My Top 10 SOLO BOARD GAMES of 2020

[Music] [Applause] [Music] hey what's going on everybody this is justin with me myself and dice a channel dedicated to solo board games and today we're gonna do my top 10 solo games that i played that were new to me in 2020. yes that's a mouthful i thought long and hard about making this video for probably two months i know a lot of people do a top ten video at the end of the year and i didn't want to just jump on a bandwagon and this to seem like oh everybody else does a top 10 so i'm going to do one too i want every video that i make to serve some sort of purpose or goal that i set out when i made this channel i realized two things in my contemplation and that is one top 10 videos are fun to watch i enjoy it it's entertaining and this channel part of the purpose is to bring entertainment into your lives and i realized number two that this could fulfill a big purpose of the channel which is to spotlight really good solo games that maybe you haven't heard of before or have been curious about and want to know if they may be right for you so these are all going to be games that i highly recommend if they sound like something you were interested in now not every game came out in 2020 that is on this list not every game came out in 2019 that's on this list but that's another purpose of my channel is i wanted to not chase the hotness and spend more time with the games i have and the games i love and spend a little more time reaching back and looking at some of those games that i've probably missed because of hype and hotness and chasing that over the last few years so this i think really spotlights some games that were new in 2020 and games that were just new to me in this past year so i did set some ground rules for myself and it's not as big a deal this year but going forward i wanted to lay some ground rules out so that i could follow those and help myself make these lists in the future so the first rule i said for myself was that i had to have played the game for the first time between november of 2019 the first part of november 2019 and the end of november 2020 and yes if you do the math for next year that means that there's an overlap of a month in november there but i realized that this would allow me to look back and pick some of those games that i actually started playing last year but didn't get enough plays to kind of make the list and that will again be more relevant next year if i do a list that there are games that i've gotten in november and december that i've either not gonna play or have only gotten one or two plays in and probably would make the list but i just don't feel comfortable putting on the list yet so they'll be eligible for next year the second rule that i set for myself is that i had to play the game at least three times now all of the games on my list of top ten have been played more than three times but looking forward into the future it's a possibility that i don't get to play a game as many times as i would like to and i just know myself that it takes at least three good plays for me to really get a feel of how much i like the game anything other than that is is pretty much still first impressions for me but just to set a hard number i figured three plays was enough so that's the rule going forward from now in any of my top 10 videos and the third rule that i made for myself is to give myself a little grace and be able to break those rules and the way i can do that is with honorable mentions before i get into my list i wanted to say that any games that we have played on the channel i will put up in the title card and any games you're interested in i'm going to try to put handy links down below for you to just go straight to amazon and grab those now i have to tell you that they are as amazon affiliate links yes the channel does get a kickback from that but if you're gonna buy it anyway it costs you no extra and it's just more of a handy link for you to check out these games see what their pricing is like read a little more about them and that kind of thing just to make things easier on you so with the disclaimer out of the way the first of my honorable mentions is a small game that just barely missed the list this one we played on the channel and it is gate now gate by jason glover is a small micro deck building tower defense game and we've played it on the channel in this you're building your your hand your deck your small deck and trying to survive through the waves of enemies and then defeat the last two this is a great game that i really enjoyed so why did this not make the list proper well i think it's for two reasons one because of covet i didn't do any traveling this year i usually do a lot of traveling and i like to save these games to throw in my bag for just treats as i'm out traveling and that's where they get the most play i also going along with that i have a dedicated table right here that i can lay out games on and leave them for days so typically those multiple playthroughs are going to happen with bigger games not smaller games and the other reason is because i've played this about 12 13 times and i've beat the hardcore mode twice and i haven't gotten that highest score achievement yet but i feel like i've seen what everything the game has to offer i'm not saying that it's not replayable it certainly is i still would have fun with it but when i think about pulling it out again coupled with it being such a small game i just feel like okay you know i can move on to something i haven't seen everything now that being said jason glover the designer of this game commented on my video on board game geek and said