October 2018 - Top 20 Solo Board Games!

hello everyone and welcome to the one-stop co-op shop this is Colin and today we're gonna do our top 20 solo games of all time I did this last year right around the same time and I decided I'm going to make this an annual event so I should say this is the second annual top 20 list now I'm doing 20 instead of 15 because it coincides with the bgg top 100 solo games list that Kevin earthshine is so awesome to head up he's done it every year so everybody's supposed to give him their top 20 this is the top 20 that I would give him a couple things about the list first of all I do make sure to let you know why I like the game solo and then I also let you know why maybe you wouldn't like the game so I'll tell you the things that some people might not like or might gear them away from that game so that way you don't have to waste your time on a game that you're not interested in I do have a bunch of games on this list that were on it last year so I did use the same audio file for those so if you remember last year's list and you're seeing you're going huh that sounds familiar you go ahead and just jump to the next one sorry about that I just didn't feel like recreating the wheel this time I have at least 10 unique once in this one that I did not have in the last top 20 or top 15 solo list so with that let's jump in I'll see you on the other side [Music] pathfinder adventure car game the mummy's mask the game takes about 92 about 120 minutes to play solo depending upon the scenario and the set-up time takes about 10 to 15 minutes since you have to set up each location with 10 unique cards Pathfinder and venture card game the mummies mask designed by chad brown and published by Paizo publishing is a one to four players strategy role-playing card game where the heroes are pitted against the monsters curses and traps of the mummies mask adventure paths in a solo game you can choose between two to four heroes to play with you can even choose more as if you get the character expansions build a unique deck of equipment magic and Ally cards to help you along your way the game is scenario based and campaign driven so you will slowly level up your characters with additional powers and new cards to your deck in the game you will be moving to different locations in search of the villain that you are trying to defeat for the specific scenario you do this by searching through a unique set of ten cards for that specific location encountering monsters henchmen and even potential boon cards you can earn for your deck you'll have approximately 30 turns to find and defeat the villain to win the scenario you can lose by running out of time or by having all of the heroes run out of cards in their deck and hand as this means their health has been reduced to zero perma death is an option in this game so you better take care what I like about this game is first and foremost the RPG elements you do really feel like as your plane you're gonna be leveling up your character they become more and more powerful with different abilities as well as when you find different boon cards you can put them into your deck and then essentially feel stronger when you have those cards and those additional abilities I also really appreciate the campaign style going through scenario to scenario leveling up your decks there's a bit of a story that goes with it albeit I will not say the story is the main point of the game it's fun but it's definitely more about playing the game itself than the storyline I do also appreciate that each of the characters feel quite unique and you'll have different sets of builds for them they'll have different requirements of cards that they can have you know if you are playing a spell caster you can't have any of the heavy armor cards only makes sense so you have ways they have ways of making the characters feel different and I appreciate that finally what I really like about the game is the theme I don't have a lot of games that are in that specific type of theme that are played for solo only so I like that I'm going in kind of this Egypt world and I'm trying to find different things and there's traps and curses it's pretty cool it's definitely unique much more unique than their first set the rise to the room Lords that one was just so generic I couldn't get myself into it but that's part of the reason why I like this one now this game is not for you if you have an aversion to dice dice is used for all of the combat and you're gonna be rolling trying to get higher than a specific number you'll use cards and stats to increase that number but it is gonna be based on dice and you'll do a lot of rolling and a lot of counting and a lot of cursing at the dice so be ready for that also set up time takes so long to set up okay and that's why a lot of people play it online I still prefer the actual physical version just because that's the type of person I am but yeah you might not like how long the setup is the progression in the game is is slow and it is random meaning that you may never find those boons that are really good for you because they just don't show up because you randomly set up these location to location decks and after a scenario you might gain a one-car maybe two but that's about it so it is a slow progression and finally if you're looking for a solo experience with one character I don't think you really get the full experience here you're gonna need to play with at least two I played with three sometimes I even play before so and that can be a little overwhelming to manage in Akron II designed by Richard Amon Victor Peter and David Tutsi published by mine clash games is a 1 to 4 player competitive game where players compete for being the ultimate race that survives the impending doom of a meteor hitting the earth in the solo game you play against the chrono bot who scores points and uses his own logic board and a die roll to determine actions each round the solo AI uses an interesting mechanic where the board has movable numbers on it each time the bot selects an action you move the specified numbers to the next location on the board this allows the bot to behave quite differently each time you play the game why do I like this game first of all seem if you enjoy time travel you're gonna enjoy this game the simple idea of borrowing from your future self is quite awesome and yet provides you with potential negative consequences based on how often and how much you borrow love that and then whenever you pay it off you get victory points so cool the components this is a big draw to this game especially if you have the minis which are totally not needed but I think I must have in this game because when you place out those mechs and you've got a huge mess that you place out on the board and it's it's an awesome-looking minute you'll see them the playthrough totally totally cool and really makes you get into the theme of the game so why is integrity good solo well first of all the AI and that's the biggest reason as an avid solo player you get used to playing against you know dummy players where the AI does one one of a couple actions and they do it over and over again well this AI uses this logic board which provides for much more variability and unknown with the chrono bots take your next action what's gonna do but at the same time because you can have multiple numbers on the same spot on the logic board you might know well it's more likely they're gonna do this because two out of the six signs of the die and they'll do this action and I love that because it's just like when you play a real person you know you kind of know what they're gonna do but you don't know for sure and sometimes it's more obvious than others I love it thinkI so actions in this game are super quick so it provides what it provides you with very quick and streamlined play yet the decisions are juicy and difficult and so planning is quite involved and it makes a great solo because of it because you can sit there and plan and you don't have to worry about other people sitting around waiting for your turn to end replayability so from a solo perspective there's an easy medium and hard solo mode and there are four factions each with two different types of leaders you do the math that's tons of different replayability and each time you play the bots gonna do different things and you can do different things so I really like this game and its replayability for solo specifically I do have a solo playthrough of this if you're interested feel free to check it out now this game's not for you if you're not into euro games a work replacement because that's essentially what it is if overproduction bothers you that might annoy you in this game because you don't need the minis you don't need the nice components in a year old game but you have them here if you're a nincompoop you don't like this game I'm just kidding and that was just a joke if you want us just score points if you don't want to just score points for the solo game that's all you're doing here is you are just scoring points but you are trying to beat the chrono box so you do have that going for you but it is just a point scoring system [Music] Ziya legends of a drift system with embers of a forsaken star expansion is a one to five player competitive game where players race to be the first player to receive 20 fame by completing missions finding exploration tokens and upgrading their ship in the solo game you're gonna be pitted against three npcs who race you to the 20 fame points by using a variable AI system depending on how the npcs behaviors are set you'll have to find your own way of scoring fame before they do why this game is so good solo is first of all you'll play as one ship you don't have to run anything but that single ship it's you and the ship taking on those NPCs I find that the AI in this game is a huge plus because there's four behavior cards each one has two different signs on it and you're gonna roll to determine which enemies are which NPC is gonna use which behavior it's really cool it's simple but it also provides a unique experience each time you play this game focuses a ton on the adventure and exploration and not as much about combat so you certainly can go and try and take out some of those NPCs but you may find the best thing for you to do is avoid the NPC's and get your fame points by exploring completing missions I really like that the solo game with the expansion comes with a campaign and the campaign gives you different objectives each time you play I think that's so cool and it provides you even more replayability as a solo player I also just love how it looks on the table there are so many tiles it creates a unique universe each time you play and the miniatures are painted aw it looks so cool I love it I will say this game's not for you if you're not into dice rolling everything is determined by dice rolling your actions your movement but I will say that with the expansion they provide you with ways to mitigate that so that's why I would highly recommend getting the expansion if you can't this is also not a short game so once again a lot of people look for solo games that are short