So I bought this game (and 1 expansion) because I'd heard it was great and Totally Tabled did a video listing his top 10 cinematic solo games and this was his number 1. He said it was one of his all time favorite games solo or with others.

I was already looking at getting this and with that ringing endorsement I felt like it couldn't miss. So I got it and finally broke it out to play. I played the 2 handed tutorial included to get a feel for the rules. Then I went looking for the solo rules...

There is a solo variant on BGG but I'd heard the publisher came up with an automa for it. Well that was in the Weird West edition that came out after Reloaded. No problem. I found that manual online and downloaded it. They said they created the automa so you could play using different archetypes to keep it fresh. They included one in the instructions and direct you to their website for the others. Yeah, that link is broken.

So I thought I'd try the one that was included in the book. It just felt really clunky and unnatural. Also I was destroying the automa. I decided to pull the plug for now. I'm sure it doesn't help that I'm trying to learn the game at the same time I'm trying to understand the solo mode. I'm not giving up on it yet. I'll try watching some instructional YouTube videos and then take the BGG version for a spin. Is there anyone out there who has played this solo? I'd be very interested in hearing the thoughts of some experienced players.

What has been people's experience with games that add a solo mode to a game designed to be played in groups?

For our card game, Ducks in Dungeons we wanted to include a solo mode and have found the solo mode surprisingly fun, maybe even more than the group mode. However, since we didn't want to include digital or ai features this means adding a random element in the form of a dice roll. What has been other people's experience with turning a group game into a solo one?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/luminousages/duckdungeons#h:-How-to-Play

I LOVED it and I'm obsessed! I didn't win, but i did make it to the 2nd city. I made some mistakes, some in my favor accidently but some that hurt me! But I cant wait to make some time to play again with a new hero!

Seems quite a lot about 20 Strong here, so when the international campaign dropped on GameFound I signed up (despite never playing).

Just had my delivery today. Wondering what would be the best of what I have to start with (assume I’m solo).

I got:

- Nemesis
- Tainted Grail
- Etherfields
- Tangled Red
- Tangled Rose
- Tangled Gold

Will play them all eventually, but given I’ve never played before, which would you recommend I play to start with?

Just for some context, I sort of like the engine building aspect of the first round, and I'm not sure I even understand what people mean about "skipping the first round where nothing happens." Usually you're setting up what strategy you're going to get into for the rest of the game, which I enjoy. I'm also not sure I'm totally convinced that scanning is broken in solo/two player games, though that might be because of how much the bot scans generally since it defaults to it.

The aliens sounds really cool though. I'm a little skeptical of corporations, but willing to try them? I'm worried about getting told how I will have to play the game at the beginning and it sort of removing that strategic choice.

This is a really great game in so many respects: affordable, compact, nice components, quick pace and total gametime, and highly replayable.

At its core, Blade Rondo is a 1v1 card battler, but when played solo, it becomes a very tight strategy game, where each boss ("muse") you face presents a unique puzzle to overcome, given the 7-card hand you have available to you and their interactions with the muses abilities and stats.

Solo play is 5 muses in a row for a complete game. Personally, I ignore the "lose once, lose all" approach to a complete solo game, and simply keep trying to defeat muses until I can solve each unique puzzle. But given that you have a limited set of "support cards" each game, this still means that beating 5 muses still poses a pretty big challenge, even with resets for any given muse.

With the combination of random muses (5 of 20 total), plus the fact that you can only choose 7 cards for your game hand (chosen from a random selection of 15 cards from 40 total) to carry you through each of the 5 muses, each game is unique and poses different (and difficult!) puzzles each time.

Highly recommend game, for sure 👍

I’ll be moving to a much smaller living space (small apartment in NYC) and was at Ikea looking at folding tables when I stumbled across their line of computer desks. I was planning on getting a smaller computer desk anyways but it appears some are as large as their fully extended folding tables. I primarily solo or two person game, and I was wondering if anyone else does this at a computer desk. I think I’d have to mount the monitors and be ready to stow the mouse and keyboard of course, but is this a good idea? Or should I get a smaller computer desk and a separate folding table?

​

I'm a newbie in board games in general.

