here can hold either one of the better minerals, the greens, blues, and reds, or two of the golds, and grays. So, whenever they get one gold or gray, they put it here. Whenever they get a second one, they fill in both of the top and bottom spots with them. And they're going to because after they do the one drill, they resolve this little symbol which shows a drill in all the minerals. And that just means they get the most valuable mineral they have access to. Uh if there's a tie, this was left out of the rule book, but they enter this on BDG. If there's a tie, they go for the best mineral that is in the highest level. Now here, of course, they're just getting another gray from my level. So they have now with two of them filled that little spot there. And then finally, if they had, they don't. If they had this blue symbol, they would actually move down into the mine to the floor with the most valuable minerals on it. And then that would trigger them taking a reset turn on their next action where they get two minerals and they head back to base and they throw away some of the cards from the offer in the market. And also, those kind of turns don't have them flip a card, which is important because when they flip through all nine of their cards, that also triggers the end of the game. So, it is a race to beat the bot no matter what.
But here, because it was only a one cost card, they're not doing any of that. They just got a bunch of minerals, which is kind of worse for me because generally they are slower and doing less when they take one of those reset turns. All right, so now it comes back around to me and the two movement from the spider leg, which would cost one fuel, would be enough for me to get home. and the claw would be enough drilling for me to get the one grave that's left on my level, which is honestly a little wasteful cuz I would still have a lot of fuel left. And then I've also got the damage card. So damage cards can be played for gaining two fuel or if you spend two fuel, they let you draw an extra card. But I can see the top of my deck is a crutch, which would just get me a movement for free. That's not doing much here. But I could play the claw for one drill and then spend four fuel for another drill to drill another corridor.
H the only negative of that is that then I am again helping the bot to get a gold because I don't think there's any way for me to get enough drilling to drill the corridor and get a gold and get home. And I really don't want to stay out one more round cuz I'm not going to have much to do with my capacity all full. So even though it's a bit basic, I'm going to spend one of my six fuel to get a drill and I'll pick up just the gray. Then I'm going to spend another fuel to move twice and get back to the surface. And I'm going to just waste four fuel. Oh well. Okay, so now I'm surfacing. Let's get to what happens with this. So first of all, you can sell any and all minerals in your storage. So I'm going to sell a gray for four and a yellow for five. You see the value of these goes down the more of one color you sell. And if you fill all three spots, they go into your overflow area and you just get the basic value here.
For gray, and gold, that's zero. Blue, green, and red are always worth something when you sell them, even if you already sold a three. But that got me nine credits. Make some change there. The silvers are five. I also get to fill my fuel tank for free. If I spend some credits upgrading how much fuel I can have, that'll also go up. And yes, I can spend credits. So, I could upgrade my fuel capacity. It'll cost me two the first two times, then three. So, I can just hold more fuel when I leave. I can also upgrade my storage capacity, which would mean I wouldn't have to come back to the surface as quickly. If I have cards left in my hand, I can discard cards to gain two more credits. Although, don't forget, I can keep one card at the end of my turn. Also, once per surface, this one's pretty important. I can spend five credits to make what's called a repair. That's basically culling a card from my deck permanently. And that card can come from my hand, from the cards I played this turn, from my discard pile, or the top card of my deck. And importantly, that'll get rid of cards like damage that have negative values. Additionally, if I repair a card that's in my hand, I get to draw a replacement card for free.
So, let's definitely do that for five because you can only do it once per surface. Might as well take advantage of it. And that does immediately let me draw my crutch here, which is not a great card. I want to call that one, too, but it's still better than the damage was. I can also, of course, go shopping. So, I've got six money left. I could flip my quarter tile to get three more to have nine. I can't get these yet cuz I don't have a battery to use for them. And that's what that little icon there is. But I could get any of these other six. Let's talk about my options. So the burner drill costs six. It would get me three fuel, but to activate it, I need to not spend any fuel, but that symbol means I need to get rid of a mineral that's in my supply. Now, it still goes in my overflow area. So I still get the victory points for it. I'm just not selling it. But then this gives me two drills and two fuel back. Yeah, that's right. Two fuel back. So it's actually paying me. But of course, I would have had to gain the mineral for one drill in the first place. So, it's, you know, not as good of an economy as it seems. As an alternative, I could spend all my money on the jackhammer. It costs three fuel to give me three drills, which is pretty dang good. But it's also got an ability that says, "Whenever you drill a corridor or barrier, gain one fuel." And that infinity symbol means that that's going to apply for my entire turn. Not just with drills from the jackhammer, but with anything I drill. Barriers, by the way, are what you drill to go down to the next level. In the movement category, I've got the flywheel for three uh for one fuel. It would give me three movement, which is pretty nice.
