Board Game General /bgg/ - Solo gaming edition

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What do you do when there's not enough people around to play your favorites /bgg/? AI like Power Grid robots/COIN series games? High score variants like in Rosenberg games? What's your favorite digital option, tablet/phone, TTS/Vassal, websites like boardgamearena? Do you use the downtime for offshoots of the hobby like painting or making inserts?

Other urls found in this thread:

benjamincosman.github.io/alchemistsSolver/
boardgamegeek.com/guild/1303
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

I just bust out Terraforming for a quick session, sometimes two. I definitely lose more than I win. I need more games with solo modes in my life.

I post on /bgg/. I seriously need to figure out a way to get more gaming into my life

>COIN
If you don't like the idea of playing COIN alone don't buy it imo. I actually do have people to play it with but playing that game alone is incredibly fun to me. Maybe it's autism?

No they tend to have good AI, I wasn't looking down on it, just wondered how many out there enjoy it as a solo option.

>Solo full plays for mechanics and rules
>Solo because it's one deck dungeon
>Solo variant of 51st state
>Greenstuff because downtime and want to into minis despite not being into warhammer
>Anything on Android that's free (so much garbage tho) roguelike or just not rewards clickers
>Have made inserts, trays, boxes and labels for all my games until there is nothing left to organize
>Shitpost on bgg

I think that's about it except Card Thief was awesome but having won every upgrade and topped 500 in a game I'm back to classic unfuttered solitaire because board game ports are way too expensive on the Android and I'd rather buy real games.

But Descent is super easy to explain, takes like 10 mins tops.
Assuming you're the overlord you just need to explain the ~5 actions heroes can do with base gear/skills, give them a hand choosing heroes/classes, and maybe talk a bit about los/range if any hero is ranged.
Then pick the simplest scenario, do set up yourself, explain the scenario things that are relevant, what the few monsters you'll use can do, and that you can use nefarious OL cards.
Sure you'll have to remind them of various things as you play and remind them of all their options (actually help them as OL), point them to the helper card that explains the hero turn a lot, but it should be fairly simple.

I wasn't trying to be combative, just stating an opinion. I know you weren't trashing it.

This poster is right. You can basically teach someone how to play as they play as long as you give them the basics up front.

I'm either going to get The Great Zimbabwe or Antiquity. Anyone wanna weigh in?

Waiting for the solo play app for Star Wars Imperial Assault is suffering.

I recently got into it and my buddy and I have been running a campaign, but he has no interest in playing as the Imperials or playing skirmish mode. He loves the game mostly because he enjoys upgrading his heroes.

I really like imperials, but I'd also like to try playing as a hero once in a while. I also hate how fucking overpowered heroes are if you give them the legendary card. The extra health and activation basically ensures they never die, and I'm too worried about that to try Dark Obsession.

>What do you do when there's not enough people around to play your favorites /bgg/?
I mostly play solo to learn rules, occasionally I'll play a coop game solo for fun. Shadows of Brimstone mostly, or my solo variant for the resident evil DBG
>What's your favorite digital option, tablet/phone, TTS/Vassal, websites like boardgamearena?
I cannot stand playing board games online or on apps. I feel a major piece of the appeal of board gaming is lost in translation. I'd just rather play vidya.
>Do you use the downtime for offshoots of the hobby like painting or making inserts?
Oh yeah, I do paint some of my games, I sometimes do foamcore inserts, or even 3d printed inserts if the box isnt big (printing takes so long and goes wrong too often to be reliable for big projects)

>What do you do when there's not enough people around to play your favorites /bgg/?
I play video games. Board games are meant to be played with other people (except for pure solo boardgames, of course). If you can't wrangle people to play board games with you, you're just wasting your money and shouldn't be buying them.

>implying some co op games aren't better solo
>implying there aren't games where the ai is so good why not play solo if you like it
I get your general point, but for someone like me who looks at a screen all day at work it's nice to come home and play something not electronic to unwind

explain further

i have a local gaming store that has a gamenight every week on friday where like 15 people go to. and on thursday one of the parttimers just stays with the keys and plays games so its almost 2 boardgame nights.

Antiquity

Anyone in these threads live in Paris? Just moved here.

