OO Solo Board Gamers Guild

[hepcat]

Did I say I finished chapter 1 in Isofarian Guards? I did not, it seems. What I thought was the end of the chapter was actually the game just opening up a bit more and telling me to navigate to the bottom of the map. I've got another hour or two ahead of me, it seems. Which is fine by me. I've started leveling up and I'm about to start my first field event, I believe.

Edit: And NOW I’m done with chapter 1. Wow, the game really opens up after that. I was not expecting a little worker placement system (as minimal as it is) in my adventure game. I printed out all the save sheets and put them in a little binder so I have them all in one place. I know I’m gonna need that considering the three different books I normally would mark up otherwise.

[AWS260]

Red Dust Rebellion, the new COIN game, has an excellent (though unofficial) app to run non-player factions. It uses the same solo system as the physical game, it just saves you the trouble of checking tables and priority lists.

I set up the app to play a learning game, but accidentally forgot to select a human faction. So the app was running all four factions against each other while I followed its orders, flipping cards and moving pieces around the map. It was probably for the best: since I didn't have to focus on making decisions, I could better observe how the different factions operate and interact.

Very nifty, since the solo system would otherwise be too burdensome for my taste.

[hepcat]

I'm back to Isofarian Guard after a brief side try at Dungeons of Infinity. Let's just say I have issues with DoI that I'm not sure can be overcome (at least by me). And I'm getting too old to just keep trying to enjoy something more than a few times.

Isofarian Guard though? That's pure grinding goodness. I'm just now getting into the swing of things in Chapter 2 and I can easily see myself spending hours grinding away for gold and materials for the much needed crafting of weapons and armor. Of course, now the enemies are starting to kick my precious behind, so it's not an easy path I'm on right now.

It's so weird to me though that they made this a two player only game at most.

[Fardaza]

I'm back to Isofarian Guard after a brief side try at Dungeons of Infinity. Let's just say I have issues with DoI that I'm not sure can be overcome (at least by me). And I'm getting too old to just keep trying to enjoy something more than a few times.

I just finished the third (and last) dungeon of chapter 1 in Dungeons of Infinity last night. It was interesting, but a little unfulfilling. I'm having a hard time enjoying the wild swings of fate. The dungeon lord went into a blind rage two turns in a row and ran away from my heroes. This allowed me to easily escape the dungeon. If he had moved as normal into the tile with my heroes, it could have been very ugly. However, the story of the campaign is just starting to be told, and I don't really want to put it away.

On the other hand, my BGG Secret Santa's gift arrived yesterday. Spirit Island is now staring at me! DoI may be moving to the shelf for awhile.

[hepcat]

My issue with DoI is that it seems...well...underbaked. You can tell it was a first time game designer's pilot attempt to create a game after playing his first real board game (Mistfall). But you'd think he'd have made some changes to the rules set after all these years when creating this new printing.

He's a nice enough guy, and I feel badly for knocking the game. But when most of your "fixes" for the game on its facebook and BGG pages are "oh, that shouldn't be that way in hindsight, here's how it actually works" it's a bit discouraging.

Isofarian Guard, on the other hand, apparently underwent quite a few updates since the first printing after feedback from the community. I mean, they can't remove the grind from the game as that's an essential part of it (and part of the reason I like it), but they did add a bunch of things for quality of life improvements. They also made it tougher after numerous complaints that the first printing was too easy. I'm getting my butt kicked left and right in my game as I'm learning the intricacies of the bag management, using my abilities and how to build your character. But I see a light at the end of the tunnel. With DoI, I just didn't see that light.

[hepcat]

Two games of Undaunted 2200 this past weekend. I lost the first game to Turczi's solo AI, but won the second after realizing what I was doing wrong...well...realizing ONE of the things I was doing wrong. The third scenario introduced some fun new mechanics (traps I had to clear for my mechs, for one) that I enjoyed figuring out how to handle. I've been slightly obsessed with the Undaunted series for a few months now, after getting a copy of Stalingrad for my birthday last year. Such a fantastic series of games.

[tylertoo]

Over the holidays I bought a used copy (local, meetup) of Dungeon Degenerates, 4th printing (5th is the latest but the only difference is some fixed errata). With four expansions and a homemade insert/organizer, for $100. Love the aesthetic and the mechanics so far.

[wonderpug]

Over the holidays I bought a used copy (local, meetup) of Dungeon Degenerates, 4th printing (5th is the latest but the only difference is some fixed errata). With four expansions and a homemade insert/organizer, for $100. Love the aesthetic and the mechanics so far.

Please give updates on your impressions! I've been on the fence about getting a copy for a while.

[TheMix]

I enjoyed the few times my copy has made it to the table. But it's not for the color-blind.

The biggest problem I have is keeping track of the colors. Border colors on roads, regions, etc. matter.

Reminds me that I do want to get back into it one of these days for the campaign.

Maybe when we finish up Mechs vs. Minions.

[tylertoo]

The biggest problem I have is keeping track of the colors. Border colors on roads, regions, etc. matter.

