Category: Syndicated

For Among the Stars (at least the base set – don’t have any of the expansions) you can switch the drafting from closed-hand drafting to open-tableau drafting like with Suburbia. It’s a fun way to teach people about values of cards – they are openly visible, so it’s easy to talk about. Just make sure you only use civs that don’t want to go at other players hands, obviously. When you later do closed-hand drafts, they will know more about what each card can do and how it works.

For Among the Stars (at least the base set – don’t have any of the expansions) you can switch the drafting from closed-hand drafting to open-tableau drafting like with Suburbia. It’s a fun way to teach people about values of cards – they are openly visible, so it’s easy to talk about. Just make sure you only use civs that don’t want to go at other players hands, obviously. When you later do closed-hand drafts, they will know more about what each card can do and how it works.

When I played Wiz-War with my friends, I think we got about 50% of the rules wrong. And it didn’t matter a single bit. It’s just a hilarious “throw stuff at your friends and see what blows them up” session with tons of laughter. Sadly it is too chaotic and too word-heavy (you have to read and understand those cards to make use of them) and in a theme that totally turns off my wife, so usually any of the many other games we have will win. But it is totally fun.

When I played Wiz-War with my friends, I think we got about 50% of the rules wrong. And it didn’t matter a single bit. It’s just a hilarious “throw stuff at your friends and see what blows them up” session with tons of laughter. Sadly it is too chaotic and too word-heavy (you have to read and understand those cards to make use of them) and in a theme that totally turns off my wife, so usually any of the many other games we have will win. But it is totally fun.

Aside from the usual mix of Progress: Evolution of Technology (still happening on at least a every-three-days schedule), Paperback and Waggle Dance, I got some games in from kickstarters and BGG market.

One was Hostage Negotiator with all the expansions. Fun little solo game, gives me quite a good story every time I play it, even though it’s usually a story of carnage and dread. At least last time I saved 5 of 8 hostages and eliminated the abductor, only to be thwarted by the 2nd in command. Damn. If I could have told my sniper to just shoot the last two hostages, I would have won, but so it was a loss.

The other was Cuba Libre which I got bought from the BGG market. Great COIN game, am an instant fan of that system. Essentially a very thematic, asymmetric ressource management game that is driven by event cards and where you can play each faction that doesn’t have a player with some AI bots. For me it is meant for solo play again. Catapulted itself way up my list of top games.

I got some Sentinels of the Multiverse in again, after some time not playing it, and remembered what is so much fun (and what is not so much fun – modifiers). Funny enough, when I started out with it, I wasn’t too worried by it’s supposed fiddlyness and while playing it then, it really didn’t bother me – I am kinda used to it from playing MTG. But after some pause in playing it and picking it up again, I was quite happy to play it on my tablet instead of with it’s paper version.

Another solo game that snuck in was Soviet Dawn again. I really adore this fast little state of siege game. It’s really nasty, but isn’t too obvious in being nasty and even if you lose, it’s over quick. And since I played both this and Hostage Negotiator, it really drove home the point I noticed about Hostage Negotiator in that it is structured quite similar to solo war games in that you get the “fog of war” effect where you only know if you succeed in an action after you rolled some dice. You can prepare and can make your chances for success better, but there will always be some insecurity. And probably that is why I prefer COIN over some of the longer state of siege games: most actions in COIN games are deterministic and dice only come in in very few places. I have will-wheaton-levels of bad dice rolls quite often …

You don’t drink whisky from cups while playing some deep and heavy euro game. It would look silly and probably hamper your abilities to manage the game.

And I play games according to my current mood – which might be influenced by seasons, but I didn’t analyze my play log. Could be a worthwhile exercise, but I guess it’s heavily skewed towards the new and shiny, so more related to the board game seasons “pre-Essen” and “post-Essen” and “inbetween Essen”

Aside from the usual mix of Progress: Evolution of Technology (still happening on at least a every-three-days schedule), Paperback and Waggle Dance, I got some games in from kickstarters and BGG market.

One was Hostage Negotiator with all the expansions. Fun little solo game, gives me quite a good story every time I play it, even though it’s usually a story of carnage and dread. At least last time I saved 5 of 8 hostages and eliminated the abductor, only to be thwarted by the 2nd in command. Damn. If I could have told my sniper to just shoot the last two hostages, I would have won, but so it was a loss.