And then additionally, it would give me for the rest of my turn plus one fuel whenever I play a card to gain fuel instead of forwards effect. Or I could get the rocket drone that also gives me three movement for one. But then it's got a little drone symbol to the right of it. That means when I play this card for one fuel, in addition to the three movement, I also get to flip one of my drone tokens, which remember lets me sell stuff from down in the mine or lets me buy cards from the mine. And finally for the utility ones, I've got a nuclear reactor. It would cost seven. And this is a horizontal card because it never gets added to my deck. It just goes out and I get to use it once per turn. In this case, I could get one fuel per turn while I'm down in the mine, which is pretty good. Or I've got the sentient drone. For one fuel, I'd get one movement and get a drone and draw a replacement card. Dang, that's that's pretty dang good. And don't forget, I could also increase my capacity or my fuel. And again, I've got six money, nine if I use my little tile. I guess I could also sell the crutch I just drew into to get to 11 if I really wanted to.
But I'm going to keep it simple and flip over my tile to get three more credits and spend all my cash on a jackhammer. But then I can't increase my capacity. Hold on. Okay. Instead, I'm going to get the burner drill for six. We'll see how this goes. And I'm going to flip my token to get three more and go up to a third capacity. And any cards you buy go to the top of your deck. So I'm going to draw that in a moment. See? Yep. I got my crutch, my burner drill, my stock propeller. Oh, and my mining arm. Super expensive, but gets me three drilling as well. I'm hoping, this is the reason I decided to finally go with the burner drill, that I can combo that with that. I should get a mineral from that and then that'll get me back some of the uh crazy amount of fuel it cost to fund that one. And also, upkeep is when any empty spots are replaced. Oh, yes.
That's a really cheap three drill, but it would give you damage cards. No thank you. All right, and that's it for me. And the bot, remember, is still up at the top of the mine. So, they're going to take another action turn for two fuel this time. So, they're going to drill for three, then get a free mineral, then move down. And this time, they are absolutely going to open up level two. So, they grab this. Uh, they don't care about any of the stuff except for the 10 victory points here. And it does go in their little slot here. Now, just to note, each of the four player boards has a bot board on the back, but the nice dual layer stuff is only for the player side of things. You'll see there are like no actual indentations here. So you just got to kind of figure it out. All right. And they are going to find Rad Bath. So this says the first time you drill a corridor every turn, the things that add more resources here, you gain five fuel, but you also take a damage.
Well, isn't that nice? So that took all three of their drills. Then they take the most valuable resource that's open, which now is this very valuable blue one. That fills up a whole slot by itself. And then because they did have a movement icon, they're dropping all the way down here. They look for the floor that has the most red minerals, then green minerals, then blue, then yellow, then gray, and if there's a tie, in this case, they go to the lowest one. So, next turn, they'll take a reset turn, which means they'll take the two best minerals in their current level if I leave any for them. If there aren't any there, they'll just get grays from the supply anyway. So, that's kind of what I want to make happen when possible. All right, so now it's back to me. Let's go and play my stock propeller for two fuel to get three movement. It's going to be right down to the fun area they just unlocked. And then it's going to leave me a bit broke. But let's go ahead and use the mining arm for six fuel. So, I'm down to two. Two. I'm going to hate myself for this a little bit to mine a corridor, which is going to put out two yellows and a gray. And then I get five fuel back. Haha. And I also get a damage card to my discard. Uh, boo. I've still got one drill left. What am I going to drill? I'm going to drill this gold one.
