Thunderstone Quest - Lichen Guardian Solo Variant

This video shows the setup & play-through of the Thunderstone Quest Lichen Guardian Solo Variant. This allows people to play through the chapters in the game solo against a beefed up Guardian which makes victory more rewarding with a true win loss condition.

You can go to boardgamegeek.com forums for full instructions.

Setup
Combine 2 starter decks to act as your counter. You don’t need to shuffle unless you are using a helper-hinder variants.(listed in the end)

After you have selected your dungeon monster groups for levels I,II,III shuffle them each up & deal out 2 creatures normally starting with the right most space. If the second card is a duplicate, set it aside & deal another second card. Then take any 2 key cards & shuffle them in with the leftover cards, include the duplicate card aside if needed. Do this for all 3 dungeon levels. (yes there are now 2 keys mixed into each level’s deck)

Next you will need to add tokens to represent the Lichen corruption counters for each dungeon level. The difficulty can be adjusted using the chart below. You can either print out the 4 copies of the 3d models in the file section(1 five count stone formation & 5 single stones) or you can just use gray Thunderstones for 1s & red wound tokens for 5s. Each group of tokens can be placed just to the right of the rooms. You can print & cut out the optional small rooms to make it look a little nicer, but it is not necessary.

Gameplay:

Timer: At the start of each turn flip over 1 timer card. On the last card (24th) you will fight the gaurdian unless there is an active keycard in the Wilderness. In which case you will fight the Guardian after the key battle turn. I will go over the meaning of key battles later. (I put a unrelated token on my deck to remind me to do this each turn)

Dungeon Battles: When you defeat a monster on a given dungeon level, you can remove one corruption token from that level only. If there are no corruption tokens left on that level you do nothing.

Dungeon Room effects: All dungeon affects take place before refilling the open slot from a defeated creature. (unless the dungeon room affect if about refilling the card, havent seen this yet though)

Refilling Creature card effects: These will affect you new hand, not the previous one if you are asked to discard a card-cards.

Key cards: When you draw a Key from the level deck put it the wilderness. As per normal if you draw another Key just set it aside & refill the open slot with a monster. Then just shuffle the key back into the deck. Your next turn will be a Key Battle turn even if it’s the 4th key or your next timer card is the 24th card. But the next turn will be your last, you must battle the guardian. If you want you can skip the final Key Battle in these situations & fight the guardian.

Key Battle Turn: This turn is played as a normal one, but if you do defeat a monster you get to remove additional corruption tokens equal to the current Dungeon level. So if you defeat a level III monster during a Key Battle turn you can remove 4 corruption tokens if they are available. The 1 token you would normally take plus 3 more for the Key Battle bonus. Level II monsters would let you remove 3 total & Level I lets you remove 2. After the turn the key is removed from the wilderness & kept aside for scoring at the end of the game as per normal. There is no counting monster decks during the game to figure out how many keys are left in a deck. Remembering that is part of the challenge.

Treasure Cache: When you draw a treasure cache card you have can choose to take it’s reward, place it at the bottom of the treasure deck or you can destroy the treasure and it's corruption completely , receive nothing at that time but get to remove 1 corruption token from any level at the end of the game. If you choose the latter keep these cards to the side & remove 1 token for each card at the beginning of the guardian battle.

End game triggers: You begin the final battle with the guardian after you have completed your 4th Key Battle turn or on your 24th turn when the last timer card has been drawn. Unless you have drawn a keybattle card for that turn, in which case you will complete that Key Battle turn & then fight the boss on your 25th turn. This can only be caused by uncovering a key card on your 23rd turn.

Final Battle: Total your saved treasure cached card & subtract that many tokens from the leftover corruption tokens on any dungeon level. Count the number of all the corruption tokens left and add that number to the health points of the guardian. Then proceed with the battle as per the normal rules following any Before Battle instructions on the Guardian card.

Score as normal with the following additions.
You get 2x the difference between the damage you used to defeat the guardian & it’s health.

You get 4 points for each unused Timer card.

Rankings:
50 Townfolk
51-70 Adventurer
71-80 Protector
81-90 Champion
91-110 Hero
111-120 Conqueror
121+ Legend