that he was working on an expansion and that makes me super excited because i think that just adding even a little bit more of what's already there would add to the veritability of this game i think it just needs a tad more variety just so you don't know every time what's coming out there's a sense of surprise and a sense of tension and suspense there when you play it so he may be playing playing other things i don't know but even if it's just a little more of the same i think that would just have put this game right there on the list but it didn't quite make it and i don't think it's the game's fault so again a game i highly suggest wanted to shout out to gate by jason glover so the second game in my honorable mention list is a game that i only played two times which should disqualify it but i've played enough of this games in this series that two plays i know i really like this i really enjoyed this entry and it subsequently plays would only push it on further in the list but since it broke my rule i put it in an honorable mentions and that is the newer release from the coin series in gmt gandhi now if you've never played a coin game coin stands for counter insurgency typically the coin series looks at four factions there's one exception but usually there's four factions with different political or social uh ideas and motivation that are in a conflict typically these are classified as war games i think of them as an evolution of war games maybe where they're looking at a some sort of conflict and they're giving you the perspective and the means that those perspectives use to try to accomplish their goals uh counterinsurgency of course means usually guerrilla warfare but i knew once i played the first in the coin series that this way of looking at things would possibly open up something besides just looking at traditional warfare conflicts and i feel like they're finally starting to reach into some of those other uh social political strife in gandhi and gandhi the counterinsurgents group is uh gandhi's group and it's great to see something that's non-violent that is reaching through a new set of means and undermining the british raj or the controlling group and you really get to see what they were holding on to what they were fighting for or not fighting for fighting for peacefully i guess is it's just really eye-opening now this is a bear to learn it's a steep learning curve uh even even knowing the coin system every game is a little different the other reason i think it deserves a shout out is that they went away from flowcharts on this and started a card based solo system which i think is fantastic and i am can't wait till they retrofit that into some of the older games because the flow charts can they're fine after you get used to them but they are very intimidating the first time and this is just a series that i love i love the perspective of it i like the historicity of it i like just that we get to deep dive into something that's not black and white and this is a fantastic game i definitely want to shout it out i shout out all the coin games but this one for this year was definitely a hit for me and that is gandhi by gmt games the final game that i want to showcase and the honorable mentions is a game that was been on and off the list as i was making this and thinking about it probably would have slid in that number 10 spot but it just just barely fell off and that is the hexplort series forest of adramon now if you're not familiar with the hexplore series they are the closest thing that i've found in a board game to a pen and paper rpg you actually write with dry erase markers on your character laminated sheet and i didn't think i would like that at first but i actually grew to enjoy that a lot i really like that all of your stats are numbers there is zero art well there's not zero art on the back of your character sheet there is art and it's beautiful art i love it but dry erase flipping your character sheet over not a good combination so there's no card no art on the cards the board is beautiful uh and you can put the board in in a almost infinite number of layouts so that there's tons and tons and tons of replay value in this the idea of this game is that you are a an explorer you can play it one character or solo or you can play it multiple characters solo i like playing two-handed uh to experience more of the combos that you feel but you're a group that is going after the big boss and in this case you are trying to find pieces of the scepter and put those together so that the boss is not quite as hard and eventually you're going to have to face the boss and either you're ready or you're not there's a quick ticking time clock and at first i didn't think i would like that with this game because of the open world feel but unlike video games the ai can't adjust for how powerful you are and if they didn't have that tension there if they didn't have that that suspense of trying to get as powerful as you can before the boss attacks you then it would we would be able to get too powerful and would ruin the end game it wouldn't be as quite as fun so they really balanced that tension of open world gameplay with that racing against the clock feel now why i fell off the list this was an amazing game i played it probably seven or eight times really enjoyed it but it can be brutal and i don't mind hard games they don't i don't mind losing games that's fine but the purpose of the game is to find a way to efficiently explore the board and meet your goal so that you can hopefully beat the boss what happens to me and this may be a me problem is that if i play with the feeding mechanism