And then, like a monster, I'm going to burn it with my burner drill. So, it goes straight to my overflow. Still worth three victory points, but uh not any money for me. And that's going to get me two more drilling, and I'm back to almost full fuel. That part's crazy. And with the two drills, I will get these two gold here, mainly to stop the bot from getting them in a second. And then I've still got the crutch, but there's not much reason to play cuz I don't want to move. Well, unless I wanted to go up to the brewery and get plus one fuel, but I don't think I need that. So, I'll just keep it cuz remember, you can keep one card for free. And then we're going to draw one, two, and reshuffle. Oh, and get the mining arm again. I'm a little worried here though. I don't want to get too much damage from doing that rad bath. Speaking of damage, it's on top. All right, good to go. So now the bot, since they are in the mine, does not take a turn. They just look at their current level. They take the two most valuable minerals there, which currently is just one gray. So they get another one from the supply. That does mean they have now leveled up. And then they run back to base and they callull some cards out of the market. And it's based on the color of the two minerals they got. If they picked up grays or gold for each of those, they get rid of the lowest cost card in the market. And if cards share the same cost, they get rid of all copies at that cost. If they picked up a blue, green, or red, they get rid of the highest cost card. So here they got two gray, so they're going to get rid of the reckless drilling, which costs two, and the flywheel, which costs three. And we'll replace those. And that's it for them. It's back to me. [sighs] Uh kind of want to drop down and dig a tunnel and get some valuable stuff here. Let's do it. Let's do it. Okay, so I'm going to play mining arm for six. Takes me to
three. And then I'm gonna play crutch for its fuel to get me back to five. Then I'll play grabber for uh what was it? Four. So that gets me five drilling. And then I'm going crazy. I'm going to zero out my fuel. We'll be fine. And I'll play torso to get a sixth drill because I want to leave free amazing stuff for the bot. So I'm going to spend four drilling. I don't really like this rad bath area. Let's get on down. So, that's 15 victory points. And this is a battery. And sorry, I should have mentioned my other one also has a battery. So, I can buy some of those superpowered cards now. And I have crossed the first milestone line. So, I get this worth four victory points. In a competitive game, every other player would get three credits as a consolation prize. Here though, the bot just gets a single gray cube. All right. Then I fall down in here and let's see what we got.
Toys are rust. Oh man, this is expensive. If I spend a fuel and trash a good, I can repair, which is pretty dang amazing. I don't have a fuel. Otherwise, I totally might have done that. Also, you might notice there were two other cards here because when you unlock level four, you also permanently double the number of special battery requiring cards that are available in the market. All right, and I've got two drills left. Uh, let's get the green first. And now here's why drones are useful. Because I have no room left. Yes, I do. Let's go ahead and flip my one drone and sell this green straight to the market for eight. And then for my last drill, I'll pick up the blue so the bot can get the yellow if they want. And man, if I can make it back to town, I'll be able to get seven, six, 13 more money. Be able to buy something nice for sure. Of course, the question will be, will I be able to get back home? All right, bots go in. And oh, they flipped a zero card, but they are now in this column sadly.