The other was Cuba Libre which I got bought from the BGG market. Great COIN game, am an instant fan of that system. Essentially a very thematic, asymmetric ressource management game that is driven by event cards and where you can play each faction that doesn’t have a player with some AI bots. For me it is meant for solo play again. Catapulted itself way up my list of top games.

I got some Sentinels of the Multiverse in again, after some time not playing it, and remembered what is so much fun (and what is not so much fun – modifiers). Funny enough, when I started out with it, I wasn’t too worried by it’s supposed fiddlyness and while playing it then, it really didn’t bother me – I am kinda used to it from playing MTG. But after some pause in playing it and picking it up again, I was quite happy to play it on my tablet instead of with it’s paper version.

Another solo game that snuck in was Soviet Dawn again. I really adore this fast little state of siege game. It’s really nasty, but isn’t too obvious in being nasty and even if you lose, it’s over quick. And since I played both this and Hostage Negotiator, it really drove home the point I noticed about Hostage Negotiator in that it is structured quite similar to solo war games in that you get the “fog of war” effect where you only know if you succeed in an action after you rolled some dice. You can prepare and can make your chances for success better, but there will always be some insecurity. And probably that is why I prefer COIN over some of the longer state of siege games: most actions in COIN games are deterministic and dice only come in in very few places. I have will-wheaton-levels of bad dice rolls quite often …

You don’t drink whisky from cups while playing some deep and heavy euro game. It would look silly and probably hamper your abilities to manage the game.

And I play games according to my current mood – which might be influenced by seasons, but I didn’t analyze my play log. Could be a worthwhile exercise, but I guess it’s heavily skewed towards the new and shiny, so more related to the board game seasons “pre-Essen” and “post-Essen” and “inbetween Essen”

yeah, COIN is fantastic. At least for me it feels quite euro-ish and that’s a good thing for me. It mostly is a very thematic ressource-optimization puzzle. For me at the moment it is Cuba Libre that occupies my brain cycles and I am looking forward to receive my copy of Liberty or Death end of February and Falling Sky later in spring. Another thing I really like about the COIN games is the quality of components. It just feels great to push nice wooden pieces around on a great looking board.

yeah, COIN is fantastic. At least for me it feels quite euro-ish and that’s a good thing for me. It mostly is a very thematic ressource-optimization puzzle. For me at the moment it is Cuba Libre that occupies my brain cycles and I am looking forward to receive my copy of Liberty or Death end of February and Falling Sky later in spring. Another thing I really like about the COIN games is the quality of components. It just feels great to push nice wooden pieces around on a great looking board.

Lots of good suggestions in this thread, just let me add a few that weren’t mentioned yet:

Lord of the Ice Garden is a game after a polish scifi/fantasy book, where players play scientists gone mad that try to take over (each one on his own) a magical world while being hunted by some guy from back home who wants to stop them and bring them to justice. It is an interesting mix of area control, worker placement with lots of other mechanics thrown in. Slightly fiddly on the first plays but strangely addicting. Aside from setup variance there is no luck whatsoever in the game, it boils down to pure strategy, which can crank it up on the “brain burner” scale quite a bit sometimes. Each player has a very distinct win condition and a pool of units they can use with very different abilities. Sadly I haven’t brought it to the table multiplayer, yet, only played it solo. It is a beast to teach.

Wir sind das Volk is a very interesting historic game where one player plays West Germany and the other East Germany, duking it out ideologically and economically over 4 decades. Both countries play very different, West Germany is trying to run down the economy or ideology of East Germany, while the East is just trying to hold on to a crumbling country, fighting fires all over the place, trying to survive (and especially survive the end-of-decade phase that consists only of bad things happen to the east). In this one, both players really play two different games that just happen to be on the same board, interacting heavily with the other side.