which you can take out but to me it just feels like cheating i like the food mechanism but it's a die that you roll at the beginning of your turn every turn and if you don't get lucky on those first few rolls or you don't get lucky to have a food source nearby you can go from trying to strategically make an economy towards your goal to trying to just stay alive and just problem solving of how can i last one more round and then this game is long and this can go on and on and on trying to just get to where you're not starving again you could take that mechanic out but i really like that idea that you know i'm weaker because i didn't get to feed myself yesterday and so i need to take care of my basic needs before this but then it gets really hard to come back from that in practice so that is hexplore specifically volume two forced of adremond and the expansion just a fun game if you like having an imaginative story where you write the story in your mind this is definitely a game that you should check out [Music] now honorable mentions are out of the way let's get on to number 10. the number 10 game in my 2020 plays is a game that really changed the way i look at the games with this theme and that is cthulhu death may die yes this is still in shrink i didn't want to grab the box over there when i had this one handy but i liked it so much i got season two and have it ready to play whenever i finish the base game now cthulhu definitely die is something that i didn't think i would like when i first heard about it in fact i didn't back it on kickstarter i picked it up way after that and just because people were raving about it cthulhu games i have a couple i have arkham horror third edition i loved arkham horror second edition that was one of the first big solo games that i played that got me into oh i can do this without a group kind of mentality and i have eldritch horror and what i don't like about those games i've realized over the time is this idea of i don't my characters don't know what's happening they're having to gather clues they're having to chase down the who what when where how and why and then only then after two hours of play you finally get to defeat the bad guy because you can't shut them down before this skips to that last part and i love it it's fast-paced it's action-packed i mean you go in guns blazing magic slinging and you are ready to try to you already know the who what when where how and why you are trying to take down the cultists that are summoning cthulhu a godlike creature down to this earth i really just don't get into cthulhu games because i guess the horror mythos just i want to like it but it's just not it's just okay to me but this has been a ton a ton of fun it is a game that we will feature on the channel that we will do some playthroughs of i can't wait to share them with you the minis are amazing i've enjoyed painting those it's just it's just a really fun game and this is one i highly suggest you look at it's a tactical miniatures game with a lot of dice rolling but it has the coolest level up mechanic in it i really enjoy the kind of pressure lug pressure lux a big mechanic that i like in games especially thematic games and this has it with your level up system and i love that i absolutely love that so take a look at cthulhu oop there it is death may die and see if that's something that might interest you [Music] now the number nine game on my list is a game that came out before that allotted time of november i believe if i remember correctly but i actually bought it i actually pre-ordered it and then because people were so mixed on the reaction i was hesitant to even take it out of the shrink and then at the end of last year i did and i played it several times at the end last year and the beginning of this year and throughout the year and that game is tapestry by stone meyer games now tapestry is i'm not a stonemeyer fanboy by any means in fact pendulum that came out this year i had no interest in i maybe looked at it once or twice i really just didn't click with me but scythe is in probably my top games of all time i haven't done that list yet and uh viticulture is one of my favorite games of all time so still meyer puts out some good stuff and definitely deserves a look from me because they tend to click with what i like however when they said a civ euro game i was very perked up i was very interested in that i my interest was peaked and so i kind of pre-ordered it with very little known and then once some of the reviews and some of the first opinions came out they were kind of mixed now i think it's fair when people call this a sieve themed euro i i think that's fair and that's fine i i'm fine calling it a civilization euro just because i think enough of the theme comes through and it gives enough of that flavor and that feel of the forex to building a civilization and growing your civilization and spreading out and exploring new areas all of that stuff i get those fills with this and i get enough of the fills that the theme comes through to me now what i discovered about myself in this game is that the main is your racing up tracks and that doesn't sound fun when i say it but i've realized i've really liked that and i really like it in the way they do tapestry and other games that i enjoy the track racing of is that you get bonuses as you go along there are incentives for you to you know race up a single track and not let your opponent get there first or there are bonuses that may combo well together so it benefits you to kind of split but that's risky because then you never become fully powerful in any of them it's really just a neat neat euro