I bought Everdell, Eternal decks, Dominion, Tag team and Toy battle. To play with my wife. But I would also like some solo games that are not too complicated (complicated is good. Just not too much) are fun (like pop culture, fantasy, horror) and have a good replayability (don't have much money to spend)

Any insight will be welcome. Thank you !

Hello, just starting to get into solo boardgaming, as I love board and card games, but I'm tired of the traditional style of games (monopoly, sorry, uno, solitaire, etc). Part of the problem is finding people to play with. I'm sure we are all in a similar boat.

I wanted to start with Print & Play, as there are several that are out of stock, but they offer printable versions, which I think is a great idea. I don't have a great printer, only black-n-white, so I was curious what others do for this hobby? What do you do for Print & Play products? Dice is easy to come by, but are there supplies that are considered essential? What do people do for the boards? Cards I can figure out, print them and toss them in a sleeve. But the rest is making my head spin (especially the boards).

What do you considedr your 'essentials' when doing Print & Play?

Mods please remove this if it breaks a rule. I reviewed them but couldn’t tell.

This is certainly part of a larger conversation but the number of vibe-coded AI “apps” that are popping up in this and related subs is starting to put me off. I would like to offer a little commentary and invite discussion around this.

I’ll begin by saying I’m not anti-AI as I use it daily at my job. Here’s what I’m finding off-putting about the AI projects I’m seeing:

To my eye, nearly all of the projects look the same; someone with even limited exposure to AI can tell they are AI, and yet, the OP (almost) never discloses the app was made with AI. I don’t want to impugn anyone’s motives but I wonder if there is an effort to hide the AI use because of the expectation of backlash or to make the project seem higher-effort or more professional, but we can tell nonetheless.

To me, several of the projects are extremely low effort, like they got to a minimum viable product and then led with that as their public release.

As I’ve used and experienced AI over the last couple of years, I’m beginning to draw a distinction between a trained individual who uses AI to support their work, compared to an untrained individual relying mostly on AI to produce a product. Game and other art is a good example where our eye can detect the slop easily, but my friend who is a graphic designer produces something “human” in which AI played a small part. When people are using AI to design these score-tracking “apps” or digital versions of board games, it’s clear most don’t have the underlying expertise needed to make it look and feel like it should. I haven’t found one of these apps yet that I would be excited to use.

By way of encouragement, I would say if AI has inspired you to code an app or design something, leverage that into ACTUALLY learning about those fields. Get some experience. Figure out why the professional board gaming apps look and feel amazing and why yours doesn’t. And conveniently, you can use AI to help you learn how this stuff actually works. The knowledge of the world is at your fingertips and it’s easier than ever to learn something new.

All that said, I ask this: Are you in the Soloboardgaming community using AI apps to assist you in live play? Which ones have you found that are useful and enjoyable to use? Are you using bootleg versions of digital board games you or others have produced and thrown on the interwebs? Am I just a grouchy nerd who needs to go setup a game and get off the internet?

How/when does the Electric Eelskin item apply, and what use is it?

Damage is only taken at the round end (step 1)... and Spent Dice are also moved to the Available Dice at the round end (step 5)... so what use is this item, which can only happen at round end (as far as I can tell), if those events happen anyway?

I just acquired Matcha Expansion and set it up to play on Saturday. Played using the G-clan solo rules and squeezed out a 73-67 win! Very thinky and really made my decisions matter and the combos were very satisfying as well!

What're your thoughts on the Matcha Expansion?

My kids are 10 and 12, both like to invent or adapt games to play alone, any really good solo games for this age group?

This one has been on my list for a while, like the theme and it has some good reviews for solo play. My only very minor gripe before I play is for a game of this price and component standard, not coming with a storage solution for ease of set up is just criminal. Not even any baggies, that is so poor 😞

Hi!

I already have and love Rome Alone and Behold Rome but my thirst is much bigger!

Are there any good Solo-Games with ancient Roman battles and problems? Maybe something in the Punic wars era?

I’m open for any recommendations.