and quick this one is not this one you'll need to set up and keep up at least a couple nights probably before you can finish it finally if you're just not into the space-themed it's heavy into space so if you're not into that you're probably not gonna enjoy this one number twelve is baseball highlights 2045 so this is a deck building game the length from a solo game is about 45 to 60 minutes and setup takes less than five minutes baseball highlights 2045 designed by Mike Fitzgerald and published by Eagle Gryphon games is a 1 to 4 player competitive game where you play many baseball games against your opponents for the solo game you have a quick preseason by round or two and then you go against an AI deck full of upgraded cars and a best-of-seven World Series if you can take four games from the AI before they take four games from you you win why do I like this game well first of all it's the theme I play baseball pretty much through high school so the theme really strikes a good chord with me I feel like I'm playing baseball I love that sport it's probably my favorite sport so I really appreciate that deck building so when you purchase your new cards for your deck instead of those just going to your discard pile and then filling up your deck you actually get to throw away a card from the hand that you used in the last game this means that you only ever have 15 cards in your deck anybody think of renegade and but not only that you get to buy when you buy cards they go to the top of your deck so you get to see them in the next game so there's a real good strategy there of well you know I'm thinking I'm gonna need this for the next game etc etc and even in a competitive game that is really interesting because you will get to know what your opponent is buying and you know they're gonna have them in your hand so you can plan accordingly you know a little bit about their team and it's that makes perfect sense though matically I love it but yeah and also your deck gets to be upgraded very quickly which also I appreciate last the fun factor just like Clank it's not a highly strategic game instead it's more of a fun solo it's such a blast when you can cancel that ai's homerun and you win the game or you cry a little bit when that happens to you instead yeah but I do I just I love how much fun it is to play this one why is the game good solo well first of all one deck and this is similar to Clank just like Clank you only have one deck that you're running and you go against one heck I prefer that in a solo deck-building experience the length of the game so although the overall game could take you about 45 to 60 minutes what's really great about this game is you can do a little minigames and then stop and then come back to it so a minigame will take you eight to ten minutes max when you're done with that you can do a buy around upgrade your deck a little bit then call it for a night and then go and start it again tomorrow so very very easy to do small sections of this game and I really appreciate that from a solo perspective the AI so there is an AI in this one and I swear that bot just knows how to tick you off even though that AI is only just using 15 random upgraded cards you will find that you'll always flip over the one that cancels one hint when you're trying to hit that three-run homer you know but the other thing about that ai is it does provide replayability because each time you play the game solo you're gonna see a totally different type of AI deck in my solo playthrough I saw a ton of gift cards that hit well against cyborgs so I ended up changing my deck so I had almost no cyborgs but other plays it's been totally different so I really appreciate that and yeah like I just said I do have a playthrough a solo one if you want to check it out if you're interested now this game's not for you if you're looking for a strategic deck builder because it's not once again it's more fun than strategic if you have zero interest in baseball it can still work as a solo game but a lot of this games enjoyment is about the theme and so if you don't like the theme you might have a hard time like in the game and lastly if you're looking for a smart AI one that reacts to what you're doing and changes based on how you're playing yeah this isn't for you you're just drawing the top card of the AI deck so a lot of times what they play doesn't make sense it's those times where they do it does make sense that you get frustrated but it's a lot of fun but if you're looking for that smart AI yeah maybe not for you missed fall heart of the miss miss fall plays in about a hundred and twenty to 150 minutes it is not a short game the set-up time actually isn't too long about five to seven minutes but be sure to be ready for a long game miss fall heart of the Miss designed by blase Kibaki and published by n sk n games is a fully cooperative card based adventure game for one to four players to play the game solo you will control at least two heroes embarking on different adventures on a semi randomly created board which provides different landscapes and different enemies to be encountered each time you play each hero has a fixed deck of cards that have specific equipments and certain actions that you can use to smite your foes along your path but as you gain experience you can obtain advanced action cards which can provide you with different strategies to utilize during the game your primary focus will be on managing the cards in your hand is this is also the health your health in the game between the variable board the random enemy generation and the unique card play miss fall is a world full of perils and adventures for a solo gamer what I like so much about this game is the hand management it is probably of this list of 20 games the one that has the most hand management of all of them your actions are all based on the cards in your hand and you'll be placing them maybe in your discard pile maybe at the bottom of your deck maybe in different places um you might lose them for the rest of the scenario but then you get certain benefits for it it's totally awesome and I love all of the hand management of the game so unlike Pathfinder adventure card game I do feel like with this game you feel the progression of your character more quickly because you'll get that same type of levelling up just in a shorter amount of time and you can actually play this campaign style if you have the campaign expansion as well I also just really enjoy the theme I do love fantasy and I know it's generic but it's different enough that it keeps me excited which I appreciate that finally I also really enjoy how the time mechanic works in the game and how that pushes you towards continuing on in your goals for that specific scenario you may end up needing to push yourself through different locations just because of the I'm the time element now this game is not for you if you have any problems with iconography they use it up the wazoo and a lot of it is a little bit confusing and you know with the first printing of this game the mists fall base side of this game it was overwhelming and not well done with this expansion corset I would say it's much better but yeah you have to get an expansion corset to be able to play and miss fall I think the best way also as much as I want to say this is an adventure game it really is more about combat all of the encounters are gonna be about combat and I wish that you had more RPG elements where media to make decisions you don't have that nearly as much in this game as I would hope [Music] Warhammer Quest adventure card game the length of this is about 30 to 45 minutes for a solo game and setup takes about five minutes maybe even less Warhammer Quest adventure board game designed by the Sadler brothers and published by Fantasy Flight Games is a cooperative dungeon crawler for one to four players in a solo game you'll need to control two heroes to delve deep into the dungeons of the old world battling goblins bats rats and the like there's only one campaign in the box as this game is no longer in print since Fantasy Flight lost the license to Warhammer I will say I'm kind of using this game right now as a stand-in for heroes of Terran auth just so you know that should be coming out within the next couple of days during the game you'll choose one of your four actions to take on your turn it'll either be attack rest aid or explore once you choose one of these actions it'll be exhausted until you do your refresh action you need to optimize your available actions to progress through locations fight off enemies and age your allies all at the same time if you're able to progress through the quest before any heroes die you win the game now I know this game is no longer available in retail but like I said I'm kind of using this as a placeholder for heroes of Terran off what I really liked about this game is there are two types of play with it you could play either in campaign or the dungeon delves so if you did the campaign you actually had five quests that linked together but you also had the dungeon delve where you could just get together and you could take on some locations beat up some enemies and a level up all in a short play of the game itself because of that I've actually retained this game even though I know it's dead that's gotta say something also I love the dice mechanic in this game so you're gonna roll dice to see if you hit even if you miss you're gonna get a shield that can help protect you also there is one sign that's a burst symbol and that means you get to roll the die again and keep adding those up and then will be all of your successes I love this because you can always feel like it's a potential that you could maybe defeat that enemy even though you think you have no chance I also really appreciate the fact there's only four action cards it makes it a lot easier for you as a solo player deciding what you're going to do you have limit options you don't have a hand of 12 cards like you do in gloom Haven and trying to pick out two for two different characters can be completely overwhelming here you only have four actions for each player or for each hero and then as you use them they become exhausted so you have less and less options so it becomes more tactical and less fully strategic but I actually appreciate that here because it makes it easier to play solo I have to say the AI in this game is so smooth and so quick and so simple I really appreciate that you can get right to what you need to do for the game you don't have to worry about the controlling and overly complicated AI now you may not like this game if you're looking for a game that's not out of print no here's a Terran out hopefully will come out and be just as good as this will see but if it is then we don't have to worry about this point but right now yes Warhammer is out of print so there's gonna be no new material coming out also once again dice there's lots of dice here so you're gonna be rolling to resolve for all of your action cards that can sometimes be annoying for some certain people so just be aware of that and finally of all of the dungeon crawlers that you're gonna see on this list this is