Has anybody come up with a good solo version of this game? It seems like you'd just need to figure out the card drafting mechanism and the rest of the game would work fine. It's probably harder than I think to make the card drafting hit the right balance of choosing what you want vs. not getting exactly what you want all of the time.
thoughts?

This is a rather interesting or odd question. To me, find another game to play solitaire as they do it better....but, that was not your question. Drafting, which was your question, is easy to solve (I think). Set up dummy players. Three or four should work. shuffle their cards and force them to pass face down random cards. Think about it, you get them coming to you from your opponents so just mix them up randomly and send them on.

That's what I was thinking originally, but I wondered if there was a way to simulate the reality of the game in which your opponents hold certain cards back from you or keep valuable cards for themselves. For example, maybe you could limit the number of Notre Dame cards in the deck, as they are often sought after (at least in our games).

There are games that do the solo thing better, but I was looking for a way to 'practice' the mechanisms of the game when I don't have an opponent. Also, Notre Dame has been tagged with the "multi-player solitaire" description, so I thought it might not be a huge deal to figure out a solo varient.
Thanks for the reply!

My idea is to have 3 set of cards. One is your own, the second one is simulating the one to your right and the last one is for the player being 2 seats to your right. Your set will have 9 cards and from the other two you should remove the Notre Dame and the trusted friend since they are usually not passed in a real game.
Now on each turn you take 3 cards from your set, pick one card, two cards from the second set and again pick one and a last card from the third set will complete the card selection phase.
After three turns you shuffle the cards back in their pile. This will simulate receiving cards in a real game.

Update:
I tried Koby's basic varient a couple of times tonight with a few modifications and I think it worked pretty well. The changes I made were:

1) I removed the Notre Dame card from one draw deck, and the Trusted Friend from the other instead of both from both.

2) I used two sets of messages placing one set straight across from me in a two/four player set up. I made myself alternate colors when gathering messages. I think I'll modify this in the future and use the three player setup somehow because in the 2/4 player setup, if you use the carriage once, you have to leave your cube there or you won't be able to get any messages the next time. Maybe that's a good thing, but I think I'm going to mess with it.

3) Points in Notre Dame. I made it possible that I would only be able to put 2 cubes in Notre Dame in any given round, so I made the first one worth 2 points and the second worth 1. I was trying to simulate increased competition for points as you get more cubes in there.

Overall it was pretty good. I found myself with some tough decisions at various times, just like in real games. The rats were a constant concern, just like in real games. I was a little frustrated about the carriage issue, but maybe you just need to commit to the carriage strategy more in this version for it to pay off. Not necessarily a bad thing. I played twice, the first time scoring 45 and the second scoring 55. I'm not that good at the game yet, so it's possible that a more experienced gamer wouldn't find the variant as challenging. On the other hand, solo variants are all about beating your personal score, so...

Hi guys,

I've also tried this with some success. It plays out fairly quickly of course but seems to work well.

I played with a 4 board set up - but of course only the markets on the other boards.

I had a deck of cards on my left minus the ND card, and one on my right minus the Trusted Friend. I took my 3 cards, passed 2, took 2 from the left, passed 1, then took the top one from the right.

Then played out my hand. I used Davids 2/1 scoring for ND.

My scores in 2 games were 45 and 40.

For the purpose of learning to play the game and trying different things it worked quite well.

Thanks Koby and David.

Hi guys,

I've tried this again tonight as the wife fell asleep on the couch, thereby cancelling any other plans we had.

This time I tried it with a 3 player board. (for markets only)

I used 3 decks. One with ND taken out, and one with TF taken out.

I didn't see any conceivable difference to the 2/4 player setup I used last time. I used the 2/1 scoring for ND but could only get there once or twice due to cards and circumstance.

3 scores - 39, 38, and 59.. This is a really good way to explore strategic theories in this game.

I played this tonight as an intro to this game and as a way of learning it. I am impressed with all the options and potential paths to victory. (I must say the the boards are the most unique shape I've come across).

Anyway about the solo variant: I played with the 3 player setup (boards/messages/card decks) and it seemed to work well. Although I'm not sure I quite understand the ND scoring that was suggested. What I did was: 2 points for the first marker in a round placed there and 1 after that. At the end of each period I scored it as 1 point per marker.

Anyway I only had time for the 1 game - checked the rules alot as I learned the actions - but thanks to the mayor turning up in the last round and my neglect of several actions earlier in the game, my markers were clumped and I got 10 points from him. This was by accident rather than some master plan I my part. The end result was 50 points.

I really like this game, but think I will enjoy it more once I learn it better and don't have to refer to the rules so often. I look forward to playing it with, I dunno, actual people.

So Scott when are you free?

By the way thanks for the thread - very helpful to read how this might work and see different people have had input as it developed. Nice to know that the original poster didn't have to post a perfect variant and that by collaboration BGG's can come up with something together.

Agreed.