Flyin’ Solo, Flyin’ Free: THE SUPER DUPER STAY AT HOME SOLO GAMING EXTRAVAGANZA!!!!!!
Even before the pandemic hit, I had been looking for games with good solo modes to fit into my collection. Even though I’m blessed to have several great gaming groups to play with, sometimes you just want to play a board game when no one else can get together. Now with the pandemic, solo gaming has hit upon a major boost in popularity. Shut Up and Sit Down has several solo game review videos, publishers and designers are releasing new solo variants, the BGG solo community is as active as ever, and our own Jesse has reviewed a few on the Quackalope YouTube channel. But sometimes you just want to be told what’s good and not have to watch a video! That’s’ where I’m coming in. I rounded up 25 of the games I have with solo rules variants and put them all together in one big ol’ honking (and quacking!) extravaganza! So strap in folks, because here we go!!
The Networks
Have you ever wanted to own and run your own television station? Well now you too can have the stress of wondering if people are going to like the shows you make, if your advertisers will reach your target audience, and for god’s sake, hope that none of your stars say anything controversial!!!! All joking aside, The Networks by Gil Hova is a great implementation of a theme that really is underutilized in the board game space. Seeing the interesting non-copyright-infringing shows that you put on your station is reason enough to own it.
The AI for this solo implementation does a good job of simulating a human opponent. As with any game that features a shared pool of resources, the AI eliminates your choices. The cards that the AI eliminates in this game are based on the symbols at the bottom of the network cards. It works really well to simulate an actual opponent. Where it falls flat is with the win condition. You are trying to attain a certain score, and if you don’t achieve those scores two distinct points in the game you lose. It’s almost always better to have a game where you don’t know exactly what you need to win. Therefore, The Networks has a good, but not great solo mode, but definitely don’t let that stop you from checking it out.
Sprawlopolis
Sprawlopolis, published by Button Shy Games is great for a whole bunch of reasons. One: it’s a great city building game that makes you think and has a great puzzle to solve. Two: it’s a great small card game in a wonderful wallet sized travel case that has a great sense of scope despite its really small footprint. Three: it’s a co-op game that also is great solo! This is one of only two games on this list that is co-op, and there is a reason for that. Most co-ops are meant to be played with other people. They are designed that way. Most co-ops are designed and intended to be played with other people, and I typically find them to be overly complex or simply not much fun when only playing solo. But I find Sprawlopolis to be a rare exception.
In Sprawlopolis, you have three scoring objectives that give you points. Your goal is to beat the combined score that the three objective cards show on their upper left-hand corner by building a city out of the cards in the deck. While the gameplay is simple, you are going to need to use expert city-planning to be able to win. With easy to understand rules and a great design, Sprawlopolis is a great game if you like tile-laying or city building/planning games. Its small footprint and portability make it an excellent choice to play anywhere, and at any time!
Tussie Mussie
It’s really hard to think of a more unique theme than Tussie Mussie by Elizabeth Hargrave. That’s right! The designer of Wingspan! (Look below for a report on that game’s solo version.) Tussie Mussie is all about the language of flowers. This is an old Victorian practice, where the flowers that are in an arrangement signify and mean different things to the people you give them too. Ever wonder why a red rose means love? It has its roots in Victorian flower language, known as floriography!
But enough with the history lesson. Tussie Mussie is another wallet game published by Button Shy Games, which is absolutely brilliant. They fit anywhere, and they are a real treat to just be able to have available. Tussie Mussie’s solo mode is an expansion, but it really is worth getting. In the solo mode, you are competing against your apprentice to make the best arrangements for your flower shoppe. You do this by using a deck of cards that will simulate the base games ‘I split you choose’ mechanic. It’s a great implementation of a game that you wouldn’t think could be played solo. You always have some choice in how your arrangement is going to look, and it can be quite the challenge to make sure your score stays ahead of your apprentices over three rounds, thus winning you the game. With beautiful art by Beth Sobel, and such an easily portable and small footprint, Tussie Mussie is definitely worth your solo play time.