probably the lightest one which I'm okay with but if you're looking for a heavier dungeon crawl yeah this probably is not the one for you near and far with the amber mines expansion this takes about 60 to 75 minutes to play solo and takes about 10 to 15 minutes to set up to play your game near and far with the amber mine expansion and designed by Ryan Lockett and published by red raven games is a 1 to 4 player competitive or cooperative adventure game where players can either work together to defeat the quest or try and compete to have the most journey points at the end of the game in a solo game you'll need to play with at least 2 to 4 heroes who are journeying through this beautiful land trying to earn more journey points than the timer of the game and defeating all the necessary bosses at the same time the game includes flashes of worker placement as you will run to the city trying to gear up recruit allies dig in the mine and heck even learn some magic once you feel ready you can throw yourself on the map exploring locations having encounters and even finding enemies at the end of the scenario you will count up the amount of journey points you have look at the time tracker and multiply it by the number of characters in the game if you have more points than that you have won the game so what I enjoy about this game are the little stories that come out of playing the game you get to see these little side quests that you get to go on and all of a sudden you're starting to down this different road than your other characters that are playing with you and it's so fun to see where that goes and how your decisions will affect it I also like how you can play the game either in character mode or in campaign mode or you can play them as one-offs lots of different ways to play it and lots of variability in that way there aren't many games that I can think of that have true adventure feel and also has worker placement this one does and I really appreciate that because I've always loved the worker placement mechanic but I always feel like it's missing something and what it's missing is that adventure feel and the story and the understanding of well why am i collecting these goods other than for victory points well now you can understand oh I'm collecting them so I can go out adventuring yeah it's really cool I like that there isn't really an AI in the game that means you can just jump right in and enjoy the story and enjoy your characters development now you may not like this game though if you are looking for competitive Aiea ice is essentially a timer you're just looking to complete stuff as quickly as you can and compare points and I should say each map is different but I don't know it might not be different enough for a lot of people you may get tired of kind of doing the same actions yeah things will be in different spots on the map you'll have different storylines but other than that you are still going to the town getting the same Goods and whatnot so if that doesn't sound appealing then this might not be for you you'll also see if you play this solo certain actions that are used competitively you're never going to use in the game so going to the amber mine isn't really that beneficial when playing co-op or playing solo with two characters so yeah it's just I'm not really sure you're gonna get the full experience of the game itself if you only play it for solo and finally of course you really do need the expansion in order to play it solo so you have to buy the base game and the expansion in order to play solo [Music] number thirteen terraforming Mars so terraforming Mars is an engine building game in Alaska about 45 to 75 minutes solo depending on how much ap you have and the setup only takes about five to seven minutes it's very quick to set up very quick to take down especially if you have the broken token organizer for the game that really helps terraforming Mars designed by Jakob flux Ilyas and published by stronghold games is a 1 to 5 player competitive game where players work together to terraform Mars through raising the temperature of the planet placing all the ocean tiles on the board and increasing the oxygen level in the solo game you're trying to complete all of these objectives on your own within 14 rounds each round you'll drop four cards and choose which ones to keep you have to pay three mega credits per card that you keep then once you've drafted your cards you'll move to your action phase leave it to pay the cost of the cards in your hand to lay them down on your tableau these cards will have various effects to make Mars habitable and some will even provide you with victory points as you play the game you'll create your own engine with the cards that you play and you succeed if you terrifying terraform the planet within 14 rounds once you do win you can check your victory points on your cards as well as your total hot terraforming rating and then compare that to the results from game to game a really good game would be around a hundred points I still haven't even gotten to a hundred points but I don't even care I just have a lot of fun with it so why do I like this game well every time I have played it it has had tight gameplay and now what do I mean by that well no matter how good I am at building an engine I always feel like it seems to come down right to the wire maybe the last two rounds before I can get all of my objectives complete so to me that just means they did a great job designing the solo game and even competitively you can play this it still feels like tight gameplay people usually don't blow others out of the water that's not always the case but in general I really liked the tight gameplay replayability this game you start off with 12 different starting corporations that you can use each one has you with different starting components so you might have a lot of tools with one of them are a lot of titanium but others you might have a lot of mega and then each one has their own special abilities plus there's a huge stack of cards that you're gonna be drafting from I can play at least three or even four solo games in a row and never even have to shuffle that deck I just get new cards every time that is awesome there's so much replayability there now why is the game good so low well engine building that is the number one reason there's something so satisfying with watching your engine going a game but when you play competitively it's not so much fun if someone else has a really fun engine and you're just sitting there right when you're playing solo that means you can enjoy the intricacies of your engine without having to wait for other players and the game just does a great job of providing you with a ton of different types of engines and so that's you get to pick and choose and create and you can spend that time making that engine and you don't have to feel like well I'm slowing the whole game down because I'm trying to do that in this competitive setting there's a winning objective so all the game is a beat your own score game it also has a winning objective so whenever I play it I usually don't even care about victory points until maybe the last two rounds and I'm pretty sure I'm gonna get to the get to my objectives and I like that because and overall I prefer solo games that are more that are not about just points but I do appreciate it that when you win you can check your points and then compare it to how you've won other games and that's exactly what terraforming Mars is from a solo perspective lastly no downtime so when you play this competitively there's a lot of time when you're sitting around and doing nothing when you play this solo none of that some solo games you spend more time you know also just moving around the AI but not in this one this one it's all about you it's all about your engine I love it it just all you have to worry about is to draw pay and then play I don't have a playthrough of this one yet I do plan on doing one let me know if you're interested but I know board games with near moss he has 12 solo playthroughs one with each each of the starting corporations and then ant lamp games does a competitive one I really highly recommend you check those two out now this game is not for you solo if you want an AI and there is none because there isn't one and then also if you don't to play a beat your own score game yeah yeah you're not gonna want this game because it is a feature on score game lastly the art and component quality is okay it's kind of bland I mean it is Mars but if you want a game that really gets you into the theme yeah probably not gonna be the one for you apex therapod deck building game is a 1 to 6 player competitive deck building game where players compete to become the apex predator by obtaining the most victory points in a solo game you must defeat the boss that is within the hunt edge you'll hatch cards from your hatchery and use of all points to place them into your deck as you play there will be environmental challenges as well as other predators lurking within the hunter that could attack your species if you're able to defeat the boss you have won the game you then can count up your score to compare how well you did between plays one of the biggest draws for me in this game is the theme itself as a kid I was a dinosaur fanatic so being able to play as a Spinosaurus race or the t-rex race and build up my deck to defeat a boss Dino is absolutely fantastic and yes you can play it with one deck which is wonderful so you're only playing one hand you're gonna be quickly building your deck up while all those enemies attack you I also really liked how instead of having a market deck that you will be choosing cards from you have a hatch deck where you're literally hatching cards that you can purchase for your deck and all of those cards are specific to your class of dinosaur so if I play the Velociraptor deck all cards that I can add to my deck through the hatchery will be different types of velociraptors I honestly wish more games would do this type of deck building as it means your deck is not a conglomeration of random cards but a thematic deck with cool interconnecting abilities I do also love having a boss fight in solo games and this one does not disappoint how it works is you seed this boss into the deck of hunt cards and it comes out randomly at first if you're unprepared you can run away but when you're ready to take them on and you have to have these series of rounds where you try and fight them and win and so you have to have multiple hands where you can do enough damage to that boss so you can win the game I'll also say that this is some of the best dinosaur art I have seen so that it just looks wonderful at the table I do have a solo play to have this one on the channel if you're interested check it out I will say this game is not for you if you're not up for spending a bunch of money and the game is out of print so it may be hard to find also the environment cards can be super tough and there's nothing you can do about it that can get a little bit frustrating and then finally the theme is strong and could be a deterrent if you're not into dinosaurs at all you might just go