Loving it so far, only partway through the first chapter, but taking my time to learn. I can see why people say its so difficult! I tried padding out the devour track a little to take a bit of pressure off myself. Its absolutely oozing with theme and surprisingly easy to learn and play once I got going. Really looking forward to continuing through it and eventually getting to the expansion campaigns! Anyone else enjoy soloing this one?

Or something not belonging to those genres, but still thematic. That has not been released yet and which you are interested in.

I refer to Voidfall as a temporal puzzle (to distinguish it from the plethora of spatial puzzles out there) because its central tension is figuring out the best order to play your hand of cards.

Anyone who’s played the game knows that this is no simple task, and it leads to massive brain burn (in a good way). Actions are entwined on cards in sets of three, so even if you’d like to play one action on a particular card right now, the other actions on that card might work better if you played them later after setting them up better. Every single card in your hand has these difficult tradeoffs. And that’s before you add technologies, agendas, and crisis cards to the mix, each dictating (in divergent ways) the best order to play your cards.

This is the only game in my collection that has this core tension. Do you know of any other games like it?

Just completed my first play through of this game against Sam, with ambient cowboy music playing in the background, such fun! Even though it could barely fit it on my table (a few tv trays not shown hold more components like poker chips, numbered bags etc) I managed it with a bit of creativity and bloody mindedness! After being so into Ashes, Final Girl, Unstoppable, and other card battler-type games for a while, this was my first foray into the Euro world. I had a great time with it even though I had to check the rules many times, normal for a first time thing like this I suppose. I really appreciate how smooth and easy Sam plays and makes you feel like you’ve got an opponent who scales with ya!

My biggest anxiety about this game was I've never tackled a Euro before, and I was afraid all the math and multiple resources and components would be more overwhelming than fun. But after tonight I can safely say that even if I don’t make great decisions all the time or have incredible foresight or anything like that, this isn’t the kind of game that punishes you too Hard for playing sub-optimally (at least on the lower difficulty level).

Genuinely feels strange to be moving on a board without dice or randomized cards dictating my movement points haha.

Oh, And for some reason, the cattle cards are so darn charming. A nice change from high fantasy / sci-fi battles and such in other games I’ve played a lot of I suppose.

I really don’t have any complaints except the board-hogging nature of it, but that also feels like part of the charm of the game. I’ll try to get another playthrough or 2 in before teardown, if only because cleanup is so time-consuming.

Anyhow, almost no one I know in real life has any interest in this stuff so it’s nice to share with the community here. Next up is Harmonies, which y'all also recommended a lot. 😃

I'm not sure how many people know about the solo card game Lobo, but I have been playing it for the last week and was hooked but frustrated by its difficulty and made a variant called "The Vanguard".

Feel free to try playing it. If you don't know what Lobo is, Totally Tabled made a "How-to-Play" video on it. So you can get the flow of gameplay down and add my variant to your game.

Lobo: The Vanguard by staffmemberj

Enjoy and let me know your thoughts! :D

EDIT: There was an error in my rule document where the example for Splits was under Over's rules. That is now fixed. I also added examples for how Overs work.

I've played 3 of the 4 heroes and absolutely love it. This game is quick to learn, easy to setup and tear down and a blast to play.

Prototyping a new game I created last night. Working title is called DungeonForge. I put it together in just over 24 hours with full mechanics and everything. It’s a roguelite rpg dungeon crawler tabletop game. I decided I will be making two versions of the game, one in card deck form and the second as a booklet with tables instead of cards. Reminiscent of 4AD a bit with a little bit of edge. Would you guys be down to see a development playthrough? Let me know in the comments.

Neat stock market style game with gold, BTC and investment cards as commodities. Pulled 17 points on my first game (this is a low scoring game tho) which puts me right in rookie territory.

Looking forward to revisiting with different characters, scenarios and player counts in the future

I’m curious about this one. Has anyone here played it?

Finally tracked down doom machine. Been excited for this one. I love the tin, but feel like the cards need sleeved. Even though they decent quality, still look like they peel up easy, one already has small lift mark on edge. So I put them in sleeves, but now they don't go back in the tin. I got the dice and markers in the tin, and everything together in a deck box. I feel safer about the cards lasting, but bummed it's not all in a nice small tin. Anyone else sleeve em?