I have a few solitaire games, and games playable in solo mode. In no particular order; Elder Sign, Friday, Phantom Leader, Zulus on the Ramparts, DungeonQuest, Flash Point, Pandemic (most co-operaives) among others. Board gaming can be fun solo, but is generally better with friends.

Can someone give me a rundown on the main differences between Arkham/Eldritch Horror?

Your friend sounds autistic

Check the map in the OP

I played Alchemists. I enjoyed it, but it feels like there was insane amounts of downtime.

The worker placement also felt like it was more important than the puzzles too.

What is bgg thoughts on Alchemists?

>What is bgg thoughts on Alchemists?
I don't play board games that require an app to work. Goes against the point of a board game.

dont need an app if you have a person willing to make the ingredients and check the cards and say what they got

It's solitaire Clued with an app. Once you have "cracked" the solving method - should require all of the first turn if you read the example in the rulebook" - it comes down to who is luckier with testing their postions on themselves / adventurers.

It's just a gimmick, absolutely to avoid.

Pretty bad. After the extra 20 minutes it takes to teach people logical deduction and assuming none of them fuck up (ruining the entire game for them and probably others) you're left with a fairly standard euro game with a heavy dose of chance. The game encourages you, for example, to sell potions with no guarantee of success or you'll fall behind in both money and information.

If you play it online and use
benjamincosman.github.io/alchemistsSolver/
this becomes clear pretty quick.

arkham has better narrative, more complex
eldritch is more streamlined, shittier narrative unless youre ready to pay for expansions

Sauce on the girl in OP's image?

what girl? I just see star trek

Care to elaborate? I do think Antiquity looks really cool with how cathedrals look, but TGZ plays up to 5 and looks easier to teach meaning I'll be able to play it more often. Is there anything very wrong with TGZ I should know about?

I have a few games on my phone, but mostly I make inserts or try to assemble and paint some more minis

.

I'm not directing this at just you but does anyone have any tips for someone wanting to try painting minis for the first time? I know there is paint used for 40k minis, do I have to use that paint?

>(printing takes so long and goes wrong too often to be reliable for big projects)

If you play any miniature wargames, failed prints are an excellent source of scatter terrain, after a bit of painting and basing

I guess, but I've got plenty of actual legit wargaming terrain that is sitting around unpainted

>what girl? I just see star trek

And that, Sir, is the correct answer!

>Dr Steel
Holy shit I'm in high school again.

I don't know if this counts but I printed a Baseball Simulation game and now I'm going to simulate a season ALL BY MYSELF YOU LOUSY CUNTS.

thin your paints
hang out in /wip/
no

I'm bored just reading this. Guess it's a pretty good baseball simulation.

WHAT YEAR IS IT

Savage. but true

That's kinda interesting. I'm assuming you've taken one team as "yours" to play against the others?

hello goyims! how can i secure your pledge of allegiance to the 7th continent kickstarter?

I'm looking at eldritch horror and can't get the popularity.
Seems to be mostly rolling dice while deciding minor things.

Plebs love it. Nuff said. If you want a big lovecraft game just get arkham horror, eldritch is shit.

>implying Arkham is better
Unless you're talking about the recent card game which is probably the best FFG Arkham game.

I'll take it over tides of madness.

Anybody ever play tides?

I haven't played it but I'd guess that the lovecraft theme is part of the reason why it's so popular. People will eat up almost anything with a lovecraft feeling to it, just like they do with zombies

No but I want to

>implying arkham horror isn't the ultimate lovecraft experience
Damn, sorry your parents were so shitty that you turned out to be a fucking idiot. Better luck next life.

Aren't they incredibly similar?

Arkham Horror is basically Eldritch Horror plus. If you concede that the only reason to play Eldritch Horror is to have a thematic experience then it is objectively worse than Arkham Horror. Is Arkham Horror "fiddly"? Sure, but so is every COIN game and no one shit talks those. Good games require effort sometimes, and AH is no exception.

>Seems to be mostly rolling dice while deciding minor things.
Welcome to ameritrash.

Arkham has buckets of rules that are a failed hamfisted attempt to make it feel like more like an RPG which it dramatically fails at and instead clogs up the game's gears and slows down gameplay dramatically.

Eldritch Horror knows it's a board game going in, and nails it much better than Arkham.

