A Complete Beginner's Guide to Solo Board Games - Paperwave #4
Recommendations from a veteran.
(Welcome to Paperwave: a free newsletter focused on board and card games, Lego, art books, and other cozy objects likely to spark joy with nerds).
There’s nothing odd about setting up and playing a board game by yourself. Stop looking at me like that. This is my newsletter, anyway! 😤
But seriously if you’re not embedded in the board gaming scene, solo or solitaire board games may seem a little strange. And for most of modern board gaming’s history, they kind of were. Well maybe not strange but they definitely weren’t very prominent. Most board games rely on player interaction and require an opponent to play against, after all.
But as modern board games have matured and broadened, a wider variety of games gained popularity, including cooperative games. Instead of competing with each other, players could work together to defeat the game itself. Usually by racing around a game board trying to complete challenges to win (Pandemic, Forbidden Island), or by defeating an enemy scenario or “boss monster” of one kind or another.
As co-op games gained steam, so did the concept of solo play. It makes sense why it would follow. “Hmmm… I’d really like to play another round of Forbidden Island but my partner doesn’t want to. Would it be weird for me to set it up and just play both player roles…?” - You can’t exactly have that same internal dialogue with Catan or Ticket to Ride, where the challenge lies in besting your opponent.
It’s worth pointing out that even today, with solo board gaming hugely prominent and included as an option in almost every new release (more on this in a later newsletter), true solitaire games - that is, games that support 1-player and only 1-player, are actually still uncommon. Under Falling Skies, Friday, Coffee Roaster, and Hostage Negotiator are the only four “true solos” that I’d wager have broken through into the zeitgeist in any kind of major way, and even then they’re still fairly niche.
So, almost all solo games are actually still multiplayer games first and foremost, just with strong rules support and strong game balance to make single-player a viable, fun, compelling option. Depending on the game I either play these games in true one player mode, or I play “two-handed solo,” controlling two player roles myself.
So if you’re a board game novice that’s just solo-curious, you can still build up your solo collection in the same way I did: buying games that work well for two or more players, but also have a strong solo option.
Below are my picks for my personal favorite solo board games - but take heed! - I am but one man, and there are many games I have yet to try. Please join (or start!) the friendly discussion below to share your own solo recommendations.
Excellent Expandable Card Games
I own and play a huge variety of board games, but over the years I have come to learn that I definitely have a type: card games with a large and expandable card pool, giving players an ever-growing library of player cards to use, as well as an ever-growing number of scenarios to defeat. I’m a sucker for expandable, scenario-based card games. I collect way too many of them. I’ll probably write an entire newsletter on them later.
Briefly - these are games where you construct or buy a pre-constructed deck of cards to play with, filled with allies to fight for you, special abilities, and so-on. And then you use your deck to defeat an enemy scenario, powered by a similar deck of enemy cards. New cards are flipped over on enemy turns, revealing a new minion you must defeat or other nastiness to overcome. In this way players can work together to defeat the scenario and win, and solo play is also an excellent option. Solo play in these kinds of games doesn’t feel “weird” because every round you’re waiting to see what pain the enemy deck will dish out next.
The games are heavily expandable, with new enemy scenarios and new non-randomized packs of player cards (when new cards are released for sale everyone gets the same stuff for the same price in every pack, unlike Magic) released at a regular clip.
It can get expensive, but you certainly don’t have to be a completionist. But I like that buying more deeply into a product line adds additional value to your previous purchases, too, as you’ll develop new strategies and cards to run through older scenarios.
1-2-3 Punch: My Favorite Expandable Card Games
I’m probably going to do full dive-ins on all three of these games down the line, so I’m going to try and keep these explainers brief. My three current favorite expandable games in this category are: Legendary Marvel, Aeon’s End, and The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game (which also happens to be my favorite board game of all time). All three work absolutely perfectly for two player play and for playing solo.
Honorable mentions for two more games in this category: Marvel Champions and Arkham Horror: The Card Game. For my personal taste I like the above three more, but I own and enjoy these two as well and honestly they’re both more popular overall.
The Lord of the Rings is the grand-daddy of them all, in print since 2011. As a result its spiky difficulty and some rules fiddliness has been smoothed over by later games like Marvel Champions. But I like LOTR more for several reasons. It features by far the best artwork. It supports more nuanced and flexible play styles and deck building - be a sneaky hobbit, an aggressive dwarf, a trapper, or many others. It emphasizes combat and non-combat in equal measure. And, although I’m not a LOTR super-fan, I do have a fondness for the characters and lore. Publisher FFG is gearing up to reprint the game in a new packaged format that’s easier to catch up and collect, too. Perfect for newcomers.
Legendary Marvel I enjoy thanks to its extreme level of modularity. It isn’t just “pick a hero and a villain then duke it out” - you have complete control over several aspects of the setup. Nightcrawler and Rogue vs. Thanos and a group of evil mutants, who are trying to Replace Earth's Leaders with Killbots. Or maybe Deadpool and Shang-Chi, fighting Zombie Green Goblin and the Skrulls, who are trying to Splice Humans With Spider DNA. It’s a ridiculously powerful, clever, and flexible system. You don’t just fight Red Skull, and move on. Red Skull completing one scheme with one group of henchmen will play completely differently than Red Skull completing a different scheme with a different group of henchmen.
The game isn’t perfect (so much shuffling) but it’s still excellent. One important note - instead of constructing a deck to in advance to take into battle with you like in LOTR, you add new cards to your deck as you play.