You're right, but I printed out a player-made map guide that helps immeasurably.
https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/194436/dungeon-overground-map

Please give updates on your impressions! I've been on the fence about getting a copy for a while.

Will do!

[Smoove_B]

The biggest problem I have is keeping track of the colors. Border colors on roads, regions, etc. matter.

Try keeping this handy:



(click to embiggen)

[TheMix]

Yeah. That's fantastic!

[hepcat]

I had it and played a bit, but ultimately it wasn’t for me. The combat just didn’t appeal to me. I sold it off eventually.

[Fishbelly]

The biggest problem I have is keeping track of the colors. Border colors on roads, regions, etc. matter.

Try keeping this handy:



(click to embiggen)

I used this map when I played a few years back and it helped tremendously. The art style made me nostalgic for my college days, because it reminded me of the flyers for early 80s punk bands, as well as early independent role playing games. I bought it instantly, only to discover the map was damn hard to read!

[YellowKing]

I guess I'll put this here since I played it solo and it's primarily a solo game (but does support 2 players): Unstoppable, the recent KS that many of us are now just getting. I had a bit of time to play a couple of sessions this evening so some quick thoughts.

Unstoppable is a roguelike deck-builder in which your goal is to defeat enemies in your threat area while also grinding down a boss, before losing all of your HP. As you run through your deck you'll level, which gets you access to more powerful cards.

There are two big gimmicks to Unstoppable, however. The first is that your cards can be upgraded by sleeving up to two upgrade cards in with them. Because cards have cutouts, you can essentially "build" new cards by combining core cards and upgrades. The second gimmick is that all of your cards are double-sided: one side is your core card which is how you perform actions, etc. and the flip side is an enemy threat. And by upgrading one of your core cards, you are also upgrading the flip-side enemy.

I found the rules pretty easy to grok, as the rounds are broken down into phases that should be pretty familiar to anyone who has played deckbuilders before. And even though I watched a how to play video, I found the rulebook itself to be pretty decent. The biggest learning curve is that there is a fair amount of iconography, but there is a reference card for that so it's not hard to glance over and figure out what's what.

Difficulty wise, I got my ass handed to me in both sessions. One trick to the game is that the primary way of getting cards into your hand is by killing threats, as defeating an enemy immediately flips it to its core side and brings it back into your hand. But I found myself getting into situations where if I couldn't kill enemies fast enough I was constantly short on cards, which made it harder to kill enemies. A vicious circle indeed. Obviously I need to play some more to figure out how to balance that.

The aspect I most enjoy about the game is that you can put together some really wicked combos during your main phase. You can pretty much play cards, buy upgrades, and defeat enemies in whatever order you wish. So for instance, you could play a card to get a coin to afford an upgrade that you then slotted to another card that you played which gives you the damage to take out an enemy, and the reward for killing that enemy is that he does more damage which you use to kill a second enemy, which puts a card in your hand that allows you to get more cash which you then use to buy yet another upgrade, etc. etc. It's a lot of fun when you hit it just right.

One fear I had is that resetting the game would be a pain in the ass with having to "un-mod" all your cards, but they make it pretty simple to reverse your upgrades and sleeving. It wasn't nearly the hassle I thought it would be.

From a replayabilty standpoint there are 3 bosses in the base game and four player characters (which only differ in which three starting cards they get). I did pick up the expansion with the KS, which offers two additional player characters and some more cards for the upgrade, threat, and core decks, but no additional bosses. Honestly I think that's fine - there are also three difficulty levels you can try, and honestly I doubt I'm going to play this one so much that I'm starving for content.

In summary, it's a cool little game and I'm glad I picked it up. Kind of reminds me of Warp's Edge a bit. Given how top-heavy my collection is with long big-box campaign games, it's nice to have games like this on hand for when friends come over or I just want something quick to play.

[YellowKing]

Update on Unstoppable:

A buddy of mine came over last night and we tackled this as a 2-player game. And success! We beat the first boss (fairly handily).

In this case two heads were better than one, as we took our time and really pored over cards and upgrades to figure out the most advantageous in every situation. We realized a few things early on that may seem a bit obvious but weren't readily apparent to me my first couple of plays:

- Upgrades are huge, and getting upgrades into your deck as quickly as possible is never a bad idea.
- Any time you have the ability to purge weaker cards, take advantage of it
- Any time you have the ability to move your level marker to open up stronger cards in the market, take advantage of it
- The faster you burn through your threat deck, the better
- Know your character's strengths and weaknesses. Play to your strengths, focus on acquiring cards to offset your weaknesses.

The ultimate key is you want the strongest deck possible as quickly as possible, as the enemies scale very quickly and you really can't afford to get behind the curve.

Like a lot of games of this type, what you'll find is that though you start off weak, but by the end of the game you'll be stringing together incredible combos that can wipe out every threat on the board with one action.

I'm looking forward to playing the other two bosses, as their mechanics look *very* different.

My buddy absolutely loved the game and was disappointed it was a KS and he couldn't yet pick it up retail, which I thought was pretty high praise after only one play.

