They are primarily four player designs (except colonial twilight and the upcoming all bridges burning), where all factions are a must in play. That is why Volko started with the bots, because they allow to play with less than four players without one of the players taking two factions. That you can play solo with three bots (or even only bots) is just a function of them providing bits for all factions, so people can select relatively freely (older coin games had a few limits on which bots would work solo) what faction to play. Of course soloability is maxed that way and of course GMT markets that, it would be dumb not to. Wargames classically had a soloability rating attached. Doesn’t make them primarily solo designs, though. It just happened to turn out that way as a result of the hard four-factions design.

Lets put it this way: I got as far as being able to make it barely through half of the pre-cooked intro scenario. I didn’t get any motivation to try again or unwrap any of the non-intro packs.

That was why I went in, too. I really liked PACG, but felt the character progression was a bit too linear and the scenarios and overall story too scripted. It kinda felt like “my first DnD campaign”. But the system itself felt promising. So with Apocrypha and it’s non-linear connection of scenarios and the way characters didn’t just grow better and better but instead just developed both benefits and detriments until they succumb to ultimate failure – that sounded really good. Sadly they stuffed it in a box with a really bad learning experience. Outch.

Apocrypha. Horrible rule book (come on, a card game with multiple card types and not a single f’ing page giving a card layout rundown?) that really doesn’t help with playing the game and tutorial videos from the designers that are even worse (watching boring people playing a pre-cooked game setup trying to be interesting and totally failing, while also failing at teaching the f’ing game they designed is really an accomplishment). That game makes me really angry, because it was not a first-timer company, it was a bunch of people that were all about how professional they are – delivering an unprofessional pile of cards that definitely never made it through blind testing with a rule book like that. And I am even a Patfinder ACG player, but not even that helped with understanding the rule book. Bah.

Too much money for a game I probably will only play solo – and legacy, which I don’t really enjoy the thought of, as I don’t have stable groups for repeated play, so again, only solo. My wife doesn’t enjoy fantasy, too, so it would really be hard to get to the table with her. 7th cintinent is realistic enough, catering more pulp adventure theme than fantasy, so that hopefully will be easier.

Sword&Sorcery already is a only-for-me game, don’t need that many 😉 – and S&S for me is not just the game itself, but probably also a kitchen sink of generic fantasy stuff to use in other games.

Hmm, although I do have 10 games rated for 2017, I don’t think bad rated games belong into a top ten 😉 – so here my favorites as far as favorites go:

The 7th Continent

The Godfather

Nemo’s War

Azul

Godforsaken Scavengers

Triplock

The Lost Expedition

Sword & Sorcery

The biggest surprise were really Triplock (normally totally not a fan of memory games and one with a solo mode even? But it works great!) and Godforsaken Scavengers (solo press your luck? Small box with just a bunch of cards? For me the result play super well and is really thematic). The others I expected to be good and they delivered. Fun year with some very diverse stuff for me.

Funny enough, only two of them (Godfather and Azul) don’t play solo. But I think two non-solo games in my top list is quite high for me.

add to that the problem that the four base races have each cards that are really not useful for solo play. The expansion opens it up a bit, for one you get more races, and you get additional cards, so you get a bit more variability of setups and plans to win. And there are some BGG fan provided variants to play other scenarios solo or solo multi-handed. But all said: I would say that for solo play only, it’s only worth it if you get it all for cheap.