I’ve used GeekGroup to create a random selection of my soloable board games.
Wondering if the people around here have any interest in guiding my solo gaming? What should I play next?
If you do, feel free to vote. If you have a particularly passionate viewpoint for (or against?) any of the games listed, or perhaps something I own that’s not currently in the poll, please feel free to share.
Ausonia
Baseball Highlights: 2045 (suggest an expansion or two!)
Clinic: Deluxe Edition
Dice City
Empyreal: Spells & Steam w/As Above So Below
Fantastic Factories
Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords – Base Set
I know this is a bit late, but I used to really like Dice City. I found it frustrating as there is one upgrade building which is easily the best of all possible options. I wonder if this would be less frustrating as a solo? Any way, if you do play solo let me know how it goes as I think there’s a great bunch of mechanisms and interesting decisions in that game and it would be interesting to know if solo is a good way to play it
Way back when, I had bought Dice City with high hopes for the multiplayer experience. What I found was pretty dull and, due to my personal nature, AP-induced stress of slowing down the game. So I pretty much immediately put it on my “to sell/trade” pile. But the pandemic happened and I decided to give it a go as a solo game before listing it for sale.
I quite liked the puzzle of the solo game. I don’t think I’ll ever try to play it multiplayer again. But, it’s on this list because it’s been long enough since I’ve played it that I don’t really remember much about the experience.
So I fired up TTS to try out Dice City solo. I found it really boring. Caveats I don’t often like solo gaming, having played enough to see astring strategy there wasn’t much puzzle or interest. Glad I did it though as I’lls top wondering if the game coud be improved with teh very expensive expansions. My time in Dice City is over.
That’s fair enough. It’s a bit of a contemplative puzzle… and the realm of “solo contemplative puzzles where you build your tableau, seeking combos” is vast and far-reaching.
Actually, without realizing it, I made pretty good progress!
Games played since posting the vote:
Under Falling Skies – I didn’t get on with it. It’s a crisis-management game (like Pandemic in some ways), and that’s not really a type of game I really enjoy; add to that the dice deciding what actions are available and it just made it stressful and frustrating to play. Currently on the sale/trade pile.
Baseball Highlights 2045 – I have all of the expansions, so I played with all of the expansions! Using a community-created variant for using all the expansions, it was still kind of uneven. But I really do enjoy the solo game; it’s tough but manageable and it’s cool to see your team improve over the post-season (which, I’m pretty sure is backwards?)
Clinic Deluxe – it’s such a cool puzzle that’s surprising easy to run. It’s sandboxy, but with no wiggle room. Since playing, I picked up the first expansion… Need to explore it a lot more; there’s still a bunch of content in the base game that I need to check out
Empyreal: Spells & Steam – it’s a cube rails game where you have to supply your own cubes, because the chits in the base game are too small, and the premium resources are both too expensive and… Not cubes. The solo mode works really well.
Fantastic Factories – it’s okay. The solo is kind of lame. Probably a good family-weight strategy game more than something that’s going to hang around in my solo rotation
I got Troyes on the table a couple of months ago, but lacked the brainpower to grok the solo rules; it’s been over 5 years since I’ve played against Le Roy and it was not like riding a bike – I read through the rules and felt like I knew less after. That’s on me, not the game though.
And Space Cadet: Away Missions is in a stack near my solo gaming table. Unfortunately, about a month (or more!?) ago, I setup Trismegistus on my table but got sidelined by my kids bringing some coughs and sniffles home from school, and then work getting really busy.
My partner’s birthday is next week and between that and a few projects at work occupying my free time and physical/mental/emotional energy, I don’t have any hopes of getting Tris off my table before April. I have a bunch of games queued up next to my gaming table that I’m eager to get played.
Voting for the BGG’s 1-Player Guild Peoples’ Choice Top Solo Games 2023 is open and I am looking to refresh my memories on solo games I’ve played before as well as getting some potential candidates on my table for the first time.