So, they're going to get to drill once and then get the best mineral available. But all I left them is the gold. So, they get that. And then the best mineral available is the nothing gray. So, they just created one from the ether. But they're also not moving down into the mine. They're going to do something nasty again very soon. But first, I get my turn to try to get out of here. Oh man, I need four movement. That's not going to happen, is it? Well, I do see the stock propeller there, huh? So, I can make this work. Haha. Okay, great. I'm going to play the claw and the spider leg for four fuel. Then, don't do this very often. I'm going to play the damage for two fuel to draw and get me. This is still not enough movement. What am I doing? Hold on. Rewind everything. That'll only give me three movement. I'd still be one shy of getting out. Yeah, this is why it's bad to leave yourself deep in the mine with nowhere to go. All right. So, instead, I'll use the claw to get two fuel. I'll pay one of those fuels to play the spider leg, which will get me up to the brewery where pay at least I will get one more fuel back. Well, you know, maybe I'll burn a yellow to fire off my burner drill and drill a corridor or something. I guess that's at least going to be worth it. But yeah, I'm not out. That's a bummer. All right, they're still flipping cards. Ooh, they got a big one, a four, which goes into the three plus. They're going to drill four, then get a free mineral and then come down. Now, they cannot afford, not quite to do this. So, the next best thing for them is grabbing that, which is going to put two blues and a yellow for them. The jerks. And that only cost three drills for them. So, then they've got a fourth one left. Plus, they're free. They're
getting two blues. Ow man, they already leveled up all the way. Yeah, they're definitely accelerating way faster than they did with the level two bot. Okay, then they're coming down here cuz that's the only place that still has a mineral left. Now, this part's not too bad. Their entire next turn will just be getting a yellow and a gray and then they'll get out of dodge. But ah man, that that's not great, especially with me moving slow at the moment. All right, so getting back to me. So if I use my burner drill, that would be enough to drill the corridor, which I do want to do cuz that'll give me another milestone. And then if I can use the claw, that would let me get back the yellow that I had spent, not leaving anything nice for the bot. And I can still do the stock propeller, too, right? All right, so we're gonna burn a yellow. Remember, it's going to my victory point, so it's not really a terrible thing. gets me two fuel and gets me two drills. So, let's go and drill that bad boy. And that does, yep, cross the next line. So, I get five more victory points and the bot gets another gray. All right, then I will spend one fuel on the claw to pick up the gold I covered. Getting it right back where it belongs. And then two more fuel. So, just about out to move three with the stock propeller. More than enough for me to get home. And I got the damage to call out. We'll see how that goes. All right, but I'm doing six and 10 and 13.
So, I'm at 21. Not bad. And I could flip this to get two more at the loss of only one victory point. I can also buy up to two blue cards. I want to consider doing that. In fact, yeah, let's see what we got. Oh man, the antimatter drive is so good. Move your mech to any floor or the surface for zero. Just teleport. Yeah, but it costs 11. Well, it's got one of the craziest drilling cards in the game. Supercharge drill. costs 12, but it drills at five, though you get a damage. Or I could go cheaper, the auto drill Ultra costs eight. But for two fuel, I get to drill twice and get a card. That's fantastic. Or man, I could just spend all my money basically and get the laser cutter pro. It gives me four drills for four fuel, but that wrench icon is a free repair. So, I'll be able to get rid of my damages and get rid of some of these cruddy cards that are still cluttering up my deck. My only worry with that is I haven't bought any new movement cards. So, if I get that in like no movement, that's not ideal. But if I uh flip that tile, I could get the laser cutter pro and the rocket drone, which would get me more movement and would get me more drones to send stuff back to the surface so I wouldn't have to come up as often. Okay, I'm liking that. So, I'm flipping this tile to get me to 23 money. And then I'm spending uh 18 22 of it. So, no repairs for me yet. I'm getting both of these bad boys.
Oh, and what if uh what if I sell this for two money? Why not? Because then it'll still be in my discard pile and the laser cutter pro can still do stuff with it. And with that, should I increase my fuel? Should I increase my carrying capacity? Yeah, cuz one drone is not going to be enough to get like everything up. So, okay, I will increase to holding four minerals overall. Oh, that might be a bad idea. I don't know if I have enough fuel efficiency to stay down that long. Oh well, I guess we'll see. So, now I'm drawing the laser cutter pro. I'm drawing the rocket drone. I'm drawing the mining arm. I don't need to mine that much yet, y'all. That's not really what I wanted. Oh, definitely get all your fuel, Mike. And let's refill some stuff. Oh man, I had this card in another game. Look at this. The ATM drone. You get one movement, you get one drone, and you get seven money. What? It's insane. But unless I use a drone to buy it from the surface, it's not mine. Okay. Uh, what's Oh no, the bot is already down. They're grabbing the yellow. That's where they are. Plus a gray from the supply cuz there was nothing else. And they're going home.
