Category: Syndicated

I didn’t really like **Nations: The Dice Game** when playing it solo. I only did it to dry-run it before teaching the group, but it wasn’t that much fun – although I do enjoy the game multiplayer. My favorite dice chuckers for solo play currently are **Viva Java: The Dice Game** and **Pandemic: The Cure**. Both provide me with more of a challenge than N:TDG. And **Tiny Epic Galaxies** recently made a bit of a splash on my table, quite a good bit of dice rolling and fun “AI” opponents of varying competetiveness.

I play solo games (for example state of siege games like **Cruel Necessity** or games like **Friday**), so of course I play by myself in those cases. But I play coop games (multiplayer coop like **Shadowrun: Crossfie** or **LOTR:LCG**) solo, too, becau…

**Paperback** is my go-to game for those situations with people who never played board games before. The reason is that a new player can still build words and score big that way – and the card abilities can be introduced during game play. New players n…

We’ve played it on the plane. A but fiddly, but making good use of the box halves and the insert and you really can play it on two small plane tables.

by TheGargoyle
I ordered and will get those promos, which means I will put Ricky’s promo chip as the CF gladiator for the titans and so will get a chance to beat him up every game for making me spend so much money 😉

Beer and pretzels are game components of beer-and-pretzel games, right? okok, seriously, no alcohol over here, except maybe a nice whisky with some really heavy brainy board or war game. But that’s solo playing and the whisky usually stays in the singu…

by TheGargoyle
I try to play new games within a month or so, if possible. But there are games for special situations (like someone over for some abstract strategy fun – The Duke will come out on that day) or for specific moods (Robinson Crusoe: Adve…

by TheGargoyle
Damn, his selection of games always hits far too close to home for my wallet ;)I guess I just give in and get Hoplomachus now …

by TheGargoyle
I asked GMT and got this reply:Georg, Plans are in motion to offer the SGBoH rules as a downloadable pdf. Thanks! Tony CurtisManager, GMT Games LLCNow we just have to play the waiting game. Damn hard to play that one.

by TheGargoyle

Related Item: Holy Roman Empire: The Thirty-Years War

That little area near the big pile of red counters? Münster. My home town 🙂 – I think I need to get this game …

**Jaipur** goes into our bag whenever we leave home for some restaurant or some similar event. It’s packed away quickly, can be played with almost no space (we even played it on the plane to and from our vacation, using two small plane tables as the so…

It’s the favorite game of my wife and a solid 9/10 for me, too. We enjoy it two-player (although we use the number of epoch counters from the 3 player game nowadays, because otherwise it is too speedy for her with me rushing through the card stacks) an…

Aside from our usual plays of **Paperback**, **Waggle Dance** and **Progress: Evolution of Technology** I got **Polis: Fight for the Hegemony** just recently for cheap (there was a hint on that here on Reddit even!) and actually got a first learning pl…

by TheGargoyle

Well, I really like the resource acceleration, because it is normally not available in Spirit (and neither in Lore, which are the two spheres I use in my Noldor deck). Sure, Galadriel works – I use her currently in the deck – but her downside is a bit of a bummer (not being able to do anything than sitting there looking pretty, drawing a card and reducing the threat). Arwen can do her own questing in the early game when not enough allies are out yet, for example. With Fair and Perilous, she can do some mean beating, too, if needed. Of course, Galadriel brings even more to the table with elven lights, because due to her downside you usually don’t have her exhausted before the end of the turn, so she can do her job to activate some Dunedain dude and therefore finally brings her own weight to the table without the need of Nenya. But in the end I think I will like Arwens flexibility – especially in the early game and by providing a discard outlet right from the start of the game – a bit more.

by TheGargoyle

Well, Northern Tracker is a Dunedain with quite nice base stats and a great effect on questing. Arwen allows to have him be a super-defender or super-attacker after it quested and did spread some progress on locations in staging. The Tale of Tinúviel works on allies, too 🙂 – to me many of the cards in this pack open up flexibility (like Even Light allowing Arwen to be either a resource-generator or a card-draw when using the generated ressource from discarding Elven Light to return it to hand). It’s almost like she is a Gandalfs Staff on a hero.