Orleans & Orleans: Invasion
Orleans is one of my favorite board games of all time. Its classic bag building game mechanics and wonderful historic theme and art hit all of the buttons for me. If there was worker placement, it might even be my favorite of all time! Orleans the base game unfortunately does not come with solo versions right out of the box. Its expansions however, feature several different solo scenarios that allow you to have the Orleans experience even when you can’t get a group together.
In the 5th player expansion you also get a single player scenario called The Trip to Tours. Unsurprisingly, you are trying to get your merchant meeple to the French city of Tours to deliver three citizens and three of each type of good from the base game. The scenario features its own beneficial deeds board (which you use to pare down your bag contents and get rewards) and events that happen over the 14 rounds you have to complete the objective. This scenario does a good job at making a solo experience that feels like the multiplayer game. You don’t have to worry about other players taking the citizen tiles though, so that’s nice!
The Other solo scenarios from Orleans come from the Big Box expansion Orleans: Invasion. This expansion comes with three solo scenarios, and they are all different from one another. In ‘The Dignitary’, your merchant meeple is now a dignitary, trying to go around the Orleans area meeting the various citizens. Meet seven or eight citizens (depending on your difficulty preference) within 16 rounds and you win. This is a super simple scenario where you don’t even use the goods tiles; it’s all about generating movement. It’s not really all that interesting.
The second scenario in the Invasion expansion is ‘Capital Vierzon’. In this scenario, you are trying to make the town of Vierzon the Capital of the Orleans region. You do this by completing a number of objectives in the 14 rounds that the game takes. These include things like establishing a building company (putting a trading station in the town of Loches), hiring a builder by round nine (by paying coins), or delivering building materials to fortify Vierzon (which are goods tiles that you have to deliver all at once!). This scenario offers some more challenge than the previous one, as the time element can really put you in a bind if you don’t pay attention. This scenario is a good improvement over ‘The Dignitary’ but still not quite as fun as ‘The Trip to Tours’.
The last solo scenario in the Invasion box is ‘The Travelling Salesman’. It’s a lot like ‘Capital Vierzon’ in that you are completing objectives with certain goods, but this scenario is focused entirely on goods rather than mostly coins like in ‘Capital Vierzon’. You have 15 rounds as the merchant to make your deliveries to the towns in the Orleans area, and it can be a close call even with the extra round to be able to collect the goods you need. This scenario is better in my opinion than ‘Capital Vierzon’ and is very comparable to ‘The Trip to Tours’. This scenario is much more difficult though, so it really depends what kind of mood you are in when you sit down to play.
Overall, the available scenarios for Orleans give you a great opportunity to get the game to the table when few people are around. It doesn’t really give you the feeling of competition, but it makes up for it in the challenge that is present in each scenario. My personal favorite scenario was ‘The Traveling Salesman’, but each is good in its own way, and will have you wearing a beret and eating a baguette in no time flat!
Suburbia
City planners have it tough. People want to be close to all their amenities, yet isolated from the congestion and hustle-and-bustle, and maybe even have a lake nearby that they can swim in. It’s a no-win situation! So… why not try to become one? In Suburbia, you are taking control of planning a town, and trying to get the highest score for your brilliant ideas of putting a school next to an airport, and providing the people of the downtown area with lots of shopping and eating opportunities! Suburbia is rewarding on a number of levels, as it gives you the feeling of Sim City in a board game.
The solo game of Suburbia has two modes. In the first, you can just build your town unimpeded, taking the tiles you want and not having outside interference, other than the normal game’s rules that make you discard tiles for certain actions, and make you lose income and reputation for how large your town gets. The second mode introduces Dale the Bot, who’s not too smart, but he has some advantages! His main advantage is that he gets discounts. He only ever pays three dollars for his tiles, whereas you will pay the normal amounts. The key benefit to playing this way is that it adds the variability of a human player, and it also lets you play with goals, which make the game more interesting. Suburbia translates well to a solo game, and the scoring table at the end can tell you what kind of designer you are. Whether you like this game will really come down to how you feel about the theme. I personally like city building (my day job is with a construction firm in their law office), but your mileage may vary. It’s certainly worth a look!