And they're trashing the cheapest. Oh no, the ATM drone. Well, I don't think I was really going to buy it, but still kind of sad. All right, now what am I going to do? Well, let's play Rocket Drone first for one fuel. Gets me three movement and a drone back. And I'll certainly play the laser cutter pro for four more fuel to get four drills and a free repair. Get out of here damage. I'll spend the three moves, go down to the rad bath, and then huh, you know what? I got ways to get rid of damage now. So, let's go ahead and spend two of my four drills so far to do a corridor. Putting out a blue and two yellow. So, I get five more fuel. I'm back to full. But the bad part is I get a damage in my discard pile. But hey, laser cutter can hopefully take care of that. And then I'll spend my two remaining drills to pick up the blue and yellow. And I'm going to spend three fuel uh to get a move action. Remember, you can always do that. By the way, another option I didn't talk about, and I should have considered this maybe earlier, is that you can take a damage card to get three fuel added on your turn if you're desperate. But yeah, that one move will get me down here, cuz here's the combo I was going for. I'm going to spend one fuel to take me down to six. And trash that yellow I just got. Well, not trash. It just goes up here. And at this point, yellows are worth zero money to me. They're just three victory points and they'd go to overflow anyway. But let's be repair again. Haha, the damage I took is gone.
So, I feel like I came out kind of ahead there. I've still got my mining arm to potentially spend all my fuel on, but let's wait and see what the bot does. They might open up a new level or uh open up some new resources I can grab. All right. What you doing, bot? Uh a one. And they're still here. So, they are drilling two and then getting minerals. Now, two would let them drill a level three or a level two. Yeah, they're going to go for a level three on the rad bath level because otherwise the best thing I've left them is just a yellow. They don't want that. So, they'll spend all their drilling to get that, which leaves a gray, a yellow, and a blue. But then, sadly, they get the most valuable mineral, which is the blue. So, they're already on the almost highest level of drilling possible. That's just great. Now, it comes back around to me. Ah, what do I want to do?
I could use the mining arm to get three, then play both of those for fuel to get four to play the grabber as well. I'd be broke stuck in the mine again, which didn't work out great for me last time, but it would let me get another nice corridor tile. And I would leave uh a green, a blue, and a blue, and I could grab the green and blue with the extra two drills. Just leave a blue for the bot. I mean, that seems like maybe it's worth it. And this time, with me having more ways to get rid of cards, I might actually do the damage for fuel thing. So, mining arm for all my fuel gets me three drills. And then spider leg and torso get me four fuel back. And then the grabber for four gets me two more drills. Oh, I'm sorry. I just realized when I bought my blue card, I never flipped anything over. I'll do the one that loses one victory point when I flip it and not the ones that lose two. Okay, so I've got five drills and nothing else. So, let's drill a tunnel. Puts two blues and a green there. And I'll grab a green and blue. And whoop, I went over another milestone. taking these things out. I mean, I think I'm winning on victory points given the bot another gray, though. And yeah, we'll just have to see how things shake out. And honestly, I'm rushing the end game pretty quickly because uh yeah, I mean, if I just get a couple more things and keep building the overflow, I'll be done. Now, before I finish up, I do have to ask myself, huh, I could take a damage to get three fuel and then spend a fuel in my blue to get rid of the damage I just took. No, that's stupid.
That's like the dumbest idea I've ever heard. Never mind. Ignore everything I just said. We'll just go to the end of my turn. Oh, but you know what? On a different note, huh, I have a drone and I can flip this to get another drone at the loss of only one victory point. I think I'm going to do that. I'll use one drone to sell my green for eight and then I can buy something and put it on top of my deck so that I can definitely get out is what I'm thinking. So, I want a movement thing. Suction engine's pretty nice. It'll give me four movement and then this turn collecting gray doesn't cost you any drills. And there's two grays on the way back up. And I've got two space in my hold. This seems like the one, baby. I'll spend uh six of the eight I just got for this. And again, that goes on the top of my deck. So, I'm going to get it immediately. So, we'll definitely be getting out. But the bot is up top. Oh, and there's his most expensive card. So, he's doing a big Oh, man. He's drilling deep, deep, deep, deep this turn. He's got six drills.
