Highly recommend Spirit Island. It's the best solo experience I've had. Gloomhaven is okay, especially if you use an app to manage all the fiddly bits. Spirit Island is my go to if I am not able to rope people into a game night.
this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
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I played through gloomhaven on PC. It was a ton of fun. But imagining managing all the stuff manually is daunting.
Some of my favorites for an all afternoon (or longer) game:
Liberty or Death (or any other COIN)
Xia w/ Embers expansion
Dawn of the Zeds (not so big)
Two-handed Spirit Island by far. It's one of my favourite co-op game too, although it's a toss-up with ArkhamLCG in true co-op.
But I feel Beast and Claw or Jagged Earth is essential for the extra tokens and events, feels too static otherwise after a couple of plays.
I think a friend of mine has Spirit Island. I'll poke him so I can try it out solo or with friends. Thanks for the awesome recommendation!
Gaia Project and Great Western Trail I have been playing a lot.
I still keep going back to the Agricola Solo campaign however as it's so much fun to break the game keeping an occupation permanently 😄
Gaia Project seems very much like it could be up my alley. Thanks for the recommendations! :)
The only annoying aspect of Gaia 's automa is remembering where to put the new mine it builds, and I keep forgetting to do it's points.
I don't tend to look at the automa's score but try to see how well I can score. Those skills seem to helpe well in multiplayer
Even though I do usually not enjoy solo play, I can recommend Spirit Island. As different spirits you take on settlers corrupting your Island. Besides every spirit having a completely different play style, it can be as challenging as you like, as you have multiple options to give the settlers different strength levels with unique strategies. It is a coop Multiplayer boardgame which works really well while playing alone.
I bought a copy of Trudvang Legends in order to solo play. The only reason I haven't solo played at this point is that I am playing it campaign style with my board game group, and don't want to accidentally spoiler alert myself until we are done. I love the combat mechanics of the game. I am sure I am being overly cautious but hey, I have to have something to do when I retire...
That game looks badass. I enjoy myself some nice combat mechanics as well as campaign games. I'll look into it a bit more!
My friend who owns the copy we are playing as a group played it solo, just controlled a few characters on his own. Since it's coop, it wasn't like a mental challenge to separate everyone. And the way it plays, where you make decisions and go to different pages in the book (choose you own adventure, or Tales of the Arabian Nights style) he had been to some of the scenarios we went to as a group. That is what I don't want to spoil for myself playing solo. I would rather do a run through as a group, and then I can go back and explore other options in solo mode. My hope is that they come out with more campaigns for this, or maybe a way to make your own campaign, and then distribute it for others to play.
Mage knight
Had a look at it and it looks amazing. I love the visual style of the art, cards and tokens etc. The gameplay seems very intricate as well. Thank you for the recommendation!
- Spirit Island. My overall favorite game since my first play of it. Plays great solo as a single or as 2 spirits. Coop games in general are good for solos because you can run them multihanded if necessary
- Dune Imperium has an automa based solo mode that luckily is simple enough to run
- On the hard to find side: Leaving Earth--space race simulation. I haven't played that many solos of it but it is a grandiose thing to be launching a moon mission and testing Saturn rockets.
- most of the big Uwe Rosenberg games have excellent solo modes. My favorites are Nusfjord and Oranienburger Kanal. But A Feast for Odin with the Norwegians expansion is also very good!
- I recently got Legacy of Yu which is a solo only campaign game that reminds me of Paladins of the West Kingdom but is much easier to run as a solo because it was designed as such.
- Imperium: Classics and Legends are very versatile and once one understands the basics of how to run the opponents they aren't that difficult to grok.
- As I mentioned on the small games thread I love Ark Nova and Revive as solos.
- Obsession - tile laying, worker placement, card-game mashup that I recently found out I prefer solo on the table as opposed to multiplayer online.
I am not a fan of having to run automas so I prefer games that can be soloed without complex bot actions. Dune Imperium is one automa deck that I can stomach.
This is a great list that pretty much covers my recommendations. I’ll second this entire list and also add in Aeon’s End/Astro Knights, which are mid-weight co-op deck builders that play great solo.
I never heard of legacy of yu. I just read a review and it sounds very nice. Thanks for recommending so many games to check out.
I’m 5 games into Legacy of Yu, and having just an absolute blast with it so far. As a campaign/legacy-ish game, I’m not sure it’ll have the staying power of something like Spirit Island, but I’m going to get way, way, way more than money’s worth out of it.
Pandemic (and its variants) can be quite fun solo. It's a co-op game, so all you need to do is decide how many characters you want to have, then run them all yourself. Makes for a very interesting, puzzle-y experience.
I don't play board games solo, but here would be my recommendations of games that I have played with two players, but are also possible to play solo:
- Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detectives: It is mainly reading and coming up with theories, but I really enjoy it. I played the brown and latest green box. I recommend to start with the green box.
- Gloomhaven: I played the original Gloomhaven, but for starters I think the Jaws of the Lion box is a much better starting point.
- Gaia Project: You can play the with the Automa cards, it can be pretty challenging!
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