Sagrada
In Sagrada, you are using beautiful multicolored dice to try and re-create some of the equally beautiful (and downright amazing) stained glass windows of the Basilica de la Sagrada Familia (Sacred Family) in Barcelona, Spain. While it’s not exactly as beautiful as the church, it’s quite a remarkable puzzle to try and put the dice out in the window according to the placement rules. In the solo implementation, you are trying to beat a score that is determined by leftover dice from the dice pool that you use for drafting, and all the normal rules of playing the game apply. There are some additional rules for using tool cards, but it’s very intuitive.
Sagrada definitely loses something in its solo implementation. You know you have to beat a score to ‘win’ but that score is completely arbitrary, based on the face value of dice you do not draft. It’s very easy to try to draft dice that are lower face value to try and ease the score, and the tension of hoping you can draft the dice you need is lost by not having other opponents there to contest it. If you already have Sagrada (and you should, it really is a great game.) and want to get it to the table more often, this solo mode will serve you well. Don’t get it just for the solo mode though.
Roll Player
For a lot of people, their introduction to Tabletop gaming may have been and RPG. And for a majority of those people, it’s a safe bet that first RPG was Dungeons and Dragons. For some people, the worst part of an RPG is rolling up a character, figuring out their attributes, equipment, and stuff like that. Roll Player makes that process fun! Using a whole bunch of D6s, you figure out your attributes, equip your gear, and find out what kind of character you are. With so many different cards for attributes, alignments, classes, and a whole bunch of fantasy races to choose from, there is endless replay-ability in the base box. (And yes, there are expansions!)
Roll Player’s solo mode allows you to experience more of the game when you can’t get a group together. You mostly only have to challenge other players over cards from the market deck, so the AI eliminates cards from the market to simulate a human opponent. What cards it removes is decided by the roll of a die and what initiative the human player chose to take. This is the first game on our list to have a tiered rank list to tell you how you did after the game is over. It ranges from NPC (Non-Player Character for those that don’t know 😉) to True Hero for those players that do exceptionally well. I’m of two minds on whether or not this is a good thing. On one hand, it’s amusing to see what rank you got after the game is over, but on the other hand it is a little lame to not have an opponent to really ‘go up’ against. Roll Player has a lot going for it, but its solo made is not one of its strong suits.
Cartographers
Set in the world of Roll Player, Cartographers is a flip and write game where you are a cartographer mapping and claiming the lands of the northern territories for Queen Gimnax. Throughout the game you reveal different cards showing different types of terrain, and add them to your official map of the kingdom. You score points by following the edits of the Queen, who has some very particular ideas about what she wants her kingdom (queendom?) to look like.
Cartographers’ solo mode is very simple. There are almost NO changes to the base game. Except for changing the way ambushes are drawn on the map (not everyone likes being ruled over), there are literally no other changes, which is refreshing. This happens a lot in ‘…and write’ style games, as there is very little player interaction. The same is true for Cartographers. Like Roll Player’s solo mode, you get assigned a different title for each level of score you achieve. Like Roll Player, these titles are very funny. Cartographers is a great solo game, better than its big box Sibling Give it a try, and hopefully you can avoid being an ‘oblivious inkdrinker’.
Welcome To….
Have you ever wanted to build your own 1950’s housing development but not have to worry about the cost or liabilities of a time machine? Well Welcome To… Welcome To…! In this game, you and as many people as you have a sheet for can design their own subdivision to their heart’s content, using the unique ‘flip and write’ mechanics of this game. You can build houses with pools, designate parks to make your subdivision more attractive to residents, hire real estate agents to sell completed housing estates for more points, and construct fences (arguably the best kind of neighbor is the one on the other side of a fence).