[hepcat]

My preorder with promos for Star Trek: Captain's Chair just arrived. This game has been delayed more times than an American Airlines flight during a light shower. I love Imperium (I own it all) so I'm looking forward to more of that...but with Andorians!

[hepcat]

I picked up Purple Haze on a lark last week after reading some strong reviews. It was a Kickstarter but they’re selling through retail too, I believe.

It’s a narrative campaign game with an overland map mode and then a tactical battle portion. It’s structured a bit like Too Many Bones in that regard. But the pull of the game is the struggle to keep your 6 marines alive while dealing with some pretty hefty trauma from firefights, war events, etc. across 9 missions (in the base game). It has the narrative heft of This War of Mine as you’ll be trying to stay alive while the world goes to hell around you.

So far I’m enjoying it a great deal. My squad is only on mission one, but my infantryman point is already near death and we had to leave a dead NPC soldier behind or it would’ve been worse….and that added a lot of stress to everyone.

It has a very odd dice mechanic that I’ve not seen before. You get focus dice, strike dice and crit dice (sometimes). You roll those and then try to get a match between the focus and strike dice, then the crit dice if you have them. Each weapon has a convoluted series of dice instructions that so far aren’t intuitive. But I appreciate the detail that mechanic affords me when modeling weapon effects.

Anyway, about to enter my first firefight with my heavy weapons guy near death. This should be…interesting.

[Smoove_B]

I was a KS backer and only managed to open the core box and sort it. It really looks interesting but I didn't feel like I had the mental bandwidth to learn a new game (it's been an issue now for a few months). Watched a few tutorial videos though, does that count?

I liked the idea of it as a game - the setting, the theme and that it's a true solo war game. I thought the combat was also different - abstract but still kinda rooted in squad-based mechanics.

[hepcat]

The other game I picked up (that has a solo mode...although I've only played it MP so far) is Senjutsu: Battle for Japan. It's a little bit of Roborally mixed with Gloomhaven. You pick a samurai, you pick their deck and then you play cards simultaneously to the table face down, reveal them, set the order based on the initiative number on the card (a la Undaunted) and then play through your card's actions on your turn. They include such things as attacking, blocking, moving, acquiring Focus icons (a resource spent on the more powerful cards), and manipulating your kamae tree (a flowchart of symbols that are kind of like stances...you can only perform some actions on cards if in the right kamae spot).

It was a heck of a lot fun during our 3 player game saturday, but I'm looking forward to the solo campaign...which, to be fair, is just a linked series of battles against an AI. But sometimes that's enough.

At 50 bucks retail, it's also a reasonably priced game in this day and age for what you get.

[MattBGH]

I just joined these forums, but happy to find another pocket of solo board gamers.

[Smoove_B]

Hello! We're a weird little group, but we absolutely play solo board games here. Looking forward to hearing what's hitting your table.

[MattBGH]

Thank you!

Most recently, I've been playing Behold: Rome. It's long and uncomfortable to play in-hand, but it's an interesting puzzle and still a compact game.

[hepcat]

I liked the idea of it as a game - the setting, the theme and that it's a true solo war game. I thought the combat was also different - abstract but still kinda rooted in squad-based mechanics.

Good lord, combat in Purple Haze is brutal. The abstract nature of it is fantastic. Soft cover, hard cover, the initiative track with which you play a frantic game of tug of war with the enemy...it's just tense as hell.

The combat dice mechanic felt like arcane mysticism at first, but after a few turns it becomes second nature. Don't be intimidated by it, is what I'm trying to say.

Overall, I'm really digging this. I still think it's a bit overpriced, but that's the cross we bear for loving board games. People pay more for old wines and rare vinyl records, so I shouldn't complain. At least with board games, unlike wine, I'm not in the back of a paddy wagon after I'm done asking the cop to take me through the Rally's drive thru before hauling my ass to jail, and then dodging his baton as he tries to get me to shut up.

[Smoove_B]

I still think it's a bit overpriced, but that's the cross we bear for loving board games.

I was confused by this - I paid $65 for the game plus two expansions, then added two more expansions for ~$32.

I just saw retail for the core game is $120 and each expansion is $30?! That is rather expensive. The components are good, but wow.

I'd watched this from our own Godzilla Blitz and it was helpful to see things in action:



Going to read the rules again and then I think I'm good to go!

[hepcat]

Good lord, it was 65 bucks for what is around 180 bucks in stores!?!

Sheesh...I take it back. Wine and a night in the hoosegow WOULD be cheaper.

[Smoove_B]

Every once and a while I get lucky. Isofarian Guard for $79 and the Kingdom Death Monster Black Friday Gold Lantern (core game + Gamblers Chest) for $300.

If only I could be so lucky with the stock market.

[Smoove_B]

Also, I just discovered one of my favorite companies is now selling organizers for Purple Haze - Cube4Me. I've come to prefer their trays over the GMT and DVG style offerings.

[hepcat]

Honestly, the box is so damn big and there are so few components for that size of a box, I just tossed the insert and threw in some plastic organizers.

[Smoove_B]

Oh yeah, it's a huge box and I usually don't mind baggies, but when I see a tray that fits all the chits perfectly? Cannot resist.