Solium Infernum After Action Report and Review

 

Solium Infernum (2024, League of Geeks) is a digital board game where you play as one of four to six Archfiends of Hell, vying with each other to succeed to the empty throne of Hell that Satan left when he vanished. 

It has solo and multiplayer mode, but it is currently best played in multiplayer, as no AI can compete with another human for sheer deviousness.  

A full house of Archfiends

There are four ways to take the throne of Hell: two main ones and two methods that are more complicated, called Manipulation Victories, that I will explain later. The first method is to become ruler of Hell by Election. To do this, you simply must accumulate more victory points (called Prestige) than any other Archfiend and survive without being excommunicated until the end of the game.  The second method is to take the central city of Hell, Pandemonium, by force with a legion and then survive five turns while you are excommunicated and every other Archfiend is given sanction to enter your territory and try to topple your capital city (Stronghold).  This method of victory is called the Tyranny of the Usurper.  Excommunication means that you can no longer win by Election, you can no longer make purchases from the great Bazaar of Hell and you can no longer engage in diplomacy.  

True to its nature of simulating Hell, most actions lead you into conflict with one player or another.  For example, in order to enter another Archfiend’s territory and attack their legions or take over their territory, you must first have a casus belli.  These are generated by the diplomacy actions, the most basic of which are the Demand and the Insult.  A Demand allows you to aggressively request resource tokens from your opponent for a wager of your Prestige. If they refuse, you lose the wagered Prestige…but you may declare a Vendetta, which among other things allows you invade their territory, take over their Places of Power and slaughter their legions.  Albeit with a time limit in turns that you determine before the Vendetta takes place.  

Erzsebet responds to an Insult

An Insult is sort of like the opposite of a Demand. By hurling an Insult, you wager an amount of Prestige. If your opponent accepts your Insult, they lose Prestige and you gain twice the Prestige you wagered. Alternatively, if they reject the insult, you have manipulated your opponent into declaring a mandatory Vendetta against you.  This can be useful to draw a weaker opponent into a conflict they cannot win. 

Tactical nature of Hell's landscape

So overall Solium Infernum plays like a tactical wargame at one level, with a layer of diplomacy above the wargame table that is integrated within it.  In addition, there is the great Bazaar of Hell, where instead of buying outright legions, artifacts, manuscript pages and Praetors (infernal heroes), you have to bid on every item. If another player bids for the same item with more Hellish currency, then you simply lose everything you have bid and have to slink back to your domain empty handed.  Hell is not certain; Hell is not kind. Unpredictability lies around every corner and decision. Every action in Solium Infernum is uncertain, takes time, or leads to deceit.   These are also the very basics of play.  With higher rank and greater infernal attributes, one can steal legions outright from another player, throttle the number of actions an opponent takes, wreck their ability to cast spells outright, send a strike of infernal hellfire against an opponent’s legion and frame another player, and many more dastardly actions.

It is quite fun.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun documented a rather devilish multiplayer playthrough of the original Solium Infernum, created in 2009 by Vic Davis of Cryptic Comment. Although that version is no longer available, the story is still worth reading.

Now I’ll relate my first Solium Infernum experience. I joined a realtime game for four players, lasting at least 60 turns, in which each player had 3 minutes to complete each round.  Predictably I got crushed. However, I did learn a couple of devious moves by observation. 

Astaroth

I played as Astaroth (a war and conquest archfiend). My opponents were Belial (deceptive manipulator), Lilith (sorceress) and Mammon (lord of money). I started off with two Places of Power immediately next to me so I seized both (to benefit from their Prestige income per turn) and built up my only legion with a Praetor (infernal hero) and a piece of equipment.

An Angel in Hell

Fast forward a couple of turns and one of the Archfiends anonymously had executed an event card that eliminated my only legion and the resources I put into it. Then Belial and Mammon basically crushed me by taking away my Places of Power. But was I done? Oh no. Stunted and doomed though I was, as the least of the four Archfiends, I caused chaos in Hell by inviting an Angel unit from Heaven to go around Hell and eliminate one of each of the Archfiends’ units. Also, there were other shenanigans as I was boxed in to my little piece of territory.

Fast forward to the end. Belial's player had been hounding me incessantly and Mammon was winning the game at like turn 30 with 335 Prestige. The Lilith player wanted to secure some semblance of victory so she blood vassalized herself to Mammon, giving half her personal Prestige to her new master. Belial's player had been rather aggressive so I began weaving spells to hinder his colossal units like The Beast of Hell and a Walking Fortress, both units with over 20 hitpoints (average is 4-8 hp). Between the three of us Belial's player got his Titan units torched and he ragequit in response. Mammon was going to win. I was fine with that. When Mammon ascended the Infernal Throne, there was a shadow that parted from behind the throne. Lilith had a secret relic that she chose at the beginning of the game that gave her the ability to win if she correctly vassalized herself to an Archfiend who was going to win via her manipulation. Mammon with his 300+ prestige was just a pawn. Such is Hell.

This is called a Manipulation Victory of the Power Behind the Throne type in Solium Infernum, and that is one of two Manipulation Victory variants.  The other is a Crown of the Kingmaker victory, which requires a player to select the appropriate relic before the game commences, then requires you to choose another Archfiend as a “puppet” within the first 10 turns.  If the “puppet” Archfiend is Elected to the throne, you win instead. 

As I have said, nothing is certain in Hell.