The great thing about ‘…and write’ games, like Cartographers above, and Railroad Ink below, is that they translate so well to single player games. In solo Welcome To… all you need to do is shuffle the ‘solo’ game card into the bottom half of the deck of cards, and then you are ready to play. You draw three cards from the deck, and use the number on one to build your development, use the card effect from another, and then discard the third. Because the multiplayer game doesn’t really have player interaction, there’s not really the need to feel like you are going up against an opponent with this game, which is a concept I bring up a lot in the other reviews in this article. The solo implementation of Welcome To… is a great way to get a good non-traditional puzzle into your daily routine.
Railroad Ink
Railroad Ink is a great game to try if you want some good puzzly fun. You roll a set of dice and use the various rail lines and road combinations you roll to connect the different points along the outside of the board. Each station you are able to connect increases your score, along with several other scoring mechanics like your longest railway, or how many of the central square tiles you were able to use.
In the multiplayer game you are trying to get the highest score, and the solo game is no different. You just simply play as you would if you were playing against other opponents, and try for the best score. Simple and effective. If you are a fan of puzzle games, this roll and write is a title that you should definitely seek out.
Welcome to Dino World
The last game in the collection of ‘and write’ games, Welcome to Dino World is a pure ‘roll and write’ like Yahtzee, but with dinosaurs! Welcome to Dino World is much more complex than Yahtzee though, so don’t be put off by that. Essentially, you use the die faces as action points to complete different things in building your dinosaur park. You can build paths, make dino pens, establish generators, and build facilities to help attract visitors to your park. You also need to use your dice values to make sure you have enough security; you don’t want any of the dinosaurs getting out and eating people!
The solo mode pits you against an AI player who has a deck of cards that will determine how it uses the die that it gets each of the seven rounds of the game, while you get three dice. They are trying to attract the same visitors as you, so you need to be extra careful to claim visitors timely so that you can maximize your points. Much like the other ‘and write’ games here, the player interaction is minimal, but this game certainly has the most out of all of them. The AI comes with three difficulty settings for added challenge, so if you find yourself beating the ‘tame’ difficulty regularly, you can move on to the ‘beastly’ or ‘savage’ difficulty for a bigger challenge. And make no mistake, they are challenging. Overall, Welcome to Dino World offers a good solo challenge with an easy breezy roll and write flair. It’s not quite as good as Dinosaur Island, (coming up later on this list) but it is certainly much more portable!
Tiny Epic Galaxies
Have you ever wanted to fight a whole galaxy? In the solo mode for Tiny Epic Galaxies, you can! Each of the player boards in Tiny Epic Galaxies has a solo play ‘rogue galaxy’ that ranges in difficulty from ‘beginner’ to ‘epic’. The difficulty in this solo mode scales very quickly, as the harder galaxies get more resources so fast, you will really have to have a good strategy to defeat them. By using the dice provided in the base game, Tiny Epic Galaxies solo mode feels like you are playing against someone, which is always preferable to the ‘score a predetermined number of points’ kind of solo game. Tiny Epic galaxies is also super easy to set up and tear down, which gives it a leg up over some of the other more robust games that have a solo mode on this list.
Tiny Epic Western
Another game in the Tiny Epic line, Tiny Epic Western sees you in the role of one of eight different Old West character types, each with the goal of controlling the little town you all (for the time being) call home. The game is a mix of worker placement and hand management, as you vie to control buildings, win poker hands (well, this game’s version of poker anyway), steer the town’s industry, and out-duel your opponents. Like Tiny Epic Galaxies, you can set the variable difficulty of the solo opponent to give yourself more or less of a challenge as you play the game.
That said, Tiny Epic Western is a good deal more complex than Tiny Epic Galaxies, and that is not always a good thing. With you controlling the actions of the AI player (your ‘rival’), it’s easy to mess up a rule and become frustrated that the game didn’t play out the way you expected. And the AI player has a greatly pared down list of rules compared to you! That said, Tiny Epic Western’s solo mode isn’t as good as its predecessors. There are a lot more Tiny Epic games in the line, and each one has a solo mode with it. I recommend trying more of those before you check out Tiny Epic Western.
