Hadrian’s Wall plays largely as a solo game. Interaction is primarily reserved for leveraging an icon on another person’s card where the benefit of doing so outweighs the boon you may provide them in the form of a paid resource. If you’re staring deep into another person’s strategy, you can influence them in minor ways (e.g., in a two-player game you can trigger extra attacks from the Pict that you might be able to handle better than your opponent or you might play a card with a good you know that they’ll need), but generally you’re probably better off focusing on your own game and then allowing happenstance to prompt interaction. Though, I will say that we’ve had an oddly cooperative experience in that I or my partner might lament missing a particular resource which begets helpful suggestions.
The game is designed well in that you usually feel like there’s an option. You might not be able to do what you want to do, but there’s at least some means to expend rather than squander your resources. With a varied panoply of tracks, you can continue your victory-point march ever forward.
You’ll spend an hour marking boxes; however, this time passes quickly. Downtime is minimal, only occurring should you finish a round ahead of the other player or players. Our experience has been that we’ve generally aligned the conclusion of our turns. And, I will add that glancing over to see what another player has left inspires me to adjust my speed of play. If the other player’s reserve is low, I’ll expedite my decision-making. If I’m finishing first, background music serves as a distraction, as does my phone, a bathroom break, a quest for sustenance, etc.
If you enjoy Excel, you’ll probably love this game. If maximizing efficiencies appeals to you, ditto. You like X-ing off items from a to-do list, then Hadrian’s Wall may be for you. I’ll add that there’s something delightfully absurd and fulfilling about the chains of cascading benefits you can accrue. More than once, you will discover yourself trading in a yellow worker for a purple one to get a yellow to get a purple to grab a stone that gives you back a yellow worker and so on.
Want direct interaction? Perhaps move on. Have terrible eyesight? Grab a magnifying glass, or perhaps move on.
The different categories of population are color coded. If you’re like me, you might only easily remember that the purple meeples are slaves (though, the instructions label them as servants). If you’re like me in that I then found it harder to recall that black meeples are soldiers and blue ones are builders, then you, like me, might have to do some soul searching… Soul searching I didn’t realize I had to embark upon had I never opened the game’s box. But, it strike me that I’d say, “grabbing a blue person, grabbing a black person, getting a yellow, need a slave.”
Recognize that the teach will take some time. A person may need time to internalize the rules, as well as recover from having ingested them. Teaching this game is one of those swallow-a-large-pill moments.