mechanic that when done well with those a little bit of of carrots dangling in front of the stick for you to keep moving that makes it an anguishing decision that i really really like that now i haven't played this in a while and yes the civilizations are they can be kind of swingy especially in solo i don't mind it as much in solo but definitely in in multiplayer and yes they have released an errata for a lot of the civilizations and i hate that that had to happen i just hadn't had the time i kind of put it back on the shelf and probably dropped it lower in this list because i really just didn't have the time to go through and read all the errata and pull it back up every time i thought about it i thought about what i had to go through to get it back to the table however i've recently gotten the expansion to this so this is definitely something that i'm going to pull back out read those erratas and explore more and that may would have shot it higher on the list i just haven't had a chance to play that expansion yet and hopefully as an expansion we can play together and feature on the channel that's my goal no promises but that's what i hope so number nine on my list is tapestry [Music] for my number eight this was a game that i actually have regrets on and that sounds bad and i don't mean it bad it's actually a good regret i actually wish i'd known about this game when it was on kickstarter i don't back many hardly any kickstarters maybe two or three a year i'm very picky about that so i don't stay in the whole kickstarter world of what's coming out and what's new just because i don't want to be tempted by it but this one i wish that i had seen because i would have backed it at least to get one expansion and that is from the sadler brothers street masters by blacklist games now street masters oh my gosh the art is just so reminiscent of everything i loved in my childhood about beat em up video games i mean now they take some references from like street fighter and such but this is more akin to i played a ton of double dragon 2 with my brother on our nes but this whole thing of going through and and just kicking and punching your way through minions and smashing crates and barrels and having you know chicken legs fly up and you just pick them up and for some reason that's what helps you heal trying to get to that boss trying to beat that boss and it being just challenging and fun and action-packed that's what this game is it's a tactical combat game you're on a square grid and you can get those crates you can get those chicken legs you're trying to fend off all of the minions so that you can get to the boss and beat him up so what else is brilliant about this game is that the sadler brothers took basically what's in sentinels of the multiverse where you have a card deck for your hero for each hero you have a card deck for the environment you have a card deck for the villain uh they've coined this the modular deck system they've used it also in ultra quest back there which is the successor to this and man it's really awesome it adds to the variety it adds the replayability you can say okay i want to try this hero today and you can grab this villain and you can grab this set of minions and you can grab this uh environment and they're all going to play very differently the rules are going to change nothing's ever going to be the same even if you play the same hero the same boss but you change the environment things just change up dramatically so those little pieces all coming together are fantastic it's fast it's action-packed it feels good it's a theme that i don't have on my shelf really it's not fantasy it's not sci-fi is just something different and i just really have had a lot of fun with this and they add the exploding dice in there and just all kinds of of goodness i really enjoy this it's actually one of the few that i don't like playing two-handed i like playing a single character solo and i just think that's a blast so this is a game that i highly highly recommend now i don't have any expansions i think that the base game is plenty i haven't finished all that uh i think you can grab this and really enjoy it and that is street masters by blacklist games [Music] so numbers seven six and five on my list are at the end of the day i just had to put a number beside these three games they changed back and forth they all kind of hit the same spot for me on my list just they rose higher or lower depending on what mood i'm in during that day but honestly all of these numbers are arbitrary i just wanted to showcase these games that i have really had a great time with this year and have discovered over the past year but at the end of the day i put at number seven a game that we've done a playthrough for on this channel and that i had a ton of fun with and that is warp's edge by renegade games now warps edge if you haven't watched the video is a bag builder what that means is you get tokens that represent your different powers like your lasers or out maneuvering ships and as you play those and the game goes on you're adding more and more tokens in your bag you have energy that you can use as currency to buy more chips and tokens and then as you defeat enemies you get rewards of more tokens in your bag and that's fantastic that is a very satisfying experience of way to progress and build i really enjoy that a lot and this game just has that kind of 80s coin-op feel of like space invaders each mother ship that you face up against is very different in the way you do it and each fighter that you can choose is very different in the way it plays so those combinations had a lot of replayability