Smugglers of the Galaxy

I got this game recently and have just played a couple of solo games. The game is pretty simple and has very few components (cards, board, planet tokens and player sheets basically) but I do think it works pretty well. It's also a game that's easily house ruled and modified. I posted two variants over at BGG: The Friends and Equipment variant ( http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/408910 ) and a Variable Goal System ( http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/408934 )

The first one fixes what I perceive as a problem, as in the original rules you draw an event card each turn and if it's an equipment card or a friend card (which both offer big benefits) you just get it. To me that's too easy, so the variant makes getting those cards cost you a bit more time and work.

The second one is a new scoring system that attempts to make the game more open ended. It's adapted from Magic Realm's scoring system.

If anyone is playing (or has) this game, I'd be glad to get feedback for both those variants. If anyone is more interested in this game, I will try to write a review after I've played it a bit more. Right now, as a solo game, I'm enjoying it a lot because it's simple to set up, fast to play and I just love the theme of space trading with the added combat choices.

It's no Merchant of Venus, but then it doesn't try to be. MoV is all about the economy, and it's more strategic (I think). This one is more about the experience. Kind of like a Sci-fi adventure game.

A friend on mine bought this a while back, I wanted to get a game or two of it in, but it fell by the wayside somehow. Does it have soloable, or does it actually have solo rules?

There's a downloadable file from the publisher's web site with some extra optional rules including solo rules. Also, be sure to download the 2.0 rules as they fix some problems with the game as originally published