Bargain Quest
In so many of the games we play with fantasy themes, we are mainly the brave adventurers that go out to deal with the various problems of society. Which are normally monsters. Monsters who are trying to eat you. Don’t you want to know how the common folk live sometimes? Well, maybe not the common folk, but at least the merchant class, right? In Bargain Quest, you too can be the brave retailers of the fantasy world, selling the items that those brave adventurers need to slay that dragon, banish that restless spirit, and tell that garbage troll that he needs to move on, because he just smells nasty. Bargain Quest is a great drafting game that has some great art, interesting concepts, and really is fun.
But wait! I hear you asking, how does a drafting game adapt into a solo experience? Well, I am here to tell you… that it really doesn’t. Bargain Quest’s solo mode is an expansion, which is a bit lame. The solo mode pits you up against a rival shop in your town that always seems to have slightly better things than you have, enabling it to attract adventurers that much easier. This can be a bit of a frustration, as I was only able to legitimately attract an adventurer once during the whole game. The entire game is based around you achieving a score that gets you a certain rank, like Roll Player and Cartographers. The solo mode works ok, but you really miss the drafting that makes the multiplayer game unique.
This leads me to the biggest issue with the solo mode. In the printing that I have, the Supply phase, where you normally draft cards for your shop, is completely missing from the rules. This step involves you getting more cards, and therefore sets up the economy of the game. I had to find out via Board Game Geek how to play that section of the game, or even know that it existed at all. I kept wondering why the rules didn’t seem to work when I read them. This is a great disappointment to see from what otherwise is a fine game. Bargain Quest can be quite fun, but like the real world, it’s much better when you go shopping with some friends.
Wingspan
Wingspan is the first in our trio of Stonemaier games, which are grouped together because they share more DNA than just a publisher. All three games have solo modes developed by a separate group known as Automa Factory, and they are really good at what they do. The wingspan solo mode includes a set of cards that will determine what the Automa will do on its turn, which happens after each of the players’ turns. Each card is divided into the four rounds of the game, and the Automa takes that particular action for its turn. In the first few rounds, this is usually focused on getting bird cards, which contributes the most to the Automa’s score at the end of the game.
The Automa solo mode for wingspan really does a good job of simulating another opponent. You can also set the difficulty of the Automa depending on what kind of game experience you want to have. The main issue with this Automa is that it really can feel like you are just trying to reach a certain score. Once you see how many bird cards it is generating, you can really easily tailor your strategy to work against it. That being said, it’s still a very functional solo experience, and allows you to explore more of this beautiful game if you can’t get a group together.
Scythe
The second in our trio of Stonemaier games, Scythe allows you to experience and alternate history in which mechs are built and rule the lands of eastern Europe between the World Wars. Like Wingspan (and other Stonemaier games), the solo mode for Scythe was developed by Automa Factory. And like Wingspan, it does a really good job of recreating an actual opponent. Scythe comes with a deck of cards in the game to act as the Automa’s AI. Depending on the symbols on the card, it will dictate the actions of the Automa, including movement, battle, and unit generation. These cards also are used in resolving combat, the most recent discarded Automa card dictating how the Automa will execute its strategy.
The weakness in the Solo mode for Scythe comes in moving the Automa pieces around the board. Scythe uses a system of ‘neighborhoods’ to decide where the Automa moves and attacks. This system can be a little complicated if you are not used to other hexagonal territory control or wargames. Overall, Scythe has a robust solo mode that makes the game feel like you are playing another opponent, and it can extend the life of the game if you have played a lot with other people. You can also choose to play against multiple Automa, or play with a mix of Automa and human players! Stonemaier has made these ‘unofficial’ variants available on BGG and their website, and also in the rulebook for the Rise of Fenris expansion. Scythe is without a doubt one of the best games to get if you can only play solo.