and i've just spent this is probably the game that i've spent the second most amount of time with out of this list i will play a game with against a mother ship finally beat it and it is challenging game but after i finally beat a mothership i want to try it with a different ship and then i usually lose because i have to learn how to balance that ship's new abilities and weaknesses with that goal of that mothership this is a fantastic game renegade has put out a great new entry uh it's from scott alms scott holmes does a lot of does all the tiny epic stuff is a great designer this is by far my favorite design he has done and i'll admit the solo hero series i didn't really like the first one the proving grounds game that came out i wasn't a big fan of that just didn't click for me personally i know a lot of people do love that this one is a home run i really like what they've done and what scott has done with this i highly suggest this is again a pretty cheap pickup for as much game as you get in this small box that is warps edge check out the video if you haven't [Music] my number six game has one of my favorite mechanics is a mechanic that's in heaven and l it's a mechanic that i first encountered in francis drake this idea of moving along a track or in this case a circle you can move as far as you want and the better stuff seems to be at the further down the track but if you move so far you leave all of this other stuff open to your opponent in this case the game i ai this game is maracaibo the reason i like that mechanic so much is it pretty much it's a pusher luck euro mechanic i said i like it in other types of games that are like the tactical strategic thematic type games i think this is the euro equivalent i think i've finally learned that about myself as this has become the euro equivalent of that maracaibo is by capstone game and alexander fister alexander fister is a hit or miss with me i either i love his game or i just really don't like it but his game great western trail is is a favorite game of mine and this is right there under it i really enjoyed this i really enjoy that you're moving around the caribbean you can move as far as you want to but you're leaving some good stuff behind just free for your opponent to get but there's that tension of well your opponent can do the same thing they can race in front of you and take some of that good stuff that you really really want but you need that other stuff in between two so uh it's so tense it's so nail-biting even and i really like that now there are other mechanics in this that i like i really like the whole pulling your disc off your board whenever you get to remove a disc you pull them off you can unlock new actions on your board and that's another agonizing decision what actions do i really need this game i have to give capstone games and fister props for this i've really enjoyed it and the addition of a campaign system only elevates this even more uh and i've just started playing the campaign uh so it's made me want to pull it off the shelf even more and it jumped it up on this list and i think that if you like euro games and haven't checked out maracaibo i think it's one that i can highly recommend that i think you might enjoy that is maracaibo [Music] my number five is a game that home paper i really shouldn't like but i really do love playing this game i during this whole pandemic i got really heavy back into painting my miniatures again and i was getting tired of painting fantasy miniatures i wanted something different and i wanted some high quality miniatures that you usually don't find in most board games but i didn't want to buy miniatures just to buy miniatures i wanted something to play with so a friend of mine suggested that i look at a game that had caught my eye a couple times but i never even pulled it off the shelf at my local game store and that was blackstone fortress warhammer quest game from games workshop this game is all about dice resolution i don't mind some dice resolution i don't mind like rolling to attack and then i have to get through your two defense that is on your player card or whatever but this game is roll a die to attack re-roll a die if you have that ability roll for the ai to see if they can defend or not roll to see what the ai does it's it's dice roll after dice roll after dice roll with the d20 but it packs so much fast furious fun in this that i don't mind it is a relaxing game of just go in and try to there's there is a pressure luck element you're trying to dive as deep as you can into the blackstone fortress before you're fatigued and you you have to kind of pull out and go back to kind of gear up again and heal up and all that kind of stuff so it's a really neat design i like it a lot unfortunately games workshop has a a thing where once a game they're done with the game they're done releasing expansions they're done with it and even the last expansion that came out is already getting hard to find and previous expansions are getting really really hard to find uh i have picked up everything for this i have not played with everything i'm still working on the base game but this is a game that i have played with my son and let him roll some dice and i've let my daughter help me paint it's just been a lot of fun that i enjoy pulling this out setting up on the table and going through a few missions a day and just seeing what's going to happen to my characters now there is permadeath in that and that's one of the things that drew me to this is that there you can get to the end of the game and totally lose and your character's dead or you can get three quarters of the way through the