He's got 20 points for five. And then he's going to grab a red. Ah, that was such a good turn for him. Let's see what this one's got for us. Hot tub. The first quarter you drill every turn. You pay one less to drill, but you get a damage o straight to your hand, which actually is not terrible because that means you can use it. And then yeah, obviously he's coming down here cuz that's the only one with green, which is the most valuable at the moment. But at least he's down there where he's going to get tons of beautiful gems. And I can I stop him? Can I run in there and grab the blue and the green? So, I've got the suction engine now and I've got the torso. Uh, so that could get me six movement. It's four right now to get up. So, six would actually be enough, wouldn't it? I could go down, grab the stuff from him, and then go Yep. up five more. So, that' only take three fuel, which the mining arm can get me. But then I wouldn't actually have any drilling. So, what are you talking about, Mike?
Cuz those are not grades I can pick up for free. All right. No, no. I'm just going to do my original suction engine idea. So, I do need uh three fuel. So, I'll play the mining arm for its three fuel. I'll play the suction engine for four movement and again the ability to collect grays for free. And I'll play the torso for one drill. Why? Cuz I ain't leaving this blue. That's four victory points, baby. So, I'm going to grab that. That was my one drill. And then one hello free gray. Two hello free gray. Three. Four. Back to home. Now, the first gray goes in here. The second don't fit. Oh, wait. I lied. I thought you could collect them and send them straight to your overflow, but no, you literally can't pick them up if you don't have capacity. So, that's sad. We'll put that one back. But still, I did pretty good here. I'm getting six, five, and four. So, that's a 15. Three more. 18. So, I'm back to 20 credits overall. And I could get some more blues. And I mean, the game's getting close to done. I want to I don't know, maybe dig out the final level if I could. Can I get big enough drills for that? I mean, I could get the supercharged drill and that would be enough almost by itself. Oh, wow.
Another one. The repair is rocket engine pro. That's crazy. But I already have a good amount of movement. Although, I'm kind of worried about getting down, getting back up, spending too much fuel to do. So, what if I got the anti-gravity drive? Oh, and I could also afford the ultra drill. Oh, and then I could also afford the auto drill ultra, which lets me draw a card, which I mean at the very least would either let me get more drills or I could discard that second card for fuel, so it kind of pay for itself. So that'd be 19 out of my 20 and flip both of my blues. So I'm going to lose four victory points, but we'll try to make it worth it. I don't know. Still haven't up my fuel capacity. I think that's a mistake. All right, the bot is getting these two very valuable gems. I hate you. So they are almost at the height of their powers. They're going back and now they're getting rid of two expensive cards because they did not get grazing gold. Sorry, I forgot to fill these in. Speaking of expensive.
Yep. Bye. Oh, that one's amazing. Get a free drone every turn. All right, so coming back to me. I can go straight down to the lowest level. That part's great. Then I can get two four drills. Oh, no. No. I don't have a mineral to drill with that. I'm not actually moving with the anti-gravity drive. Ah, that's kind of annoying. Yeah, darn it. Maybe I shouldn't go to that lowest level. Or maybe I just like move down there and then pay some extra fuel to keep more cards in my hand. Yeah. Okay. Maybe this is dumb. So, I'm use the anti-gravity drive to go straight down here and then such a bad idea. I'm going to Usually you can keep one card for free. I'm going to go straight to upkeep and pay two fuel to keep uh three cards. And then I get three more. Oh, and the laser cutter pros on top. That's good to know because the auto drill will let me draw into that. Okay. Okay. I mean, I I can definitely get the six to dig the final level and get 25 victory points.
It seems like I should do that. Maybe they're going to get to it before me, though. Probably not with a one. Probably not. Yeah. Okay. They're doing three digging. Uh, what do they want? Yeah, there's no valuable minerals out yet. So, they're going to get this and put out a blue, a green, and a yellow. And then they grab the green, which puts them into full power mode, but they do not move down. So, they're going to get a whole another turn. Okay, let's do this. Here we go. Mike, do the math. Make it work. Uh, I don't know. So, auto drill ultra. Um, paying two. So, I'm at six fuel. Got two drills and I get to draw the laser cutter pro. Okay. Then for four fuel, I'm getting uh to six drills with the laser cutter pro. And I'm repairing the crutch, which is minus two points, which lets me draw a card cuz it was in my hand. So, I got the grabber. And I've got six drills, which is enough to move to the promised land. And get that. And I fall down in here to dispatch.