It depends on the games you have in your collection (or wether you want to invest in new games more suitable for solo playing). You can play many multiplayer games solo by just playing multiple hands yourself – for example conflict simulations without hidden information can often be played like that and provide lots of fun. I myself do this often to learn games, even if it is one with hidden information, because that way I don’t need to drive my wife into madness by trying to figure out a game together with her. For example I did this with The Golden Ages – even though there are some hidden information in the goals and future leaders it worked astonishingly well playing two players on my own. Another game I played like that was Tiny Epic Kingdom – you lose out on the war part much, though, because that is a bidding mechanic that of course falls flat if played solo. Then there are many games with included solo rules. Those range from “beat your own highscore” to more elaborate automated opponents up to stuff that almost reaches AI levels. Those can be really lots of fun to play, because you as a player still play the game, but the opponent itself often only plays a reduced variant of the game, tuned to give it an edge over you so you really need to fight for your win. The beat-your-own-highscore solo variants on the other hand are something I do not enjoy, but I know others really dig them. But for example the solo variant of Lord of the Ice Garden is quite fun to play against, as is the solo variant of The Gallerist. Both provide deep and engaging play with only a minimum overhead for the solo play. Then there are games that provide specific scenarios for solo play, sometimes even boiled down to the classic “win this situation in 3 turns” you might know from chess (Neuroshima Hex for example does something along those lines) which can be fun, but don’t provide much replayability. I’m not a big fan of these. The next category would be coop games – you can play almost any true coop game (exceptions exist like for example Hanabi) solo by either actually only playing as a single player or playing multiple hands (simulating multiple players by playing them all yourself). I enjoy for example Gears of War that way, either playing it with just one COG or multi-handed with multiple COGs. Another game I tremendously enjoy is Lord of the Rings: The Card Game. I usually play it with just a single hand and deck – it’s actually my top game of all time and one of the most played ones, too. One-vs-many games sometimes provide alternatives for the overlord player to be automated (some of them fan created) and are a mix of coop and automated opponent. Descent for example has some scenarios with automated overlords. The gold standard are actual solo games, designed and targeted at the solo player. Those often provide the most rewarding play, because them being solo games means they are streamlined for that single player, while for example multi-handed coop sometimes adds a bit of clutter and fiddlyness to the play. And the good thing of explicit solo games is that they are really balanced for that style of play and often provide the best replayability. There are hybrids that are really great solo and still provide multiplayer, too. Stuff like Friday, Hostage Negotiator or the State of Siege games from Victory Point Games, with the new edition of Dawn of the Zeds being an example of a hybrid that is still designed in it’s core as a solo game, but can be extended to coop play with multiple players. There are quite many of those games – VPG for example does tons of different solo games with different themes.

Yeah, Ricky is the boss of solo gaming for me. Made me to buy far too many solo-able games with his videos. All of them enjoyable, too.

Col, didn’t know about that one, thanks!

I’m waiting for **Falling Sky** in February, because that’s thematically much more in my line of interest than all the other ones. I wish there would be more ancient conflict based COIN entries in the making.

great! I had my eyes on this one, but didn’t spring for it so far, but for that price it is a no-brainer for me.

As others, probably my 9 years of chess playing made me see replayability different from others. I don’t play chess anymore, so probably it isn’t exactly infinite, but if I can play a game without expansions for 9 years every few days, it is high enoug…

Probably **Apocrypha**, because it takes what I liked about PACG, but pits it in a non-escalating frame where you can play scenarios in the order of your choosing. I actually like the “draw card, roll dice for test, modify with abilities” mechanics, so that doesn’t bother me. And Apocrypha sets this up to be more of a story experience with its short snippets of texts by some rather interesting people.

We are on vacation on La Palma, so we have to play what we brought with us. It was mostly a repacked for two player **Progress: Evolution of Technology**, some **Jaipur**, some **Tides of Time** (which gives my wife a hrd time wrapping her head around)…

Only plays 4 and I really wouldn’t play it with 4. I like it, but I like it best with 2, with more the book of the dead is hard to counter. It mostly reduces to who gets it and gets it going first. With two players, both have the chance to get it. I se…

It only goes to 5 but it is one of the few deck builders I would actually play with 5. I think it works very well with higher counts.

Apocrypha will come out next year from the guys who made PACG for Paizo. It puts a similar game in a horror context.

It is slowly raising to my top solo games – the solo mode really works well and the game play itself is quite smooth after a few practice rounds. There IS a lot going on, because every little thing provides different ways to produce money, eiter immedi…

by TheGargoyle
Prep work is boss, especially on a dwarf. I prefer my dwarf as the decker, though, because that way I often can get some missing color with the prep work buy and still have some nuyen left to get something else after the fight. With …

**LOTR:LCG** for me, because it gives me all I ever wanted from MTG, but without the need for other players. Deck construction with builtin testing grounds? Does it get any better? **Progress: Evolution of Technology** when playing with my wife, becaus…