Then there are the COIN games, which are on the border of war games and euro games (for me they feel quite euro-ish, so right up my alley). I am currently playing Cuba Libre, where you play the different factions in the cuban revolution (Batista regime, Castros guys, the Directorio and the casino syndicates), each with it’s own win condition and very different strategies and abilities. The whole game is driven along by a series of cards representing different historical events or people and you try to get your guys into a position where they can hold up against the opponents. Fun thing is that you allways play 4 factions, but those that are not run by a player are run by bots. That game jumped up to my top games immediately and I totally look forward to upcoming titles I have on preorder (one for the american revolution and one for the gallic wars). There are some others about the vietnam war, the colombian guerillas and Afghanistan. For a history-buff like me it’s pure gold

Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage and Polis: Fight for the Hegemony are two other historically based games. Polis is interesting in that the differences of players are actually very small – it’s mostly the starting setup and availability of ressources, and the (at first sight) little difference of who strikes first in battles on land (Sparta) or ocean (Athens). But those little differences actually play out very differently during the game. Hannibal on the other hand has bigger differences in players, with regards to troups and available generals and the way they play out. Both games again are driven along by some event cards, where Polis only provides small triggers each age but with Hannibal the cards really push the game along.

And one that comes to mind is Sentinels of the Multiverse, where each hero plays very differently due to his/her deck of cards, often pushing them into really different directions (healer, tank, attacker, deck-manipulator). And many coop or 1-vs-many games can provide very different hero setups, too.

Lots of good suggestions in this thread, just let me add a few that weren’t mentioned yet:

Lord of the Ice Garden is a game after a polish scifi/fantasy book, where players play scientists gone mad that try to take over (each one on his own) a magical world while being hunted by some guy from back home who wants to stop them and bring them to justice. It is an interesting mix of area control, worker placement with lots of other mechanics thrown in. Slightly fiddly on the first plays but strangely addicting. Aside from setup variance there is no luck whatsoever in the game, it boils down to pure strategy, which can crank it up on the “brain burner” scale quite a bit sometimes. Each player has a very distinct win condition and a pool of units they can use with very different abilities. Sadly I haven’t brought it to the table multiplayer, yet, only played it solo. It is a beast to teach.

Wir sind das Volk is a very interesting historic game where one player plays West Germany and the other East Germany, duking it out ideologically and economically over 4 decades. Both countries play very different, West Germany is trying to run down the economy or ideology of East Germany, while the East is just trying to hold on to a crumbling country, fighting fires all over the place, trying to survive (and especially survive the end-of-decade phase that consists only of bad things happen to the east). In this one, both players really play two different games that just happen to be on the same board, interacting heavily with the other side.

Then there are the COIN games, which are on the border of war games and euro games (for me they feel quite euro-ish, so right up my alley). I am currently playing Cuba Libre, where you play the different factions in the cuban revolution (Batista regime, Castros guys, the Directorio and the casino syndicates), each with it’s own win condition and very different strategies and abilities. The whole game is driven along by a series of cards representing different historical events or people and you try to get your guys into a position where they can hold up against the opponents. Fun thing is that you allways play 4 factions, but those that are not run by a player are run by bots. That game jumped up to my top games immediately and I totally look forward to upcoming titles I have on preorder (one for the american revolution and one for the gallic wars). There are some others about the vietnam war, the colombian guerillas and Afghanistan. For a history-buff like me it’s pure gold

Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage and Polis: Fight for the Hegemony are two other historically based games. Polis is interesting in that the differences of players are actually very small – it’s mostly the starting setup and availability of ressources, and the (at first sight) little difference of who strikes first in battles on land (Sparta) or ocean (Athens). But those little differences actually play out very differently during the game. Hannibal on the other hand has bigger differences in players, with regards to troups and available generals and the way they play out. Both games again are driven along by some event cards, where Polis only provides small triggers each age but with Hannibal the cards really push the game along.

And one that comes to mind is Sentinels of the Multiverse, where each hero plays very differently due to his/her deck of cards, often pushing them into really different directions (healer, tank, attacker, deck-manipulator). And many coop or 1-vs-many games can provide very different hero setups, too.

If you love it, go for it. Don’t look left or right, because that will just keep you from actually enjoying what you want to enjoy: good solo play. You can (and will, sorry, you are doomed if you start) discover other soloable games later. There is no objective “best” solo game. There is just “another fantastic one” up until you stare at your overflowing shelf in wonder and can’t decide what to play today, because there are so many of them …

If you love it, go for it. Don’t look left or right, because that will just keep you from actually enjoying what you want to enjoy: good solo play. You can (and will, sorry, you are doomed if you start) discover other soloable games later. There is no objective “best” solo game. There is just “another fantastic one” up until you stare at your overflowing shelf in wonder and can’t decide what to play today, because there are so many of them …