The Manhattan Project games are on my radar as a soloist, but as a pacifist… definitely not my theme. I decided to round out my last Gamenerdz order with this card game variation. The Kickstarter came with a bunch of wooden bits, but the retail card game uses cards for 1, 3, 5 yellow cake and 1, 2, 3 uranium. I think this was a good design choice actually, even if it is slightly fiddly at times.
As for the game, I like it. A BYOS resource-conversion hand management game wherein you attempt to build as many bombs as possible before the deck runs out. This game could easily be rethemed to something humanitarian. Farming immediately comes to mind. Because I’m totally not a farm nerd or anything.
According to the forum, the solo scoring range is
< 20 Try Again 20-29 Good Attempt 30-39 Job Well Done Sir 40+ You’re a true scientist
I’ve gradually worked my way up the range to the low thirties. There is a winning strategy I happened upon that utilizes redrawing the Double Agent bonus card, so it appears 50+ scores are possible. It will be interesting to see if I can ever get that high. For the time being I’ve made a house rule that if I’m using the factory bonus, which allows drawing 2 or 3 cards from the discard pile, I cannot draw a Double Agent card. I want to see if I can hit 40 without more than 2x uses of Double Agent.