well whatever because that is all the game is about as dinosaurs [Music] sword-and-sorcery this is a dungeon crawling game the length is around a hundred to 150 minutes to play it and set up time takes probably 15 minutes and maybe even more sword-and-sorcery designed by simone romano and newt co Sorachi published by ares games is a 1 to 5 player cooperative game where players work together through a campaign setting in a fantasy world in a solo game you can choose to play a 2 to 5 heroes and walk through an entire campaign there is an option to do one-off scenarios as well but the game is totally set up to be a campaign where you level up your heroes along the way the game has a somewhat engaging story and great tactical gameplay instead of using a grid movement the game uses a simple area movement where domination of characters provides you with additional successes so why do I like this game first of all the components there's something about minis on a board and beautiful minis at that you'll have minis on a modular board system it looks fantastic and if you have the Kickstarter version with metal coins and many doors and mini chests a young player order this is something kind of simple but for whatever reason I really appreciate this fact that every time you play this game so each round you can choose who goes first second third and whatnot I've really liked how I can decide who gets to go and I'm not stuck into it well now your first player well now your first player so I really appreciate that with your player order you can make strategic choices of well you need to go first this round or I need to go first this round I really like that why is the game good solo well the campaign that is number one it's sometimes difficult for you to Fermi at least to find people that can consistently play a campaign style board game especially when you have kids playing this game solo means at any time I pull it out I can just keep going with my story I can do it in my own pace and I don't have to worry about trying to get people together to play that campaign and I get to level up my heroes and I get to see progression and I will progress and the enemies will progress and then I'm my what I'm trying to do is is to progress faster than the enemies I love that next is the heroes themselves meet of this game has to do with you know selection and how you level them up this is so fun and provides a lot of challenges in trying to synergize your heroes now if you're playing this cooperatively you might have a little harder time with this because somebody will only play an elf or whatever and so then you're gonna be stuck into trying to be okay well I'm gonna have to be the tank even if I don't want to if you play solo you get to set your characters or your heroes up into the best possible way that you want lastly and this is the most juiciest part of sword & Sworcery the AI it is some of the best AI I've seen out there for dungeon crawlers there's tons of variable variabilities and abilities and you never know exactly what they're gonna do based on are they going to use their on-hand offhand weapon who's gonna activate and how they're gonna work and what happens is instead of all players going and then all hey I activating after each turn you're gonna activate a certain amount of AI and so that is such a great mechanic to provide you with this back and forth instead of it feeling like oh well I could just take out all the enemies before they even go I really like how the AI system is set up in sword and sorcery I do have to play throughs of this one actually if you're interested the first quest and the second quest and I am planning on doing one about one a month all the way through the campaign now this game's not for you if you don't want to play multiple heroes you have to play at least with two I'm gonna suggest three or five if you play it if you don't enjoy when AI turns can sometimes take longer than your own turns that sometimes happens in this game you might go move to one attack and then you have to activate three blue enemies we're going oh my gosh there's three enemies on the board I've got to do all of those and activate them all sometimes I can take a while and you might actually end up spending more time on that than on your turn so just be wary if that frustrates you this might not be a game for you this game has a bit of an old mechanic of you roll four hits and then roll for defense and I find that somewhat annoying sometimes so if that bugs you just just be wary if you are worried about large rule books be wary of this one this one is like a 50-page rule book it's really well laid out I'm really impressed with the rule book but it's got a huge barrier of entry when you open that up and you go oh my gosh I have to read all of this yes you do begin there are a lot of corner cases and you'll refer to it a lot but they have a great reference sheet but yeah if you're worried about too many rules this might not be the dungeon crawler for you guy a project Gaea project plays about 60 to 75 minutes but it really depends upon your AP could be a lot longer or it could be a lot shorter if you're much better just making decisions set up time takes about 10 to 15 minutes for solo game Gaea project designed by Jen's dragon mule and Helga Ostertag and published by Zeeman games is a 1 to 4 player competitive strategy a civilization space game where players compete to earn the most victory points over 7 rounds of play in a solo game you'll go against an AI that is unprecedented in its creation you will compete against this AI in many different ways trying to terraform vast arrays of planets increasing your technology through technology tracks building trading posts near your opponent's so you can gain additional benefits and even using your factions special abilities to further enhance your colonies Empire you can play different factions for the AI to keep it fresh from a replayability perspective this AI will actually compete with you against the specific end goal objectives trying to out navigate your colony or create more satellites or whatever it is that you're trying to accomplish if the AI is too easy or too difficult there are rules which can be used to make the game easier or harder you can even include the AI in a two-player game to make it a three player game if you'd like at the end of the game if you have more points than the AI you will win the game what I like the most about Gaia project for solo is it is probably the best AI I've ever seen for a work replacement king it's challenging it has unique factions and not only that I appreciate so much that they actually have the AI and go for the same objectives that you are a lot of times when you're playing an AI for a worker placement game they're just scoring victory points their own way and you're kind of just doing your own thing but in gai a project you're both racing for those same objectives and they push hard so you have to find a way to be able to get more colonies or get more different types of planets that you have colonized whatever those goals are which they can be variable which is awesome makes the game even better from a solo perspective you really feel like you're playing again two player the game itself has never-ending replayability with all the different tiles that you can use in the different combinations I couldn't even calculate it there's just too many options so I love that every time I play it I'll never play it with the exact same AI as I did the last time and the exact same tiles either I feel like this game gives you one of the best engine buildings you'll ever feel because you start off in that first round you're maybe doing three or four actions but by that final round you're doing 10 20 30 actions you're doing all these different things and you had to plan for that six rounds ago before so you know how to get so you're able to do what you're able to do in that final round so I just love that many worker placements as solos are beat your own score this is not you are actually going against an AI I would say of all the games on this list this is the most strategic game that you're gonna see you know you may not like this if you're really into theme because I do feel like the theme is there but it's not really prevalent you're moving cubes around that's really what you're doing there are so many options that ap can be really difficult and then ap stands for analysis paralysis so you could be sitting there and sitting there not knowing what to do the game is overall just about scoring points so sometimes it's just yeah it just doesn't it feels cold it doesn't feel like you're going on an adventure you're just trying to just score points and finally I've talked about how great the AI is but sometimes the AI it's hard to understand what they need to do and you'll have to spend time at least at first understanding how to play those cards or how to do the AI correctly and that can be frustrating and get you out of the time that you have spent creating your own engine you might start forgetting what you were doing because you're trying to get the AI to do the right thing [Music] city of Kings city of kings takes about 45 to 75 minutes to play a scenario and I'd say setup time is about seven to 10 minutes city of Kings designed by Frank West and published by the city of games is a one to four player cooperative tactical role-playing board game in a solo game you'll need to control two heroes who will be tasked with exploring the hazardous world trading for resources and battling creatures while uncovering the story of each scenario you'll have both a hero and a worker that you will need to move around the map either defeating creatures or collecting resources items can be used to boost your stats and you can even unlock a second worker in the game you'll have to decide what is more important moving your heroes around to explore or having your workers collect more resources so you can power power your hero also as you defeat creatures each character has a tree of skills you can learn which furthers the feel of an RPG there are standalone scenarios as well as a campaign story however do note that your characters do not retain items between scenarios so each scenario can be played as a standalone quest if you're able to complete the quest before the time runs out you win the game what I like about city of Kings is it feels like a unique adventure game so many times you go out dudes on a map moving them around trying to kill enemies and gain Goods right well here you have your hero but you also have your worker and your worker can do explore actions and your worker can collect resources and bring it back to the city of Kings so that York a hero can level up so all the sudden instead of you just thinking about it I've got this hero that just needs to go out there and adventure I also have to think about well what do I want my worker to do and what do I need to collect in order to gain goods for so yeah I love that the game also comes a totally unique creatures each time you have a creature you're gonna draw from an ability bag and those abilities will go on to that creature and they'll