Definitely not legal. That’s a lot of the challenge. You need one character to send reinforcements to another character so he can attack, but this round the would-be attacker takes his turn first, so he won’t be able to get the reinforcements until after his turn is done. Doh.
I heartily recommend the Lucky Girl variant of the princess, especially if you can manage four characters. The additional support card options up front makes for an interesting and varied set up.
-Tom
Nice. That means there’s good incentive for someone to buy my first edition copy off me, since that and the bridge expansion will be cheaper than trying to come up with a second edition copy. Not quite as nice, but them’s the breaks.
Unicornus Knights is listed as 2-6 players. It just works well as a solo game I take it?
as someone who hasn’t played a board game solo in decades (I used to play Ogre solo as a kid), I have scanned this thread and gotten some ideas, but still not sure, is there a must have solo board game I should try?
I’ve also been replaying Darkest Night a little to scratch my solo boardgaming itch. It really is a lovely design, isn’t it?
For purely solo play, how is Gloomhaven? I’d hate to spent $200 and find out that it’s only slightly for solo play, and feels gimped in that regard.
Gloomhaven is a perfectly fine solo experience, you just run the whole party yourself, like Baldur’s Gate. The designer has some adjustments for solo play, but those adjustments can be thrown out the window.
Oh, very cool. Thanks SB!
They both play just fine as solitaire games. Better, to my mind, but I’m superweird about the whole co-op boardgaming thing.
That’s weird that Unicornus Knights says 2-6 players. I just now noticed that. Why wouldn’t it say 1-6? Odd. But it’s ideal for solitaire.
-Tom
I like the MP experience of Gloomhaven as each person has a chance to ‘be’ their character. I think it’d be just fine and a lot of fun solo also but you lose a little of the role-playing.
I’m not sure there are must haves, but I enjoy:
Dawn of the Zeds 3rd edition: Lots of content and semi complex rules. On the heavier side.
Eldritch Horror: Much better solo than with people. I play with 3 or 4 investigators.
Spirit Island: Still learning. I like the simplicity of the design, and the theming is so good it avoids it becoming dry.
Unicornus Knights: as said above.
I also, really, really like:
Enemy Action: Ardennes: I play mostly German Solitaire, and only the short game (I don’t have a table to leave the long game set up for the aprox. 30 hours the full campaign can take.
Conflict of Heroes + Solo Expansion
BUT: these last two are wargames and to be approached with caution. EA: Ardennes has like 60 pages of dense (well written, but dense) rules. And Conflict of Heroes is a light weight wargame (so heavier than a heavy euro), on top of which you have to put the solo system.
However, as opposed to the previously mentioned games, in these you get the feeling you are playing against an opponent at the same decision and power level as you, not just against a semi random pressure system like all the previous games. Also, they don’t use the usual flowchart bot of several recent wargames, but full, custom made solo systems that play with different rules than a real opponent, but manage to simulate one (the bot approach I normally find lacking because is both too complex and the decision tree too transparent, breaking the feeling of dynamic opposition).
Finally you have the two currently heavyweights (in a physical sense):
Kingdom Death Monster
Gloomhaven
I haven’t gotten to play Gloomhaven a lot yet, so I’ll withhold my judgement for now (I’m just unsure and need to try it more, I think). but as you can see people love it around here! I do love Kingdom Death Monster as a solitaire experience (and I think I would loathe it as a MP experience), but I would never recommend it at the current going price. It’s also kind of weird in how it mixed old school bookeeping and more modern design sensitivities, and some people bounce hard off it.
These offer a middle ground between the dynamic wargames that simulate a real, same decision level opponent, and the more pressure-system driven games of the first list.
I also own Robinson Crusoe, First Martians and Race for the Galaxy, but I don’t think those are as good solo as the games mentioned above.
And I just ordered the Replicators expansion for Space Empires 4X, which has a full on solo mode that I’m dying to play. But I have no idea how it will turn out.
Mage Knight. :)
But that’s a bit like asking “is there a must-have single player computer game I should try?” Narrow it down a bit?
Personally I get into Dawn of the Zeds, Leaving Earth, One Deck Dungeon. Also known to enjoy the odd round of Flash Point Fire Rescue.
Recently developed a fascination for A Feast for Odin - not played much worker placement, and this one’s solo mode is just a score chase that stops you using the same space two turns in a row. But it’s big, beautiful, nicely themed, and relaxing to play. There’s a cool-looking solo challenge booklet on BGG that I’m keen to try out too.
There’s a lot of cool solo games from GMT and DVG, also Sierra Madre if you like studying science books. :)
Recently got Pendragon and Fields of Fire from GMT, and only just working through Pendragon’s A.I. tutorials now. Love the time period and the 2 sides/4 factions async play.
Let me know how Fields of Fire works. I’ve been eyeing that for quite a while.
@Spock wrote a little about it earlier:
and I watched some of this video which is what piqued my interest:
edit: Oh, I looked at the documentation it comes with.
I like GMT’s modern teaching approach, how they come with a ‘play guide’ as well as a rules book. You play along with the guide as it goes through setup and a bunch of turns illustrating various aspects of the game, and the guide refers you to appropriate bits of the rules book along the way. Once done you basically know how to play. I find this really effective.
Fields of Fire 2nd Ed. doesn’t have that. :)
It does have a bit of a playthrough in one of the books but nothing comprehensive and no pointers to rules. One cool thing it does though is include a few notes from the designer commenting on the strategy and mistakes that the person doing the playthrough made! I thought that was neat.
I’m happy to answer questions about Fields of Fire. I’ve got the new edition on the table now; I’m enjoying it. I can now play pretty quickly, with relatively few rules lookups. But it took a lot of reading and BGG questions & answers before I got to that point.
Thanks for the great suggestions for games @Juan_Raigada and @Profanicus. I plan to sit down this weekend and go through them and see what looks like a good fit to start with. (Sorry for the slow reply, busy week and I had wanted to go through them all before I replied.)
Just got an email a few hours ago that my copy of Darkest Night 2nd edition is on the way. Figured I’d buy that rather than all the expansions (I own the original edition of the base game), and have it on a shelf…somewhere.)
Can’t wait!
Played my first game of Gaia Project last night against the average automa. Never played Terra Mystica.
Lost by 20 points but borked a few rules and gave the automa at least an extra 16 points so it was going to be close. I think I need to move up in automa level because after playing one game without knowing anything about strategies, i was up all morning thinking about the game and formulated a lot more ideas of ways to improve my 2nd game.
I have not been so engrossed with a game since Spirit Island. I dont think I will play this anywhere near the amount of S.I. but it’s a good brainy game and there are many different setups with different factions and different automa factions so I think for a solo game it will last quite awhile.
So you like the automa? Does it just randomly boost the AI’s victory points or economy? Or does it actually take advantage of each faction’s unique gameplay? You mention automa factions. Are there different decks of cards for each faction?
I’m skeptical that a game like Terra Mystica/Gaia Project that depends so heavily on a unique player interaction can have a meaningful AI with a deck of cards, but I’d love to learn otherwise!
-Tom
Arrived today, and I have to say that this package and components far exceeded anything I’d normally expect from VPG. Can’t wait to delve into the new mechanics added by the expansions. I had the quest cards, so that mechanic I’m familiar with, but not the darkness cards, or sparks.
The Darkness cards are great. Have you played Arkham or Eldritch Horror? The Darkness cards modify the Necromancer’s capabilities like those games do by having different powers on a given Great Old One. They can force significant changes in your strategy.
This makes me laugh because I haven’t yet told my wife I bought Gloomhaven; its in a closet right now because she got me Zombicide for Christmas.