game which is a lot of game time and you not have enough characters to finish but there's also this idea that you get to pick all of these characters and you get to pick a team of four that you go in with and that's really cool and i haven't lost a character to permadeath yet i've been able to kind of revive any that i've lost the ai is not the smartest they don't always do the most optimal thing but they can also pile up on you pretty quick it's just a fun just sit down roll some dice have some laughs not too heavy just have have a good time playing in this universe and this is a game that unfortunately i think is going to get harder and harder to find but it's one that i highly suggest if you're interested in just some good old-fashioned dice rolling old school fun with a good story line check out blackstone fortress playing with good minis it just elevates everything especially if you're interested in painting these guys are fun to paint blackstone fortress games workshop [Music] coming up to my number four number three number four i knew what my top four games were going to be pretty easily this year but number three and number four had a huge battle out for which would have which spot and man i'm probably gonna get some some blow back from this and some disagreement uh but this could change any day my number four is gloomhaven jaws of the line we're doing a playthrough of this we've done the first four scenarios in the walkthrough and we are getting ready to do the fifth one i've spent a lot of times with this game i i've failed several times and had to re-record because you know you can't play a failed mission several times this has been a really fun game in fact it's so much so that it's made me reconsider maybe picking up original gloomhaven now i still have some of the same qualms that i had about it before it's expensive it's a huge box it's going to take up a lot of space i'm pretty much in a one game one out space kind of situation right now with my collection as i've pared it down big time this year and that takes up far more than one game space but i've had so much fun with this that i'm tempted tempted hard after i finish this to explore the original goomhaven or maybe just wait till frost haven comes out and just grab that there's enough gameplay in this game to get your money's worth out of it it's not nearly as expensive as regular gloomhaven it's a reasonable price actually and it has a lot in it i have it all packed in i can barely have a little bit of lid lift but man those scenario books having the maps on the scenario books is phenomenal it makes it easy to get to the table quick to set up and i like that that makes me want to play this even more often plus it has that awesome awesome combo card play in the mechanic where you're losing your cards as rounds go you're fatiguing basically it's just really a great system i really enjoyed this i'm enjoying the story i've enjoyed filming it and it's one i want to see through to the end and i'm very bad about starting a campaign and not getting it finished so uh this one i will see through to the end and hopefully go back and play it to player with my daughter this is just been a phenomenal game this year i i think any other year this would have been my number one game on the list any other year and for many people it is their top game for this year and rightly so it deserves it i people are singing its phrases and it has earned it in every single way i think it was a smart decision to make a new entry into the system that uh had a tutorial walk through that was a little shorter or a lot shorter in this case and just give it to people who may be scared off by that huge gloomhaven box it is the whole gloomhaven experience in a smaller content easy to digest and i think that many people are going to come into the hobby through this game and many people are going to come into the solo part of this hobby through this game and that is gloomhaven jaws of the lion if you haven't checked it out check out our playthroughs and consider picking up this game if you like tactical miniatures combat and combo card play this is this is a a i think a instant hit and we will be talking about this for years to come [Music] so after singing the praises of gloomhaven what could have beat it back into the fourth spot and i think this is just totally comes down to a personal preference this is a game that i kickstarted a game that i really uh just have had a ton of play on this year and i love it multiplayer i love it solo in many different ways and that is rally man gt now rally men gt is a reworking of an older beloved solo game that i actually never got to play rally man dirt and they reworked it and put it into a closed circuit gt racing and it is just so much fun first of all the track comes in hexagons with track sections you can build a an almost infinite number of different tracks people have built real world tracks using just the hexes in this and the expansion and it's amazing it's amazing some of the things that you can make with this and each race is going to be very different because of those tracks and the main mechanic of this game is a pressure like pretty much mechanic it is you have gear dice with gears numbers on them and you have to go up or down in ascending or descending order and then once you have set your path you can either choose to roll the dice one by one and you're trying to avoid those exclamation symbols depending on what car car you're driving it's maybe two or three but you don't want to get whatever that is so if you roll one by one you can stop at any time and have a safe drive but you can also pick them