have totally different abilities every time so you never know oh here's a gremlin they're always going to take our gold great no you don't know what it's going to be because you'll randomly grab those specific skills from a bag there's only one other game on this list that I'd say has equal to or maybe better art than this one but yeah otherwise this is where it's at art just looking at some of the boards looking at the character sheets looks a fantastic and what's so cool is all of the characters are not your normal here's a dwarf here's an elf know they're all unique types of characters I also appreciate that you get to build your character the way you choose so you can grab a character that you'd normally think okay needs to be ranged needs to on't be having a lot of health or whatnot but you know what they all start at the same stats so that means you can build them any way you want you can build that really small looking character like it's a tank and the tank looking character like a ranged character you get to decide there's nothing making that decision for you when you pick a character finally I really feel like the game has a great balance of deterministic attacking but dice rolling for the gathering of resources I think that's such a cool way of doing it so many times you think of it the other way okay attacking I'm gonna roll dice see if I hit vs. I'm gathering resources what's guaranteed no well here it's the other way around your workers your wool you'll actually roll resource dice and go oh well look at this I collected some items I collected this and that and when you attack with your specific hero your hero will do automatic damage so cool I like how they flip that on its head now you may not like this game if you don't like the UH thumb at ik enemies I mean the enemies can make no sense they can have fire-breathing and ice breathing because it just depends on what you pull from this bag I am okay with it but some people have a hard time with that also the enemies are depicted by a flag standee it just doesn't really feel like there's an enemy there so that might also be a deterrent finally you do have to play with two heroes you can't play with just one which is always a bummer when you're trying to play a solo game it's so much easier if you can play with one hero and you can't do that here [Music] Nemo's wore the second edition I've never played the first edition so I can't say anything about it but the second edition I have and I love it this is an adventure slash almost war game on the length is about 120 150 minutes and setup takes about 8 to 10 minutes Nemo's wore designed by Chris Taylor and published by victory point games is a 1 to 4 player game where players are part of a crew of the infamous ship the Nautilus as this game was designed as a solo the solo play is quite strong in the game you'll be moving through the Seas sinking ships inciting rebellions and finding treasure the game comes with four different motives that determine the amount of victory points you'll receive for your specific actions as long as your ship is not destroyed and your notoriety does not go too high you can score points at the end of the game and then check to see how you fared based on the scale provided so why do I like this game first of all the game has tons of dice rolling but there's tons of ways to modify your dice this is key because every action is resolved by that rolling dice so being able to modify by using your crew and using your resources and wagering really helps to mitigate all of the dice rolling and also provides you with this push your luck oh do I want to use my crew here for a +3 but if I fail I'm gonna lose it I love that the motives the motives of this game provides you with so much replayability I can't even explain to you just how different my games have been versus war versus doing the exploration motive versus doing the science and the anti-imperialism each one feels totally different even though it's the same game so cool the adventure cards so although they do not provide you with a specific story the adventure cards to allow you to to swallow up the theme and get invested in the game personally also what I really like is that not all the adventure cards just hurt you so when you think of an event deck in the game usually it's all this bad thing happens and then this bad thing happens then this bad thing happens but in Nemo's war a lot of the adventure cards are actually helpful but they'll be like all you have to go here and do an action so they provide you with we're objectives and then what you have to do in the game is decide do I want to take out more ships do I want to do those objectives do I want to do more searching I just I love it all the choices that you have and you can find your own way it's great why is the game good solo well I'll tell you this it's an open adventure game just like room bound just like glue mcil forth nothing is required of you instead you get the opportunity to find your own path to victory points the motives gonna help it guide you but then you can use that as your guide and find ways to make it work for you you only have to play with one ship even when playing co-op you only play with one ship that's part of the reason though why I think this game is way better solo than multiplayer because multiplayer it's a little bit harder nobody is their own person on the board and so you have to come to decisions a lot more often whenever I've played this multiplayer I've actually just kind of played it solo with us designing things together and I actually appreciate that more than trying to split out the different types you know they've got okay ones you're the officer you're the first the first mates or whatever I don't actually like playing it that way if I play multiplayer I just play solo with multiple players I do have a playthrough of this one if you're interested feel free to check it out so this one's not for you if you're not a fan of dice rolling dice rolling all the time for everything okay just be ready for that if you want a coherent story you're not gonna see that in this game so that's maybe another deterrent or maybe there is another reason why you won't like this game rune bound specifically with the unbreakable bond expansion this is an adventure type board game it lasts about 120 to 150 minutes to play it solo instead of time takes about 10 to 15 minutes rune bound designed by Lucas litzinger published by Fantasy Flight Games is a 1 to 4 player competitive game set in the world of tear enough players can work against each other or together with the unbreakable bonds expansion to either defeat the boss or find the cure to the disease that is plaguing the land Solo is identical in play to the multiplayer however you can choose to play with one or two or even three characters if you want in the game you will move around a map completing exploration quests combat quests and social quests to earn you trophies and money with your money and trophies you'll obtain new skills and find useful items each scenario provides players with a challenge that they must overcome if the players can complete the necessary objectives before the end of act 2 the players win or if you're playing the competitive version whoever defeats the boss is the winner so why do I like this game first thing I should say is the expansion the expansion without this would this game wasn't even on my radar the expansion provides the solo player and the cooperative player the right tools to enjoy the game the battle sheets for the AI to new scenarios specifically designed for co-op or solo and the ability to play all other scenarios solo or co-op this expansion allowed this game to climb to the top of my solo list because without this I wouldn't even have put this probably in my top 50 solo games character development the way your characters level up in this game is great you find skills and use trophies you have one through encounters to obtain new abilities you can also purchase items from the different cities which can provide you with additional combat tokens so as you play it you're gonna be able to build your own character and then what happens with the AI or the enemies is after act 1 they get an additional combat token as well so then you're starting to fight harder enemies so it just works really well and provides you with that really nice feel of an RPG I'm building my character to make him its own why do I like this game solo well first of all you can play with one character although you lose out on the party skills which is a shame I really wish there was some way to get the party skills in there but you can't but when playing with one character the game will go a lot faster it's just one turn you go to the next round one turn you go to the next round so that is really nice the combat and AI some of the most unique combats I've ever had in a game and some of the most fun you are casting these runes I would be flicking them into a dice tray it's so much fun and I love how the combat system with these chips are only two sided so instead of rolling dice where it's you know one two three four five six this is just an A or a B side right so you've got a 50-50 chance of flipping one side or the other so it totally changes up the combat mechanic and I really appreciate that and then how you go with within that combat going back and forth between rounds and then using the battle sheets now for the AI to make them a little bit more unique and even a little bit harder depending on the type of AI you're fighting oh my gosh my favorite part of the game combat I love how that works and that's something that's kind of interesting because normally combat isn't something that I'm really really interested in it's something that's part of a lot of the games and I'm okay with it but I enjoy the exploration more I actually enjoy the combat more in this game the final reason I like this solo and you're gonna hear this in a lot of these games down at the bottom part of this this list is the true adventure game there's no requirements it's up to you and how to find out how to complete your objective you can go out and do a bunch of combats and you know what that's not what you should have been doing you should have been clearing out the plagues and but you know you don't have to do that you can do whatever way you want there's no forcing you into doing something in order to win the game and I love that I find rune bound to be one of the closest games for me that's like an open-world but still has objectives enough for me to enjoy the game because the thing about seven the continent that I just did a playthrough of I really enjoyed the game but I didn't like that I didn't even know really what my objective was other than trying to take care of a curse which I didn't even know how to do I like how I know what my requirements are or my objectives are and then I can find my own way of doing it I do have a playthrough of this one feel free to check it out I did play with two characters so that is one thing about this I think it's better solo with two at least two characters versus just one but you can play with just one so this game's