J'ai une âme solitaire: Solitaire Boardgaming Megathread!

GMT Games, makers of grognardian games and also Navajo Wars, announced yesterday that it has launched a solo-only studio, called GMT One. The announcement is strangely not on their blog nor on their main page or anywhere on their site but buried in the middle of their latest email newsletter:

https://mailchi.mp/3610efff995e/january-update-from-gmt-new-p500s-gmt-one-solo-info-production-update-and-more

I really like Field Commander Napoleon…

The announcement reads like they won’t be doing new games, just making solo add-ons for existing mutliplayer-only games.

You could be right, but that seems a narrow thing do create a separate studio for.

Command and Colours Solo Module available for P500 pre-order now…

Was quite interested to see that someone developed a solo variant for 4th Edition BattleCON, a head to head dueling game that I have spent way too much money on and love but almost never have the right player count for (i.e., 2):
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2556156/solo-variant-4th-edition

I haven’t tried it to see if I like it yet, having just found out about it, but there’s a (slightly outdated) playthrough video by the guy who came up with it in the thread, and I’m interested to do so. He also came up with one for L99’s other big dueling card game, Exceed (and yes now they have a third one in Sakura Arms, but their version isn’t out yet.) which is here:
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2586108/solo-variant-video
I don’t own or play Exceed myself.

In a much lighter vein, today is my birthday. I had the day off and my wife wanted to make sure I had new games I could play solo. So she got me 2 Button Shy wallet games to play today.

Sprawlopolis (1-4 players)

Food Chain Island (solo only)

I had heard lots of good things about their wallet games and they deliver. Fit in your pocket. Easy to learn and set up and a very nice way to spend some time solving a puzzle based on 18 cards.

Of the 2, Sprawlopolis has the crunchier puzzle. Every move you make is a compromise that keeps you unsure of whether you will teach the target score.

The base game of Food Chain Island is easier. But it’s so cute and well designed. And it comes with plenty of alternative configurations to make the game more challenging. I’ve enjoyed it a lot too.

If you are interested in their games, Shut Up and Sit Down has a fun review of those and others.

Oh nice, I watched that SUSD and some of them looked really fun, especially Sprawlopolis and its variants.

I like Sprawlopolis. I backed the Agropolis Kickstarter but never actually completed the pledge because I’m not sure I need two opolises, but I’d recommend the one.

I’m curious to try it 2 players but, really, it’s perfect as a neat little 1 player puzzle.

It appears you can combine the games in some fashion if you have both? I wonder what that would do to the puzzle and whether it would be as good as standalone though. The game is so quick and easy to bring to the table as is.

Yes, there is a small expansion called Combopolis that allows you to combine the two.

I was going to post a nice AAR of a game called Iron Helm but after spending 30 minutes reading the rules and 10 minutes setting up the cool mat that I bought with the game, it only took two turns before a Consuming Mass took me out. Two turns. Insanely bad dice rolls. About 1.4 minutes. Now I’m pissed so I’m going back in but had to post how the game looks on the table at least.

image

You’re better off… you’d be taken out by ambiguous rules if you’d survived much longer than that. I wanted to love this game. But the rules are riddled with ambiguity (and spelling errors). I think anyone who slogs through even a single playthrough clearly has more interest in the game than its own designer. Which is really too bad, I love the art and the attempt at making a light dungeon crawl.

Yep, this is what happens when you buy games that can’t get a publisher. You get a design that went straight from the cocktail napkin to the printing press. No tuning, no meaningful playtesting, and shamefully half-assed implementation.

-Tom, fellow Iron Helm sucker/victim

I don’t purport to know what calculus led Grey Gnome Games to self-publish, but if you paint all self-published games with that brush, Gloomhaven and Kingdom Deathmonster would like a word…

…actually, upon second thought, you make a great point.

Too Many Bones deserves more respect, though!

I mean, it is a memorable story. That one dungeon which has a gelatinous cube right at the entrance that glorps up every adventurer right as they come in.

After Iron Helm I put Wildlands with the Ancients expansion on the table.

This game was nip and tuck near the end. My last living character had to find one last shard with 6 possible places to encounter it. He was running around and was very close to death when he went entered a space with an object counter and, and, and 3rd f’ing stasis trap. There are 4 in the scenario and they don’t go away until all are revealed or all players get stuck in them. Maybe since my guy was the last alive he was the last player that could get stuck so maybe they should have been removed. But there were so many minions in the board it was almost impossible he would find and then collect the last shard.

It was tense and fun and there is a lot of randomness where the shards are and traps but it’s a cool little solo game and my kid now wants to play so that’s a bonus.

How do interrupts work solo?

After your turn, you then turn over a minion action card and then a boss action card. After either of these card reveals before they do their actions, you can interrupt.

I did not take as much advantage of those as I should have a few critical times. Never played the base game against others so not used to interrupts but setting up the game again tomorrow and will work more on those.

Interrupts are Wildlands’ USP (for better and for worse) if you ask me, so I was curious how that would translate into a solitaire game. They give the multiplayer a really unique feel, though it can also be frustrating. You need to get a system down with your group to make turns run efficiently but without people losing an opportunity to step in.