Gain two victory points at the end of the turn for each face up drone you have. Well, I don't have any of those. Oh, or I can spend a fuel to get a drone. Well, good luck with that. Okay, now I want the stuff. I want the red. I want the everything. I'm definitely going to trigger the end of the game this turn, by the way, because I'm going to put some stuff in. Now, at the end of the game, you don't get another turn, but the other player does. And you lose victory points based on how deep you are. So, I don't want to be here for minus 11 victory points at the end. That's really not worth it if that happens. So, okay, I definitely want to do the burner drill, which means I need to get something. So, I could spend one to play the claw, which gets me a drill. And I'll grab I don't think I'm going to have enough for the grabber, so I'm actually not going to grab the yellow. I'll grab the blue, the third best mineral there. And then I'm going to play the burner drill using the blue, which goes straight up here. And that gets me to fuel. That's Wait, where was I? See, I'd spent seven out of eight. So, I'm up to three with the burner drill. And with that, I'll get the last minerals I can these. But note, this is important. I have now intersected just barely the tile I got with that. So, the game end is triggered after this turn. But now I've got enough fuel to move five times. And just five because I can't uh two fuel is not enough to get another move. How far does five get me? One, two, three, four, five. Ooh. Now, actually, here's a question. I'm not losing any points, but I'm also not selling my minerals. And
selling a green and a red would get me 17 coins, and each coin is worth one victory point. So yes, I absolutely 100% want to take a damage for three more fuel and spend that three fuel to move up here because again, these are getting scored no matter what. Even down in my supply, but now I'm getting 17 money and I can spend five of it to ditch the damage I just got. So I don't get minus 3 points now. Nothing else I can buy is going to matter. So we'll just stop there. Oh, I could sell the grabber for two more money, but that would not get me to another multiple of five. So, it does not matter. I'm done. Bought what you got. I didn't leave much for them, so hopefully not much. Ah, they only got a zero card. Haha. Take your weeny little drill two things turn. They can get the blue that I left down at the bottom. And they can get one of the many yellows I left. And that's it. Woohoo. I definitely think I won this.
But let's go through it uh piece by piece. So, we got Mike. We got the bot. So, first we do these stuff on our little achievement row. Bot got 10 20 30 56. I got more than that. Come on, chump. 6 20 27 36 56 61. That is not as much more as I thought. Flipping flipping a lot of those over certainly cost me some points. Can we each get two points per gray, three per gold, 456? And again, it doesn't matter where they are. I'll just go and figure that out. And I think we came out about even there. Like they got more on blue, I got more on green. They got uh more on a lot more on gray. I got more on yellow. Oh, wait. I forgot. Because I triggered the end of the game, I get this 18 point thing. And the bot gets another gray. That's two points for them and 18 for me. I think that's definitely going to be better in my favor. Yeah, that's what happens here. I didn't use my little get rid of things for one. And I got every achievement. That was nice. Uh 33. Well, 34 for the thing. And but didn't get any of them. They don't have money. I do for two victory points. Uh the bot never loses points no matter where they are in the mine. And I got back to the top. And then I'm gonna lose some points for the cards left in my hand. The bot ignores that. Oh, sorry, not my hand. My entire deck. Oh, yeah. I didn't really cull much this time, did I? Yeah. So, minus six points overall. And hey, all right.
I came away with a more than 25 point lead. That's great. But definitely way closer than my last game against the level two bot. I think there I had like 200 somehow versus 100. Which makes me think if the jump is similar to that that if I play against the bot on level four, they're probably going to crush me. But hey, at least it's something to aspire to. So, there you go. That was the Drillers solo mode and I will have a review for this one coming up pretty soon. I've been playing it a lot and not just solo but also competitive. It's fun both ways. But for now, thanks for watching and a special thank you to our biggest Patreon supporters, Matt G, Dan J William F, Steve Ren, Andrew R, and Chris C. We'll see you at the next