not for you if you're trying to have some deterministic a resolution almost everything is gonna be determined by dice between a movement on the board and combat if you're looking for a game that's heavy and themed don't don't look at this one the theme is very basic it's just your generic fantasy you don't really feel the theme in this game instead you just feel the adventure part of the game this game is long okay length is gonna be a deterrent especially if you play with two characters going for 2x wow that's a long time so just be ready for that gloom of kill forth this is an epic adventure type game lasts about 60 to 90 minutes for a solo game and setup takes about five to seven minutes gloom of kill fourth designed by Tristan Hall published by Hall or Nothing Productions is a 1 to 4 player cooperative or competitive game where players can work against the clock to complete their own personal sagas and take on the ancient before the entire world falls to gloom for a solo game you can choose 1 to 4 characters to play but the game does not suffer at all for playing only one character you'll move between locations meeting strangers finding perils etc etc and collecting trophies and money along the way as you continue to build your own powers to defeat the ancient one the evil does not just sit and wait the ancient one will place plot cards all over the board that will assist the ancient in the final battle should you choose not to take care of them the game has an open feel about it as you can use your actions for whatever you would like but the countdown waits for no one so why do I like this game first the art oh there's nothing more than I can say about this other than it's phenomenal you can be living under a rock and still enjoy how this game looks on your table or rock the mechanics there's a bunch of really unique mechanics in this game that I enjoy so you have your enemies and you to feed them and they can turn into rumours and then when you use them for rumors you can use them to help you put down different assets based on key words and your personal saga you're gonna try and get cards with specific keywords on them so that you can complete your saga I just I really like these small mechanics that I haven't seen in a lot of other games it turns the game into just instead of just exploring randomly you're you you find these specific cards that you need and you can build up your character through them and it creates a story specific to the saga and I really appreciate that replayability well the whole board itself is a set of 25 cards and they can get all moved around and changed so it's modular you can play with a different race and a different class card every time and they all have different varying abilities and then that's gonna set up how you're going to level up your character also the sagas themselves I think there's four or five different sagas oh so cool just tons of replayability now why is the game good solo well the biggest thing for me is you can play this game with one character and you don't feel like you lose anything because of it so many times I'll play an adventure game like couple the ones that are even farther up on this list but I feel like I need to play with at least two to get some of those cool abilities you don't need that here you can play with just one and have just the same type of wonderful experience and I really appreciate that way to go Tristan this game for me is a true adventure game so there's many games you know like legends of and or where they mentioned that their adventure games but in order for you to win you're almost forced to do certain things this game nothing is forced you can decide how you want to make your story or how you complete your saga I really appreciate that in an adventure game I don't want to be told that I have to do this in my adventure game I want to find my own path on how to succeed now this game's not for you if you're not into skill checks as that's what you're gonna be doing a lot for a lot of the resolution in this game if the Gothic theme is not your thing it is quite prevalent and it might be a turn-off so just just be wary of that and lastly it is a long game so be ready to invest some time and if you're looking for a short quick one this one's not gonna be for you this is a long adventure game but it's a good long adventure game dungeon Alliance designed by Andrew parks and published by quixotic games is a 1 to 4 player dungeon crawler where you can play either cooperatively competitively or solo anytime you play this game you'll always control all four heroes and then you only have one deck of cards only cars that have the correct symbols on it can be used to activate your specific heroes so you must manage your hand wisely in order to effectively utilize your heroes in the dungeon the basic game is a beat your own score for solo but Andrew added quest for a win objective and this makes the game move from a good game to a great solo game some of the quests even include a final boss and there's even a boss who can fight during the campaign mode where you have to level up enough prior to taking that Titan on I love that I love having a way and a reason to win for solo the number one reason I like this game is the hand of management gosh-darn the hand management is great when you play cards they stay out during the round so you're depleting your deck as you go you don't want to use too many cards for one hero or you'll be stuck with activating a hero with no cards but you want to go through your deck enough so you can play all of your cool cards especially playing your cool cards for the appropriate heroes also when you purchase cards they go to your hand and you slowly begin to have a larger hand size and a larger discard ability so you can get those cards that you want into your hand at the right time this hand management kind of reminds me a little bit of major Knight in a really good way I also really like the heroes each one is so unique and has really strong starting cards so although it's a deck builder it's not one of those basic deck builders where all you're trying to do is eliminate your starting cards no you're starting cards are gonna be unique to your heroes each one so each hero will have three unique cards you have four hero so that makes your deck of 12 cards then over the course of the game you'll add maybe eight to ten or twelve new cards to your deck and then what you're trying to do is find those cards that will act will be used the best at certain times the game is mostly deterministic and I love that there's only one die in the game and it's hardly ever used instead damage and our armor and movement it's all predetermined so it's it's more like a puzzle it's a puzzle dungeon-crawler and don't get me wrong I love dice chucking but there's something so satisfying about being able to puzzle out how to eliminate three enemies in one turn or take out that boss oh it's just so enjoyable one of the mechanics that I think is essential in this game is the burst of strength Andrew must have taken this from mage Knight and Star Trek frontiers but the idea of using any two cards playing them sideways for one of anything is awesome because there's just times when you don't have the right cards in your hand but he doesn't make you get stuck with that instead you can use two but you have to spend two cars it's very hefty you can spend two cars to get one of anything I really like that and finally the ability to discard at the end of each round is a great strategy so you're you're looking at your hand you don't know which hero you want to activate yet and you can discard more cards on your hand so you can draw up more cards into your hand and hopefully find the right cards for the right hero I did just do a playthrough of this one and I do suggest checking it out as I'm also right now doing a giveaway for this game now this game is not for you if high component quality matters the minis are amazing but the cards and the tiles and the cardboard chips they're just not the greatest also there aren't tons of rules facing rules locked doors closed or secret doors locked chess closed chess obstruction defense movement when you're adjacent to enemies yeah you know there's lots of different rules and people who play dungeon crawlers are probably used to that but just know that there can be a little bit of overhead trying to remember all of that if you're looking for a dice chucker this one isn't it and finally just because I've always said this for my number one on all my other ones if you're an income poop you're not gonna like this one hey it's not often that after completing a playthrough of a game that I want to go right back to it but that's exactly what I did with dungeon Alliance I play dungeon Alliance on my channel after I finish it I pulled it out that night and played it another time and then the next I applied it again it just shows how much I enjoy the game renegade designed by Richard Wilkins aka Ricky royal and published by victory points games is a 1 to 5 player cooperative abstract euro thematic deck building game in a solo game you'll choose one of five hackers and will Jack yourself into the supermassive computer or SMC server with a profile bringing its own special ability you'll move across the partitions and fight to take control of the network by using informational destructive deceptive and cognitive attacks you will upgrade your commands by visiting the hack Shack you'll have 3 countermeasures you'll try to stop while also dealing with one of five of the SMC's special abilities if you're able to prevent all the sparks or all the guardians from overflowing the network you will win the game so why is this game good solo well I'll just say this it was made by the king of solo places himself a Ricky royal and you can tell this has the best of a lot of mechanics like deck building and management player powers random objectives and even scoring at the end if you win and the cool cyberpunk theme so Ricky took a lot of the experiences that he's had playing through all these different games and put the best of all of it into one game a lot of the game you'll be sitting and thinking about what to do which is great for a solo game because you can take your time think of mage night in a more accessible timeframe and it has a more unique theme also the puzzle itself in this game is wonderful and the best part is there are so many different ways that you can go and win the game there's no pre described way to win the game gives you this huge sandbox of a network and you either learn to build the castle before the day is through or you just end up with a bunch of sand and your fingernails I'm terrible at analogies but I think you get my point the replayability of this game is off the charts if you include the additional content that was unlocked and due to the Kickstarter I'm hoping Ricky is already working diligently on an expansion as well as it would be so easy to expand this universe and the game I do always love a game that has an artificial intelligence but the best part about this game is you will hardly spend any time activating it most of the game