Viticulture
The third and last of the Stonemaier trio is Viticulture, the game of old-world winemaking. In this game, you have just inherited a winery from your Mama and Papa and are trying to make a go of it, growing grapes, harvesting them to make wine, and then selling that wine to customers. Viticulture was the birth of the Automa solo game system in Stonemaier games, and in fact, ‘Automa’ is the Italian word from ‘automation’! Isn’t learning fun?
That being said, Viticulture’s Automa is the most basic of all of them. It comes with a base deck of cards that mainly serve to block spaces on the board so that you cannot do them. This simulates a human player well and is easy to understand. The biggest weakness comes from the win condition. In the setup of the game, you place the Automa’s score marker at 20. After 7 rounds (years) you need to have more than 20 points or you lose. That’s it. Now, the game is great and flows very well, but something is lost when you know you just need to beat 20 points to win. You can adjust the difficulty, but that only means moving the point threshold up or down. Viticulture is a great game, and it is great to be able to play when you don’t have a group around to view the beautiful Beth Sobel artwork. However, Viticulture, like wine, is much better when shared with friends.
Also, check out Dan Hess’ article on paring wine while playing the game!
https://quackalope.com/blog/tabletop-tipples-lotr-lcg-ks5s9
Architects of the West Kingdom
The first game in the West Kingdom Trilogy (the third game, Viscounts of the West Kingdom comes out at the end of 2020), Architects puts you in the role of a medieval architect in current-day France, trying to build magnificent buildings and a glorious cathedral for the king of the Carolingian Empire. (If you want to know more about the History behind Architects, check out my other article on the website!) In the solo game, the king has become most displeased by the apparent lack of progress on the Death Star. …Whoops, no sorry, wrong thing. The cathedral. He’s displeased with the lack of progress on the cathedral. And, what luck! He’s found new ways to motivate you too! (Can’t get away from those Star Wars references!) He’s brought in some outside help, the architects Constantine and Helena of the Byzantine Empire.
Through the use of a deck of scheme cards, the AI player will take turns after you, and you will both be competing for the various resources, buildings and apprentices that you build and recruit to score points and win the game. Both AI player boards offer a different level of difficulty (Constantine is Standard and Helena is hard), and the scheme cards work well to represent the actions of a second player. You can even add the AI to two-player games of Architects to add a little more flavor. Architects solo mode therefore offers a simplified version of the game for you to manage for the AI player, as they don’t collect most resources and have fewer things to worry about. Architects may be one of the best solo experiences available right now. It allows the player to feel like you are playing another person, it is not hard to upkeep the AI player, and it gives a feeling of accomplishment when you are able to beat the AI. I highly recommend checking it out if you are at all interested in solo gaming. (Or just get it in general, it’s a great game.)
Paladins of the West Kingdom
The second game in the West Kingdom Trilogy, Paladins sees you defending your vulnerable towns and villages from the ever-increasing number of outsiders who are working their way into your lands. You use specific combinations (there are six different worker types) of worker placement actions to gain resources, erect garrisons, fortify your city, commission monks, attack and convert outsiders, and develop your city to have the highest score at the end of the game. Paladins is a step up in complexity from Architects, and the Solo mode is no different. It will take a while to set up and get the game played.
Paladins uses a deck of cards to simulate another player. This AI player will have a separate modified board where they take a variety of actions. They are mostly the same as the regular human players, but there are some differences. The AI player also does not collect resources, and can use any color of worker to activate its action spaces. The AI in the game is really well done, as Paladins doesn’t have a ton of player interaction, and what it does have is simulated well. The biggest concern here is the length and number of things you need to know. Paladins is complex, and there are a lot of rules to remember. That goes double when you are trying to do the AI plays as well. The first time I played, I completely forgot about the Paladin cards (which the AI doesn’t have), and I shorted myself key workers and buffs for a few rounds. The AI is also hard to beat. Sometimes you will find yourself so far behind the AI that you might think there isn’t a way to win.