Aeon’s End is a dark fantasy themed deck builder like Legendary Marvel, but with a cool quirk that completely changes everything: You never shuffle your deck. When your draw pile is empty, you simply flip over your discard pile and start drawing from it again, with all the cards in the same order. So if you carefully plan things out to put a powerful card combo together, you’ll draw and use that combo over and over for the rest of the game. Awesome. I also enjoy how thematically rich the game is, with your mages starting off weak, barely clinging on to avoid being completely overwhelmed. Then by the end, if you’ve survived the midgame, you’re usually so strong you can typically steamroll the enemy nemesis. I also really appreciate how completely different the game’s ~40 nemeses feel. Each is a distinct puzzle.
Solo Epics
Of course no mention of solo games would be complete without a Gloomhaven shout-out. Much has been written about the game’s extremely clever campaign system, that reacts and responds to your choices. And about its sheer, epic scope. And its secrets. But the beating heart of the game is its immensely clever card system, which has yet to be surpassed. Every card has two possible actions on it, but you have to choose just one to carry out each turn, foregoing the other. Not to mention permanently spending a card can give you a powerful bonus, but your cards are also your health. The mark of a great board game is giving players interesting, tense, meaningful choices. And Gloomhaven does that with every move on every turn. Gloomhaven’s popularity has earned it some backlash, but the core card system is still undeniably so, so good.
I do love Gloomhaven, but beware: The setup time and session play time are no joke, and as a result I don’t play it as often as I would like. The smaller introductory Gloomhaven product Jaws of the Lion will be a better choice for many, including I suspect, most solo players. Don’t worry - it’s not really “watered down” - it’s just streamlined. As a result I found myself drawn to play it more often.
This letter is getting close to wrap-it-up mode and I worry I don’t have enough time to do the wholly unique 7th Continent justice, but I need to include it. It’s basically an exploration-heavy open-world survival puzzle board game, filled with surprises and branching paths. You’re trapped on an island, tasked with lifting a mysterious curse placed on you. At first, you can only see your starting square. But you can move in any direction at any time. As you explore and place each new numbered terrain tile you’ll uncover new random events, equipment, animals to hunt, materials to craft into rope or other helpful items, missable clues, puzzles, optional challenges, and so much more I’m sure I’ve never seen. You choose where to go and what choices to make.
The game comes with numerous curses each acting as their own self-contained scenario, but they all take place on the same island, which is still traversed square-by-square on future playthroughs. So you can use your previous knowledge to help you, as you learn about shortcuts, good fishing spots, and so much more.
Smaller Snack-Size Solos
Gate is a tiny (seriously… the whole game comes in a mint tin) solo-only monster defense board game that manages to punch way above its weight. It’s not too hard to win but the built-in scoring and hard mode modifiers give it a lot of longevity. The ultra-strong theming does a lot of heavy lifting.
Desolate from Jason Glover, the same indie designer as Gate, scratches a similar itch. Scramble around and fight your way off an alien-infested spaceship before you run out of health (or bullets… or air). Lots of fun press your luck and resource management decisions to make.
Sprawlopolis: Build a city card-by-card where the scoring conditions change from game-to-game, constantly forcing you to evolve your thinking and layer your cards together in different ways. The whole game is wallet-sized, comprised of just 18 cards! There’s a Kickstarter ending in a couple hours (!!!) for more solo wallet-sized games from the same publisher. That’ll teach you stragglers that saved this newsletter to read later.
Justin’s Pile of Shame
To my everlasting shame I have not (yet!) played the following games, but they are known to me through cultural osmosis to be excellent, highly regarded solo tabletop experiences. Half of them I actually already own (sigh), so if you stay subscribed long enough we’ll probably get back around to them in time:
Friday: A quick-playing, simple solitaire game about surviving on a desert island.
Robinson Crusoe: A lengthy, fairly complex solo-friendly game about surviving on a desert island.
Coffee Roaster
Hostage Negotiator
There are many more! This is stressful for me!
Seriously, the scene for true, thoughtfully-integrated solo modes has gotten so rich so quickly. Many people claim to like Mage Knight (I’m not sure I fully believe them). Spirit Island has emerged as a hugely popular solo option. A Feast for Odin. Nemo’s War. Roll Player and Cartographers. Terraforming Mars. More casual options like Calico and Tiny Towns.
There’s too many! I’m already way over 2000 words! I need to go!
Look, bottom line - if you have other board gamers in your life, pick up something that truly works as well one-player as it does with more - basically any of the games I directly shouted out here. Read up, and try to skip a game that “force in” a solo option because it’s now en vogue.
And if you’re truly flying solo, without much option for multiplayer? For killing time pick up something small like Sprawlopolis or Gate, and I recommend investing in whichever expandable card game catches your eye if you’ve caught the bug and are looking for something to sink 100 hours into.
Happy gaming!
Recently I received 2 solo games I backed on Kickstarter and since those 2 games are now available in store I would definitely recommend them:
The Dead Eye: A card game only in the same vain as Friday- you turn a card and choose what to do with it. Not sure which one of those two I prefer but I definitely recommend The Dead Eye if you prefer more a mad max still of universe vs a Robinson Crusoe one.
Mini Rogue: A small dungeon crawl that uses only cards. It’s a small game that packs a lot of fun! The game is more complex than what it looks like. You need to descend into a dungeon by gearing up and combat monsters that gets harder the further the dungeon you go. The version I backed is an updated version of an older game and they now includes a 2-player mode as well.
Cheers,
I think another interesting solo experience is Terraforming Mars. Interestingly, the solo experience is almost a completely different game. Instead of competitively building your engine and squeezing out victory points where possible, you instead have to completely terraform the planet in 20 turns. Still a great way to learn the game (which is mostly why I play solo.)
Keep it up Justin!