you'll be doing your own turn and for about 5 minutes for the entire game you'll be activating I love this as it means the time spent on the game is not on moving pieces all over the board you don't control instead it's all about the choices that you want to make and finally I really appreciate the subtlety of this game I honestly can't speak too much to this as I'm still learning all of that subtlety but you have to remember this when playing the game you feel like your objective is clear and the SMC's objectives are clear but the challenge is to figure out how to disrupt the SMC's enough that you can lay the groundwork for your own plan the problem is there's just so much to think about even the setup of the game there's a strategy the game may be simple to set up but it's anything but simple to play I do have a playthrough on the channel for this just note that it is with prototype components check it out I will say this game is not for you if you're not into a more abstract theme I think of all the games on this list this one is the most abstract so make sure to watch a playthrough to see if you like that abstractness also AP can be a problem here because there's so many options and the game's not going to tell you what to do so you're gonna sit there and go I don't even know where to start be ready for that and if you're not into that and you might just want to look somewhere else [Music] mage night the board game this is an adventure board game length about 120 to even 200 minutes of solo setup time is at least 12 to 15 minutes mage night designed by Villanova teal published by whiz kids is a 1 to 4 player adventure board game when players can either work together or competitively to complete specific objectives and attain the most points at the end of the game in solo for the base game you have the solo conquest where you're trying to take down 2 cities within 3 days and 3 nights you do this by exploring finding and recruiting units you will use a deck of action cards called your deed deck to complete all of your actions one of the best expansions for solo play is the Lost Legion which provides you with more solo scenarios including one when you're fighting against another mage night invoker so why do I like this game hand management one of the best hand management games out there that I've played what you don't want to do is run through your deck too quickly because if you do then then you don't have enough time to explore before your round ends but you also have the dummy player pushing you so you can't go incredibly slow and meticulous so you have this balance that you have to find between do I do I try and play a bunch of my cards of this turn or do I only play one or two hoping that I can get a couple but new and better cards in my hand to be able to do more on my next turn but that dummy player he could push you you'd never know I just I love how the hand management works you will constantly be making decisions on how many cards to play when to play them and how to even use them multi-use cards so every card in your hand with the exception of the wounds can be played in three basic ways one you can use the basic power of your car two you can use the powered up power of your card if you feel it with mana and then three you can use the card sideways as one of any type of resource influenced attack block or move this means each turn you're given a puzzle but it's a small puzzle it's a small puzzle but it is a puzzle nonetheless and I call it a deep puzzle because there are so many ways you can do the same thing do I want to use this card and give up this awesome influence card right now just to move but then I can't get that influence later every time you're looking at your hand it's a puzzle the game provides you with an RPG feel yes it's a lighter RPG but I still feel it in this game as you level up you're gonna gain spells depending upon how you if you take out mage towers advanced action cards and skills all that allow you to create your own character and each time you play you're gonna see different and advanced cards different spells and different skills I really like that this game is deterministic this goes right along with the multi used cards but all combats in this game are deterministic that means you're able to determine and plan in advance if you can or cannot take out an enemy it also provides you with a euro feel in an adventure type game that is my wheelhouse that is just perfect for me I like being able to know what's gonna happen with the euro feel of the deterministic cards but then the adventure where I'm exploring out to find new things so why is it a good solo well that what I just said that that exploration dovetails right into why I like this solo each time you play you're gonna be exploring and you're gonna be finding new tiles they're gonna be setup different ways and depending upon what comes out you're gonna have to make different decisions I might not see any mage any mage tower so that means I'm not gonna go for spells I'm gonna have to go for maybe sacking some monasteries or maybe going and doing some more dungeon delving I want to go to a maze I just ah it's so cool every time you playing you're gonna explore differently this game provides you with a sense of accomplishment there's something so amazing when you defeat your first city I'll never forget the first time I played solo and I took out that first city the accomplishment that you feel and then you have to remember you take I have to take out a whole nother one it's it's something that not all games provides you when you're playing it but this one does to the nth degree lastly for solo it's just an engaging experience for me it is one of the most engaging games there's only one more game that I feel more engaging that's my number one and when I say engaging is when I put this game on the table and I start playing doesn't matter what's happening in the real world doesn't matter what time it is I am lost in the game and it's not even about the theme because the theme is actually one of the things I'm gonna say is a negative of this game the theme is not strong what it is it's it's the gameplay the gameplay is so rich and so involved you spend so much time deciding what you're going to do that from a solo perspective it's perfect it's just what I want maybe not what you want but it's definitely what I want in the game so I'll say this game is not for you if you're not looking for a brain burner you're gonna spend a lot of time sitting there doing nothing thinking about what you want to play I like that I like puzzling out what the best idea is but that's not for everybody if you're looking for a game with strong theme that's solo going to eldritch or not this one this one there's not a ton of theme in it it's kind of a basic you know generic fantasy game yeah I'm a mage cool I've got action cards cool what you're playing this game for is for the gameplay not the theme if you want your fights to be epic and epic in the sense that you don't know how they're gonna resolve this isn't for you because all the fights are gonna be deterministic I mean there is some some of the enemies will conjure up another enemy just for attack so you don't know that but in almost all the other times you're gonna have all the information available to you and so it's easy for you to tell well you see when you take you now to city it's not easy but it's gonna be more easy for you to tell if you're gonna win or lose versus a game like fireteam zero when you're gonna be rolling dice and you just don't have any idea you're gonna take out that guy are you not you don't know and there's tension and fun in rolling the dice you're not gonna get that page Knight [Music] spirit island this is an anti colonialism almost area control game will last about 60 the 90 minutes solo and the set-up time takes about 8 to 10 minutes spirit island designed by Eric ruse and published by greater than games is a 1 to 4 player cooperative anti-colonialism game where players choose a specific spirit for to play for the island the goal of the game is to push the invaders off the island either by scaring them away or causing so much fear they choose to leave the island on their own accord a solo game is no different than a co-op game but you can play with 1 to 4 spirits so why do I like this game first of all for me it's the theme for me having a unique theme is really fun I mean there are tons of adventure games out here but how many anti-colonialism games are out there that's so low yeah not many that's what you get here and I almost feel like it is a little bit of an area control game but you're trying to control the areas of where the invaders are going and I don't know many co-op or solo games that really gets you that area control field so it's just really unique and I really really like that unique feel the spirit asymmetry each spirit and I cannot emphasize this enough each spirit plays so substantially different that it feels like you're almost playing a different game with each spirit that you play with and you can when you're playing solo play with just one spirit try one each one individually and then you can try to spirits and then you can see how they interact and how they interact with each other and what you're gonna choose for power cards is gonna be different because of that it's just the amounts of differences that you have within those spirits provides you with so much replayability and so much enjoyment I can play this game I mean I've already played this game like 15 times and I haven't even put in the expansion yet because I don't even need it I've got so much material just with the spirit and the spirits and how different they are lastly the predictable randomness so what mage 9 is missing a little bit that spirit island has is this predictable randomness where you have things that you know what it's gonna happen so the invaders you know they're gonna build and ravage in certain lands depending on how it comes out but you don't know where they're going to explore and I love that you don't know where they're gonna go but once you know that you've got two turns to interact or to affect where what the AI is going to do so I really like how I can know enough to be able to feel like I can make strategical decisions but then there is some randomness that gets pulled in to provide you with that replayability or that unknown and now that I have played with the breaching claw or branch and claw expansion bringing in the event deck even creates more of this because there's more randomness but then there's also more cool interactions and more theme in the game so I just oh I love it I'm really excited to show you guys how that event deck can really affect the game plan so why is this game good for solo specifically well one you can play with just one spirit when that's gonna provide you a quicker game and you can ramp up difficulty easily by adding an adversary a scenario and using just a more challenging spirit so there's so many ways to increase the difficulty or to have a different experience and still just play with one spirit and that dovetails right into my next point length so one of the