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Any recommendations on games that can be played solo and are relatively light weight? Mostly want to avoid having a board, if it's cards and there are some additional trinkets that's okay. My job necessitates something/anything to stave off the boredom. Looking through different suggestions it could take forever to drill down what might be cool or lame. Something kind of puzzley with turn based decisions could be neat. I figured I'd drop a thread and see if anyone had neat suggestions. Heck if it's something using a standard deck of cards that'd be cool too -- have you seen how insanely long the list of solitare based card games is on Wikipedia??
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Feb 1, 2017 20:10
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| # ? May 18, 2024 17:26 |
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I picked up ultra tiny epic kingdoms and it's pretty much drat near perfect. AI for the dummy player is good enough and it's practically the definition of light weight. 70 game cards and a bunch of tiny wooden blocks for marking territories. If you haven't played it, it's like a mixture of catan with resource gathering and building toward victory points and kind of like risk with how you can invade other regions, unless there are "full" (2 armies is a full region) Finally you unlock bonuses for your race when you spend resources, but the kicker seems to be forcing other players from being unable to perform an action. There are 7 actions you can take every turn, and whoever is active turned decides the main action (say I choose research racial bonuses) every other player is allowed to also perform that action but they cannot perform it next turn because it's "been used" after 5 main actions the action list is reset. I also picked up elder sign and while it might be portable it's kind of a lot of tiny pieces. You could keep track with pen and paper but thats another issue entirely. Seems like a pretty neat group game. I can't imagine mansions of madness, $100 behemoth it is. Additionally, I have been playing solitaire and dug into worldofsolitaire.com and found some variants that scratch puzzling itches. My favorites right now are Alaska, Australian Patience and Russian Solitare. While in Klondike or traditional solitaire, you can only build alternating colors and descending rank on the board, and only move entire sections that all descend properly, Australian patience only allows descending by same suit on the play area, but also lets you move any card to any card as long as the cards being moved interact appropriately. Example is having 9 diamond / 8 diamond / 5 hearts descending, you can pick up the group by 9 diamond and move it to 10 diamond and it's OK. The main version only allows you to go through the stock once so it's way harder in that regard. I might be misremembering Klondike rules in this sense. Russian Solitaire has all cards on the board with no stock. It has similar same suit descending rules as Australian patience including moving any appropriate card to another. Much harder to get an bad deal, but really satisfying cause you can really puzzle over it for a while. Generally by the time I've given up I find one or two movements I didn't see before and rarely that unlocks the rest of the game. Alaska is the same rule set as Russian solitaire except you can descend or ascend by same suit on the board. Can help or hinder you in interesting ways if you aren't careful. Even more puzzling because you have to make sure you're not ignoring ascending suits. Never thought I'd play card games let alone write about them. Guess I'm old.
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Feb 8, 2017 03:02
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Dungeon Solitaire is a solo dungeon crawl running off a deck of cards. There's a newer version that uses tarot cards, haven't seen how that works out since you have to pay for it/need tarot cards. Old-rear end Fighting Fantasy stuff might be a good choice as well. I think there's a bunch on phones now.
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Feb 8, 2017 03:18
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I can't recommend Friday enough for a solo gamer. It's physically tiny and plays essentially like a 1 player Dominion. Link
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Feb 10, 2017 14:50
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Maybe Arkham Horror LCG? https://www.shutupandsitdown.com/videos/review-arkham-horror-the-card-game/ There's also Lord of the Rings LCG, Warhammer Quest, and Death Angel for more adventure-y card games Friday is a good recommendation. Check out Onirim.
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Feb 10, 2017 15:34
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UScr00ge posted:I can't recommend Friday enough for a solo gamer. It's physically tiny and plays essentially like a 1 player Dominion.
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Feb 10, 2017 16:45
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fozzy fosbourne posted:Maybe Arkham Horror LCG? https://www.shutupandsitdown.com/videos/review-arkham-horror-the-card-game/ I 2nd the recommendation for Arkham Horror LCG as a solo game. I have had a blast playing it solo.
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Feb 10, 2017 16:54
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Chrononauts has a fun solo variant.
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Feb 16, 2017 16:43
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Mint Works is a quick worker-placement game that fits in a mint tin. https://five24labs.com/shop/
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Feb 16, 2017 18:06
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Hitlers Gay Secret posted:Mint Works is a quick worker-placement game that fits in a mint tin. Is that one any good? Would love to hear opinions on it.
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Feb 16, 2017 18:22
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I would recommend watching a gameplay video after reading the rules but before playing the game. The rules aren't really that clear at points so seeing it in action really clears up some of those issues. It's really fast and you can get lot of games in. Plus you can fit the whole game in your pocket. Solo games use 1 of 4 AI cards that tell you what that "player" does on their turn. My main grievances are the rule book is not properly scaled for it's size (the diagrams are too small) plus it and the cheatsheet barely fit in the tin. But that can be alleviated by clipping the corners of those two items. Also I keep fearing I'm going to lose my mint tokens every time I dump the cards out.
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Feb 16, 2017 20:03
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I'm tempted to see if a better-scaled rulebook and sheet will fit in a second mint tin.
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Feb 16, 2017 20:07
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Ok, the games looks pretty nice for such a small one. Now I need to think about doing a PnP or buying it... Shipping to Germany is 10 bucks and PnP should not take more then an hour...
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Feb 16, 2017 20:30
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UScr00ge posted:I can't recommend Friday enough for a solo gamer. It's physically tiny and plays essentially like a 1 player Dominion. I would also recommend this. The theme had zero appeal to me but after picking it up I see why it's so popular. The art work is wonderfully endearing and the gameplay is fast, non-fiddly and very compelling. It's probably the best solo game I've ever played and is extremely portable. It is exactly what you're looking for. I'd also recommend Warhammer Quest the card game. It's no longer in print but there are a ton of copies out there for fairly cheap. If you have any nostalgia for fantasy adventure stuff, it plays quickly and is very easy to run solo. The only downside is that they never really expanded it so there's a limited amount of replay-ability to the game. Easily worth $20, worth $30 if you're into that sort of thing and definitely don't pay scalper prices. It does stretch the definition of "light" though. Plays in about an hour. Death Angel is it's predecessor and it's lighter and quicker but not something I was really blown away by. Ohthehugemanatee fucked around with this message at 00:51 on Feb 20, 2017 |
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Feb 20, 2017 00:43
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One Deck Dungeon ( http://www.onedeckdungeon.com/ ) can be played solo or with two players, and captures well the feeling of a roguelike game. A nice mechanic is that each card has multiple uses, as the monster/trap cards can be collected as three different types of loot after each encounter. This adds a bit of decision making to the dice throwing and allocation. I'm told that the dungeons pretty challenging, but I turn down the difficulty since I'm usually playing with my kid. The game is available as a print and play online, so you can check everything out before buying.
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Feb 20, 2017 03:35
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| # ? May 18, 2024 17:26 |
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Found this again. Awesome suggestions!! Dungeon solitaire is almost precisely what I want. I'll see how that shakes out tomorrow. Been playing a lot of Russian solitaire and Australian patience. Great puzzle like variants. Rules and stuff can be witnessed at worldofsolitare.com (I see I repeat myself!) Usually I don't get to use the computer for cards though since it's frowned upon
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Mar 14, 2017 05:19
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