Games I've Played Recently (last 12 months)
AuZtralia
Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig (expansion solo rules)
Bullet
Canvas (Solo Variant 1: Painting with Vincent)
Carnegie
Cthulhu: Death May Die (Sister Beth and The Kid vs S1E2 Hastur)
Clinic: Deluxe Edition (using base game mechanisms only, no modules)
Commands & Colors: Medieval
Coffee Roaster
Concordia (vs Solitaria expansion solo bot on Corsica map)
Early American Chrononauts
Gentes
Grand Austria Hotel (vs “Leopold”, one of the solo opponents included in the Lets Waltz expansion)
Kanban EV
Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest
Paladins of the West Kingdom
Planet Unknown (I think I played with a couple of rules mistakes, but I think I got it mostly right)
Spirit Island
Star Wars: Outer Rim (with Unfinished Business content)
Turing Machine
Underwater Cities
Viscounts of the West Kingdom
There are a couple of games that I love but am avoiding playing solo to save that experience to share with my partner at a later date. Namely: Aeon’s End, Cthulhu: Death May Die, and Merchant’s Cove
I definitely want to get these played in the next couple of weeks; no voting required!
1862: Railway Mania in the Eastern Counties
The Hunters / Silent Victory / Beneath the Med
Here’s a short-list (HA!) of what else I might want to get played in the next 3 weeks or so to prepare for voting. What do you think I should play?
18Mag: Hungarian Railway History
Anachrony (Chronossus or Chronobot)
Ashes Reborn (w/Red Rains)
Banish the Snakes: A Game of St. Patrick in Ireland
Baseball Highlights: 2045
Catacombs 3rd Edition (w/ Red Box)
Caverna: The Cave Farmers
Fields of Arle
Fields of Green
Football Highlights: 2052
Freshwater Fly
Ginkgopolis
Hallertau
Iwari
Maracaibo
Millennium Blades
Nusfjord
Railways of the World (w/Rail Barons of the World)
There’s a co-op/solo variant for Millennium Blades that was part of the Set Rotation expansion. It adds a “boss fight” mode where you play a single tournament where all the player(s) team up to beat the “boss” who has ridiculously powerful cards; but you know what all the cards are during the one deck construction market phase; so you have to figure out how to disable/deactivate/outscore/defend against/etc… each of the cards in order to get the win. Some of the later expansions also added additional bosses for extra variety (I know a couple of the mini-expansions added them, I don’t recall if Collusion added bosses… but I would guess “yes”).
It’s not the best because, like I said, it’s only a single deck construction phase. And it’s supposed to be timed, but I think, after playing it timed a couple of times, I would just play “zen mode” and see if I can figure out how to beat the deck with the available cards. I may even ignore the gameplay mechanisms and just pick through the available cards to see what I can come up with.
I’ve just bought Maracaibo (and Great Western Trail 2nd Edition) for solo play so looking forward to trying them over the next week or two, but I’m most intrigued by Football Highlights 2052. I’m considering getting it for soloing as a fan of the sport and looking for other games based on it, bascially to see if I can find something similar to a game idea I had many years ago.
I love Baseball Highlights (even though I had to reverse-engineer part of the rules because they assume you already know how baseball works). I’ve voted selfishly for the ones I most want to read a play report about.
My Solo queue:
Great Western Trail, GWT w/ RttN, Praga Caput Regni, Ginkgopolis, Flamecraft, Neom, Libertalia, Teotihuacan, Beyond the Sun, Mind MGMT, Curious Cargo, Grand Austria Hotel, John Company, Viscounts of the West Kingdom, Everdell, Pipeline, Barrage, Gugong.
Recents:
Troyes, Long Shot, Caesar!, Trailblazers, 51st State, Chomp, Kanban EV, Glass Road, Furnace, Paladins of the West Kingdom
This is like a real thing now. I feel like this whole appendage was added to the hobby just a few years ago.
Funny that Ginkgopolis was tied for most votes (technically I voted for it, so even though it shows 50%, it was really just part of the 3-way tie among Fields of Arle and Nusfjord), because it was set up on my table at the time I created the post!