all up and chuck them all at once and pray that you don't get the three or two or however many would make you wreck and if you do you get rewarded because you get tokens that allow you to buy off dice later on uh basically get a free pass and that comes in very handy when you're rolling you know six dice what makes rallyman gt such a phenomenal gaming experience this year is how the community both the original rally man dirk community that came over and just the people that have found this the first time and people that have started solo gaming in this time have all come together and they have really just solidified a fantastic solo community first off holy girl games saw the response of the solo community to this and started putting out a newsletter every so often that just keeps you informed of all the cool stuff that's going on in just the solo world of this game now how do you play solo well out of the box it's a time trial i didn't find that very exciting at first but even before the game came out there were already two variants for bot races but both have been fully fleshed out now and our official variants with this game and rally man holy girl games has supported the rally man solo community with that so besides the ai bot rules there is a flourishing online community of monthly competitions of time trials and this is where the time trial format really shines what they do is they send out a monthly track that you build and they show you how to build it and it has the rules for that race and i'll set up the track and i'll run it seven eight nine times maybe and try to figure out what's the best way to attack that track those are my practice runs and then i will say okay this one counts and each turn depending on what gear you end in how far you go that kind of thing there's an app that you can track all of that in and it results in adding time to your time trial you're trying to get around as fast as you can and get the best time so you pick the race that you're ready to go and you say i'm going and then you record that time you submit it to that solo community and then at the end of the month beginning the next month they release everybody's time and you get to see how you stack up it is so exciting because it's bringing a community of people that are playing solo together that will continue to play solo even when they can meet back with their great game groups and just rallying around no pun intended this game and experiencing it together and sharing their experiences and it's just a great fun way to experience this game so there's so many ways to enjoy this and with rally man dirk coming out next summer i just think the experience is going to grow the community is just going to grow even more there's going to be all kinds of different races that you can pick from and choose from those communities are going to be there and only going to grow so a fantastic fantastic way to experience a solo game in this time and it's because of all those different experiences that this beats gloomhaven out for me and that is a rally man gt i can go on forever about this but i'm gonna stop now and that's my number three let's move on to number two [Music] my number two is another one that barely squeaks onto this list due to when i got it and started playing it i first started playing it in november of last year and even if it come out let's say november of this year and i only had a month to play it i think it would have made this list but not this high i think that allowing it to grow over the course of this year and get a full year of expansions and content out has really just made this game climb up my list and that is not going to be any surprise we've done my first video series about this marvel champions i love that marvel champions the first lcg that i can actually say hey grab this box you're gonna enjoy it you can play it with your kids you can play it with your partner you can play it by yourself you can play a true solo one-handed or two-handed solo to get those combos it's just so many different ways to play this game it's gonna hit so many people and as they've come out with more heroes and then as we played through the rise of the red skull expansion we're starting to see how big the design space is with this game and i like that i can say hey grab the base game it's going to last you a while then once you feel like you've ran out the base game then you know maybe find a couple heroes that you like but skip straight to the rise of the red skull because you're gonna get two heroes and a few villains in that and that's gonna last you a while as well you don't have to pick up everything for it you can pick up as you please there's no rush there's no fear of missing out none of that stuff i love that i love that they have made that evolution in the lcg system i think that they've done something very special with this game and i love absolutely love lord of the rings and i absolutely adore arkham horror lcg for the storytelling and i love lord of the rings for the challenges and and it's just still a fantastic game one of my favorite games but this one is just done something that those couldn't and i really have enjoyed this evolution marvel champions i can't say enough good things about it it is my number two game and it has just continued to impress i can't wait they have to announce guardians of the galaxy i still haven't played ant-man i still haven't played kang but as i work my way through the heroes i've just enjoyed pretty much everything about it marvel champions by fantasy flight games my number two here we are my number one game of 2020 and it's not even a 2020 game it's