reasons this beats out mage Knight is because I can get this game to the table within five to six minutes and then after that I can play it within 40 minutes I can't do that with mage Knight and the thing about it is I still get a lot of the same challenges and a lot of the same feels that major Knight does with a tighter span so I still have the hand management of okay which power cards do I want to buy and I still have the which ones do I want to play how do I want to play my cards do I want to use the elements how can I maximize my elements and my power and my power cards abilities to maximize what I can do on the board where do I place my presence out on the board do I want to create more sacred sites or do I want to spread across the island how do I want the the two different spirits to interact with each other so many different things to think about I get all that same puzzle II type feel that I got with mage knight in a shorter time span lastly engagement and this is just like major Knight this game is so incredibly engaging when I play solo there's a lot of times when I might have actually won the game and a heck I don't even know about it I'm so involved with my spirit and my strategy I just keep going then I look up when I go oh well there's no cities on the board I actually already won I just that's so cool and there's also there's just no downtime for when playing this solo because the AI is so incredibly simple okay explore just pronto explores okay build place out new tip towns or cities okay ravage where do we place our blight done whenever I pull this game out just like mage night time stops for me and my full attention is on my board and my spirit that is the epitome of a great solo game for me now this game is not gonna be for you if you're not looking for a puzzle e-type game there's no dice rolling so it is more of a puzzle than an adventure so to speak Lord of the Rings Lord of the Rings can be played in about 30 to 45 minutes solo and setup takes about 3 to 5 minutes Lord of the Rings the card game designed by Caleb Grace and Nate French published by Fantasy Flight Games is a 1 to 2 player or 1 to 4 player if you have more than one core set cooperative adventure game where players quest through middle-earth either through the actual saga of the Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit or through other side stories designed by Fantasy Flight in a solo game you can control one deck with up to three heroes or two decks with up to 6 heroes to try and fight your way through the harsh land of middle-earth you will build a deck outside of the game itself of 50 cards that will be full of allies attachments and events that will help you when you encounter enemies treachery cards and locations that buy your way to completing the quest you win the game by progressing through the quest before your threat goes to 50 or all of your heroes are slain now I do have a ton of playthroughs of this game on the channel and that should tell you just how much I'm enjoying this game if you want to see the full saga I am doing the full saga playthrough on the channel please hang out with me and see what you think why I like this game so much first of all is the theme I am heavily into Lord of the Rings hence I am rereading all the books while I am playing the saga absolutely love it the deck construction or deck building of this game is bar to none the best experience I've ever had deck building in my life there are so many different deck types that you can build and so many options for you and there's no restrictions like there is an Arkham Horror the LCG I can put any card that I want into my deck this means I can find unique combos and put them into my deck and see how they will work the deck construction or deck building of this game is what makes this game for me it is by far the best deck building experience I've ever had in my life and I did a ton of deck building when I was into competitive CCGs there are so many options for building your deck and what's so fun is if you play with more than one debt trying to find those synergies where the two decks can complement each other or heck because there are no restrictions in your deck building you can go ahead and place cards that will only be used for the other deck one deck and because they have the right resources so they can play those cards and then play them on their teammates I love that it's something that you just don't get in a game like Arkham howl CG when you play this game as a solo game it's actually very quick when you're only drawing one encounter card per player you will see that you can burn through those quests pretty quickly you can lose pretty quickly but so the game doesn't linger too long I feel like especially in a solo game if you get two more two players also the same I feel like it's pretty good when you do get to three or four players you might feel like the game sits around a little bit too long with a total of at least a hundred and fifteen different quests and a minimum I think you have at least a little bit replayability there and the quest I mean certainly there are some that are similar but so many of them are vastly different and that's so much fun to just see how that encounter deck works one of the things that I think people always gloss over about Lord of the Rings is how the encounter deck works the encounter deck is phenomenal it gives you different experiences all with just a set of cards they've got an entire deluxe set all about sailing they've got one about being in the sands of haradrim so it's always hot they've got ones about the lost realm and you have side quests that you have to complete in order to get to the main quest and there's just all these different things that they can do with just a simple deck of cards it's mind-boggling how they keep coming up with new ways to have that encounter deck beat you down and then you have to find your way to get around it so far I've played this game about 90 or so times and I will say that the saga has been the best for me because there's an actual campaign in it and as you're playing through you'll gain boons and burdens and you have to make choices I absolutely love that highly recommend the saga is a good place to start just know though it's going to be hard the saga is not for the light-hearted you will lose you will lose often and tell you know how to deck build I really do appreciate in this game that you can play with just one deck that means a solo player doesn't have to control two decks if they don't want to but I do recommend the two deck experience if you are looking to have a full experience of Lord of the Rings because that would really give you the co-op feel of the game and then keywords like ranged and set actually mean something although I talked about the saga it's also really cool how they do the deluxe pack and then the seven additional adventure packs it costs money but what's really fun is and you have a story line that you can go through that is even outside of the saga quest itself and yes there won't be those campaign choices but this will also give you a story that you can follow through and you can understand oh why are these encounter cards happening why are why are these encounter cards doing what they're doing oh it's because of the storyline so that's really nice you can play this game in a couple of different ways you can play progression style where if you start off with the core set you only play with core set cards and then as you move through the deluxe packs you add more cards in to your pool that you can choose to deck build or you can do what I've done which is try and build one deck that can beat all of the quests and that's really fun too so lots of different options for you now I'm not gonna be naive and say that this is the number one it should be everyone's number one solo game because there's a lot of things not to like here as well first of all it's super expensive there's just so much out there and every time a new pack comes out you got to drop $15 for one quest and maybe 20 or 30 player cards at most also if you're just starting to get into it now there is so much content out there and how Fantasy Flight has things being out of print and then coming back into print later it's hard to collect everything it took me 6 months to obtain everything for this game and I'm someone who worked really hard at it I traded for it I bought it I bought it on eBay I did what I had to do to get everything but if you don't do that it can be hard to get into because you you're gonna look at cards and go oh I really want to have that in my deck and you just can't get it because it's in a pack that you don't have the game itself is from 2011 which means it's an older game and so the new packs of quests and cards are coming out a lot slower so if you're looking for something that new stuff is coming out all the time look more at Arkham Horror LCG not Lord of the Rings I will say some of the quests can really turn people off just don't let it okay just move past those quests or maybe Dec build or Dec tech specifically for that quest and some people don't like doing so that might be something that's annoying you might you have to dect tech a little bit more in this game than a game like Arkham or finally I do personally find the restricted and uniques can get a little bit annoying so there are cards that if I play it's a unique card and everyone that I'm playing with can't have that out on the board and sometimes those cards are so pivotal in your specific strategy and so if I just wanted to play this with random people it can be a challenge because it might be they're using steward of gondor and so am i and so that means I can't do what I need to do because they've got steward of gondor in their deck so you have to do a lot of coordinating which is fun but it can also be a big downside of the game as well now I do want to make one more point here before closing out and that is if you are not into deck construction but you still like the idea of Lord of the Rings rings D be calm you can find an insane amount of decks that you can try and use and you don't have to Dec built all you've got to do is collect those specific cards put them together and play the scenarios if you're not in a deck building but you really want to try the game I would highly recommend doing that and that's it thank you all so much for listening thank you for watching I really appreciate it I'm really curious to see what your top 20 is so feel free to put it in the comments below I hope to see you in one of my other playthrough videos and maybe even the saga Lord of the Ring so you guys can understand why it's so awesome and why you shouldn't listen to Mike and Peter from co-op cast okay normally they're very smart but they did trip and fall over their feet on Lord of the Rings just saying thank you all and I will see you at the next stop

Channel: One Stop Co-op Shop

Views: 52,182

Rating: 4.8403754 out of 5

Keywords: Top 10, Solo, Cooperative, one stop, co-op shop, tubetables, board, game, review

Id: HqlBZa0hkvc

Length: 85min 8sec (5108 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 30 2018