Boardgaming 2022: the year of "point salad really isn't very filling"

I actually played a couple solo games of Core Worlds with the Nemesis expansion prior to learning Empires, and yeah you’ll never guess how it works - with a deck of cards! This time it’s split into 2 stacked half-decks, so it gets harder in the second part of the game.

All it really does is variations on targeting a world (or a Prime World if one is out), conquering a targeted world, or drafting a card of a particular prevalence (then placing Galactic Orders tokens appropriately based on sector number if using that expansion).

The drafted stuff is stacked under categories, so it can be tallied up post-game if the bot conquers the relevant Prime Worlds.

To its credit, it was quick and easy to use, worked with any, all, or none of the expansions, and I enjoyed playing it well enough.

Same, I won’t buy a board game unless I can play it solo. It’s like a solo videogame, but tactile.

I’m the same too. Would love to play multiplayer more often, but alas I don’t have a group (which is solvable) nor time (which is not in the short-term).

I have a space I can leave games set-up, so when playing solo I can play at my pace.

For me to buy a non-soloable game would mean a very unique design I’m interested in exploring (like Oath).

Solo boardgaming is great!

No waiting for other people to take their turns, I can control the flow of the game.

No quarterbacking.

Option to try crazy things or less optimal play because winning isn’t everything.

Can walk away from the game and come back to it. That’s how I handle large sprawling games such as Eldritch Horror, one turn at a time, over the course of a day or two.

Finally, solo board games have a special niche area for me which is where I can relax and game before bed and give my eyes a break from a computer screen.

I’ve reached a point where I have to be choosy about the games I buy now. There’s only so much space, and I think I’ve run out when I realise as I look at many of them, I couldn’t bear to depart. Well, maybe Legendary series deckbuilder games. I think I could get rid of that.

How does Oath play solo? Are you basically multi-seating or is there a dedicated mode? I’m thinking of playing some on TTS to learn the game before playing for real.

Has anyone played a solo Wargame? I figure many have tried playing both sides but curious if any have some type of AI.

I am looking at Everdell for solo play but the problem I have is whatever I would setup has to be on a card table so room is limited and the game appears to take up a lot of space. I know a digital version is due to appear this year so I probably will wait to see it because that may allow the use of an expansion. I know none of the expansions would fit on my small table.

I’ve played a couple of REALLY OLD school wargames that were solo state of siege type games, where you play as the side defending something against attacking/sieging enemies that are game AI powered. One was pocket game back in the day about the Alamo. Very simple game, but OK for what it was. The other was a Yaquinto “album game” called Beau Geste, where you got to get all your French Foreign Legion on. Each counter represented an individual member of the FFL, each with a name, and differential stats (and a few with special abilities.) Really ahead of its time.

To that theme, I think I remember Tom and Bruce talking on a gaming podcast about a more recent game that was set in WWII regarding storming the beaches on one of the South Pacific atolls. And Undaunted just added an expansion that adds solo play to that game, but I’ve not seen reviews yet for it.

They have a dedicated mode called the Clockwork Prince. It is pretty mediocre. Imagine a big flow chart of decisions that the AI makes based on the board state.

I played my first game multi-hand, which was great to learn.

You can check the rules for the Prince at the bottom of this resources page.

This is Oath’s Clockwork Prince bot:

image

I took it for a spin once. It’s logical once you have a grasp of the game – which takes a while – but I found it a real effort to run, and I haven’t tried Oath solo since that one try.

Yep - it is easy to mess up.

There is an app someone put together that I would like to try to see if it simplifies things: GitHub - Vagabottos/clockprince: Helper app for the Clockwork Prince (Oath)

and a link to the app itself: https://clockprince.seiyria.com/

I haven’t given it a spin, but plan on doing so.

Enemy Action: Ardennes is probably the closest thing to a wargame where the AI plays the full game in a similar way to you, though there are still some differences. It also has the full hex and counter wargame mechanics and plays the positional game. It takes some getting used to to be able to operate the AI but it works reasonably well.

Navajo Wars and Comancheria are both designed to be solo (as in the recommended player count is 1 and I’m not sure it’s even possible to play them multiplayer) and their AIs work really well. There’s a great system there where when you behave aggressively, the AI gets more aggressive, and it’s a ratchet.

Hmm, the Steam discussion for the official TTS mod, which is scripted, mentions improved support for Clockwork Prince. I wonder if that means it’s automated.

Oh yes, putting aside just playing both sides, designers have been putting solo modes into wargames for a very long time. There are many wargames designed entirely for solo play and there are a variety of means by which they generate their AI - paragraph driven, chit pull, card driven, flowchart, etc, etc.

This list looks pretty recently updated and a quick perusal noted many of the often mentioned titles.

The D-Day games by John Butterfield are pretty wargame-y, with all the chits and what not, and are designed mainly for solo. Driven by multi-function cards.

Heaps of GMT games include solo bots also. Typically massive flowcharts, though of late they’re refocusing on putting them on cards instead, like the recent Fire in the Lake bot add-on. Are the COIN games considered war games?

Depends on what you consider a wargame.

Back at the beginning of the pandemic I picked up a block of Solo miniatures wargames via bundleofholding.com. The warband games ‘5 Leagues to the Borderlands’ and ‘5 Parsecs from home’ (fantasy/scifi) were ok. There were more modern-focused (WWII and on) versions, too.

Another I liked more was Frostgrave, which is a competetive warband skirmish system, but has co-op and solo rules and full campaigns in a few supplements. The designer reworked the system into a full solo game called Rangers of the Shadow Deep, and also a Scifi version, Stargrave, which I picked up the pdfs of, but haven’t played either. 5 Leagues/Parsecs and Frostgrave I converted to hex maps for my solo play- I kind of despise tape measures.

Those are minis games, though. For boardgames, I also played around with some solo rules for Battlelore 1st Ed, the fantasy C&C game (Memoir '44 system). That was fun, and I dig that system, but it is a little simplistic and random.

I also dug up some solo rules for Battleground: Fantasy Warfare, a minis-less minis game, and kicked them around a bit. One advantage this system had was that in a normal game, each player gives his army orders at the start of the battle, which then runs on a sort of autopilot, with modifications being made to those orders on the fly. So in a solo game, the enemy AI just kind of runs that system. I know the current owners of the game came out with updated solo rules a few months ago (the ones I used were a decade or more old) but I haven’t looked at them yet. Might be a bit more involved.

The Wings of War minis game (the, ah, inspiration for the X-Wing minis game) got a Tripods & Tirplanes standalone/expansion (War of the Worlds during WWI!) has rules for AI running the tripods to solo/co-op fight them. I picked it up, but haven’t tried them yet.

Just got Pitch car for $3 at a garage sale. Woooot

Ditto for me on all counts, particularly the ‘getting away from the screen’ which I desperately need at the end of the day. I am fortunate in that I can generally leave a big solo game set up on the dining table for days or weeks – we don’t entertain much, we eat dinner in the kitchen, no cats to wreak havoc – so I can drop in and out of a game even for a few short minutes at a time. I’m doing exactly that right now with Sleeping Gods.

I find my time solo gaming to be soothing, quiet, thoughtful time that I don’t get elsewhere except for reading a novel.

Wow, what a deal! That thing is super expensive new.

I know. I saw it, opened it up, saw all the discs and bought it. I thought maybe the tracks would be destroyed or missing, but it was all there!!