not even a 2019 game it's actually a game that i've put off looking at for a long time and i have to give a shout out because if you haven't seen it rob's gaming table is a phenomenal channel i watched rob play solo link down below to his channel i really just was mesmerized him playing solo this game and just the excitement that he had was contagious it made me stay through the whole gameplay and made me very interested in this game i wasn't quite ready to to shell out the money because it is expensive and that's one reason i never really paid that much attention to it before but then i've been trimming my collection way back this year again spending more time with the games i have and i was doing a huge sell-off and i got contacted by somebody local to me who has become a friend shout out to danny he was the one that i people would ask for you know do you want to make some trades for this and i was like no i'm trying to get rid of games so finally my answer became well only if it's too many bones and danny said that he had it he would do that trade in a heartbeat and i think i still got the better end of that deal because i have fallen hard for this game it is just a fantastic experience so much so that i don't have the original box this is splice and dice this is the only kind of box i have left because everything's back there in the trove chest and man this game is is much bigger than it seems i remember seeing the 4x4 little battle map and moving your chips around and moving the enemy chips around didn't seem that exciting i was like well that's not very strategic because you only have a 4x4 area but that battle map once you start getting into the game it feels bigger than it is and then at times it feels smaller than it is it feels cramped and then it can feel wide open it's really just amazing and there's a lot of strategy that can go into that so yes i am falling hard i am part of the too many bones fan club now it has easily easily become the number one game that i've played this year i look forward to much more time with this game i've only just barely scratched the surface it's a game that we're going to play on the channel one of the things that i had trouble finding was a if you want to play your first game solo what's kind of the best combination of things to get a good experience i'm not saying that i wanted to win but i wanted to get a good experience where i can build up my characters and see a good amount of the game and without getting beaten down so much in the beginning i actually didn't like my first and second playthrough of this i didn't i didn't get to even get to the boss i would quit before that because i was just so frustrated i was being bent down now this is a challenging game but starting my third playthrough it started to click a little bit so what my hope is is to have a playthrough of this where i go through a playthrough of what i think would be a really good starting point for your first solo game combination of characters the tyrant and such and walk you through a game that's that's my goal but this is a game we're gonna play many times we're gonna revisit several times on this channel and i think it's a game that's worth spending that time with i think this is to me is something special i think chip theory games hit it out of the park with this i get why people love it now it's not for everyone that price point is still high but the resale value is also pretty high on it so if you can shell out the money and this interest you in even the slightest bit wait for a playthrough to come through on the channel or watch another one uh rob's gaming table ricky royale uh one stop co-op shop all three great channels that have great playthroughs of this watch one of those see if this is something for you and if it you think it is give it a shot too many bones my number one game of 2020 and that's it those are the top 10 solo experiences with a couple honorable mentions that i had in 2020 what were your top games in 2020 leave them down in the comments below i would love to see him i love seeing what people are excited and passionate about in the world of solo board gaming and i want to say a special thank you to all of the supporters of this channel by watching the videos subscribing to the channel liking the content by interacting in the comments section i have really really just enjoyed the explosion of growth on this channel and the community that we are building together a safe and welcoming and inviting community for experienced solo gamers and new solo gamers alike i just really enjoy that and i'm so thankful that you guys are a part of this so that being said if you haven't already i want you to hit that like button smash that subscribe button and tap that bell icon to be notified when any videos go up my daughter made me do it that way i hope you have a wonderful end to your 2020 i hope 2021 is even better to you have a happy and safe new years and as always thanks for watching until next time happy gaming [Music] you

Channel: Me Myself & Dice

Views: 5,304

Keywords: Card Game, Boardgames, Solo, Solo boardgames, Solo playthrough, Board Game, Cooperative, Solatare, Covid-19, Social Distancing, Boardgamegeek, Strategy, Tips, Gaming, Games, Tabletop, Tabletop Game, Board Games, Video Game, Dungeon Crawl, Campaign, Gloomhaven, Card play, How to play, Instruction, Videography, RPG, Role Playing, Role Playing Game, Racing, Best of 2020, Best Board Games, Best Solo Games, Best games of 2020, Best solo 2020, Top 10, Top Ten, Top 10 2020, Top solo 2020

Id: yVz-N3tDHLo

Length: 48min 57sec (2937 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 30 2020