With all that said, Paladins is still a great game. I prefer Architects, but only very, VERY slightly. If you were only to get one game from this series (of the ones that are released at the time of this writing) I would recommend Architects, but there is definitely room for both in your solo collection.
Dinosaur Island
Welcome….to Jurassic Pa…… wait, what? We can’t say that or we’ll get sued? Really? FINE. Welcome……to Dinosaur Island! If you haven’t seen the movie Jurassic Park, this might not be the game for you, but if you have, welcome to Jurassic Park in a box. This game does an amazing job of recreating not only the feeling of breeding dinos, but also sparing no expense in the thrill of running your own amusement park! In Dinosaur Island, you use a mix of drafting and worker placement to build the most exciting rides, attractions, and food stands that you can, and also engineer the best Dinosaurs since the Cretaceous!
While Dinosaur Island provides a great multiplayer experience, it also shines in its solo mode. There will be a deck of AI cards that you will use to dictate what cards and dice will be missing from the drafting and market phases, which simulates a human player quite well. Where the solo mode shines however is in the implementing of the bonus scores. Normally, in a multiplayer game, there are a variety of objective cards to fulfill that will trigger the end of the game when a number of them have been completed. The solo game takes place over seven rounds, and in each round, you can complete one or more objectives for bonus points, which at the beginning of the game are worth more, and at the end drop off considerably. However, if you complete an objective each round, you can earn a bonus at the end of the game, as well, for not discarding any bonus objectives.
If Dinosaur Island lacks in one particular area, it’s that there isn’t really a score that you are shooting for, you are just trying to beat your previous high score. The interesting use of the objective cards and AI deck make up for this however, and really make the solo game of Dinosaur Island worthwhile.
Everdell
One of the biggest games of 2018, and one that is still producing content, Everdell is a worker-placement tableau building game where you play the part of animal explorers trying to establish new towns in the Everdell Valley. The amazing illustrations, the great diverse card pool and the smooth mechanics of the game make it a great game to have in your collection. But what about the solo game? Well, I’m happy to say that it is great, too.
In solo Everdell, you are trying to overcome the machinations of the dastardly leader of the rats, Rugwort. If you are lucky enough to have the collector’s edition of Everdell, you’ll have a set of rat meeples to play the game with. Solo Everdell does a good job on imitating a human opponent, as Rugwort’s rat minions block different spaces each season to prevent your using them. Also, Rugwort will build his tableau town by taking cards from the center meadow area, so you need to be strategic in order to make sure you get that cards you want from there. The great thing about Everdell’s solo mode is that it really plays just like the main game. You have cards that you can interact with from Rugwort’s tableau, and you are focused on the same things that you focus on as in the multiplayer game. If you like worker-placement games as much as I do, you should definitely give this one a try.
Ex Libris
The people need their books! In Ex Libris, you are trying to be named the head librarian of a generic fantasy town, filling your shelves with what the people most want to read, getting them in alphabetical order, and making sure you do your best to keep those banned books out of your library! Ex Libris features a very involved solo experience, which will see you going up against the dastardly public library in order to earn your Librarian’s License. The theme here is super evident, as you procure books to put in your library, shelve them, and use the various locations around town to manipulate both. You have to be careful though! As the game progresses, you will have fewer and fewer places to send your workers, and every set of books you don’t procure for your library will be used to enlarge the public library!
Ex Libris offers a supremely satisfying solo experience. You definitely feel like you are playing a live opponent, and the pace of the game is very good. Playing solo also gives you a chance to better look at all of the titles on the spines of the books on the bookshelf cards, as some of them are pretty funny! With a variable challenge level and well-designed mechanics, you will definitely be able to appreciate your local library that much more after a game of Ex Libris.
Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective
If you ever thought you could match wits with Sherlock Holmes and solve some of the greatest mysteries ever to plague Victorian London, you’re in luck! In Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, you play the role of a Baker Street Irregular, one of the many street children Holmes employed as intelligence gathering agents to solve crimes (no lie, this is real, go read the source material). The game is generally meant to play in a group, but there is no reason you can’t try to match the great detective all by yourself. Here’s the thing, though: you really can’t. The cases in each of the three volumes released as of now are well written, but they are not perfect. Also, being able to beat Sherlock Holmes takes not only an almost herculean effort of deduction, but also a fair amount of luck. If you make even one false inquiry, you are not going to be able to match wits with the master.
That said, if you don’t care that much about beating Holmes, and just want to solve a good mystery, Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective offers a great theme, wonderful components, and good stories all in one box. With the influx of “Escape Room in a Box” games in the last year, you can escape to the game that a lot of them share a common ancestor with, and enjoy a few hours lost in Victorian goodness.
Terraforming Mars
Earth. The year: 2315. The World Government has just created a Terraforming Committee, and now the business of taming the Red Planet, Mars, can begin in earnest. The undisputed champion of board games in 2016, Terraforming Mars (TM from now on) lets you take the reins of a massive corporation that is trying to make Mars a livable place for humanity, stretching across generations and the solar system. TM is truly epic in scope, and the solo experience is no exception.
In solo TM, you are trying to do the same thing you do in the multiplayer game: raise the oxygen and temperature levels to a specific point and create nine oceans on the planet’s surface to support life. The catch is, you only have fourteen generations to do it, which means fourteen rounds. This might not seem too hard, but it is more than enough of a challenge for anyone. With the sheer number of project cards available for you to build, you need to make sure that you can pick only the best ones that will help you on to victory, because the timer is really tight. You don’t really have anyone you are playing against (although you have a neutral player that you can ‘steal’ from and modify their ratings on certain production values), but for this game you really don’t need one. The challenge of beating the timer is more than compelling enough. I didn’t even really mind the fact that you’re only trying to achieve a high score instead of beating an opponent; the thrill of beating the timer was just that compelling.
TM might just be one of the best solo experiences you can get. It is challenging, but not impossible, and the combos you can create to get just what you need is an interesting puzzle to try to solve. Adding in some of the expansions will help make the experience richer and more interesting, as well. TM is well worth getting even if you can only play it solo.
Star Wars: Outer Rim
One of the best things about the Fantasy Flight licensed Star Wars games are their ability to let you make your own Star Wars story with your favorite characters. No other medium lets you tell the breadth of stories in quite the same way that board games do. I wrote an article a while back about a game of Star Wars Rebellion that made me feel this way, and Star Wars: Outer Rim is no exception. This is a true pick up and deliver game, where you are going through the Outer Rim planets of the Star Wars universe, picking up jobs, bounties, crew, and cargo (both legal and illegal) to deliver to other planets around the rim. The game board is a unique half circle design, set up in a way that make expansions to the game possible. (And it does need expansions, but I won’t go into that here.)
The solo mode for Outer Rim works well. You have one opponent, and they perform actions that are explained on a deck of AI cards (they helpfully have C-3PO’s picture on them), and the cards are very straightforward and easy to understand. The actions that the cards ask you to take are sometimes less easy to understand. Because the AI doesn’t do everything a human player does, there are sometimes questions about what the AI does. This will have you grabbing for the rules reference almost every AI turn, which really takes you out of the story of the game. There are very few Star Wars board games that are solo-able, if any (if you know of others let me know! I couldn’t find them!), so Outer Rim is a welcome addition in that regard. The gameplay can be a little bit repetitive after the first few rounds, and you will almost always be looking at the rules reference for the AI player. For these reasons, it’s hard to recommend Outer Rim as a great solo experience.
And that’s it! 25 games for you to sink your teeth into if you can’t get a group of folks around a table right now. Thanks for reading, and I hope you make the best of your self-quarantine during this ongoing pandemic with some fun solo plays!
Make sure to check out the Quackalope YouTube channel, and take a look at some of the other articles on the site! Big thanks to Dan Hess for help with this article!