>being this retarded
Sorry bro, my condolences to you. I hope to god you don't reproduce and pass on those shit genes you have.

>slows down gameplay
Who the fuck are you playing with, Helen Keller? A turn takes like 3 minutes...
>nails it
Holy fuck I understand now...back2reddit faggot.

Yeah, EH is a lot more elegantly designed, but I think they actually succeeded with giving AH more of a role-playing feel. I played both a couple times with my normie brother and two of his friends, and they told me they massively preferred AH which surprised the hell out of me. None of them are into boardgames all that much, so I figured they'd like the quicker playing easier to understand game, but they told me they preferred AH because it felt more like an "open world". Not sure what they meant exactly, but they were talking about how you can be deputized, join cults/gangs/etc, and things like that so I figure they liked that aspect which is missing in EH.

The only thing I don't like about AH is how much of a chore it is to set it up and clean it up after playing. I'd probably never risk playing it outside as the risk to lose a component is too great.

I don't get where people are coming from when they say AH had good roleplay. I distinctly remember running there being so few scenarios per location that you frequently got duplicates, which completely kills any suspension of disbelief.

Yeah, that's definitely a problem with vanilla AH. To my knowledge, though, every single expansion adds more encounter cards for Arkham so the problem is patched up a bit. For me, the Dunwich Horror expansion is a must because it not only doubles the amount of encounter cards per neighborhood, it also adds injury and madness cards which should have been in from the start. The added rules are super simple and I basically never play it without that expansion. My favorite setup is AH + DH and the King and Yellow expansion.

>3 minute turns in any board game

Jesus Christ, do play with snails?!

With Mage Knight and similar games the average turn is five minutes.

Buy a cheap primer (I use Halfords primer), white is best.
You don't have to use citadel paints, there are several brands but I would recommend sticking to one brand until you're more familiar.
You'll want water based acrylics to start because they are easier to THIN YOUR PAINTS. Less is more, it's easier to put on several thinner layers than take off one thick layer.
Check out youtube videos. There's enough content out there that can really walk you step-by-step through what to do until you get the hang.

lmao at these clowns talking about their OMG CTHULHU RAWR XD ameritrash abortion. this is /bgg/ folks not ameritrash anonymous

Eurotrash or burgerspiel?

And before anyone else points it out, I'm aware that the map ignores the tile layout rules.

>zero story
>"The adventure was inside you the whole time guize"
>15 hours of 'Spend some cards to explore generic terrain card #749, gather more cards, spend some cards to explore generic terrain card #850, gather more cards, spend some car....'

Ignored like the bag of flaming shit it is.

I played it once. It was ok but it felt like kind of a mishmash. I wasn't really wowed or anything so I didn't have a hunger to play it again. It's pretty much an adventure game with a deckbuilding core.

>>"The adventure was inside you the whole time guize"
Wait, are you serious? The "7th continent" is yourself? That sounds pretty stupid if true.

Not literally but it's basically "You are cursed, go cure curse". 15 hours of Munchkin'esque storytelling where you can tell yourself all about this wacky zany sofahnny stuff you're going through.

Too late, Tom V. convinced me.
I'm backing both this and Resident Evil 2 now, I'm a sucker, and my wallet will never forgive me.

Ignore this cunt because he's clearly miles deep into his sunk cost fallacy on this ancient, bloated, shitty ameritrash roll fest excuse for a game.

Arkham Horror is a shit game that really shows its age and in terms of gameplay, the FFG games are ranked as follows:

Arkham Horror LCG > Eldritch Horror > Elder Sign > Mansions of Madness 1e > Mansions of Madness 2e > Arkham Horror

In terms of theme:

Arkham Horror LCG > Mansions of Madness 1 & 2e > Elder Sign > Arkham Horror > Eldritch Horror

So unfortunately it's neither the best at being a game or getting the theme right in a collection of terrible-to-okay-at-best games, mostly made to sell expansions. Avoid at all costs.

I'd personally recommend to anyone considering them to actually stay away from that whole series of games desu

Seems like I'm jumping into the thread at a weird time, but to any Arkham Horror LCG players, have there been any popular recommended decks using a single set of both the Core Set + Dunwich cycle? I'm planning an event to let randoms play a game of Carnevale of Horrors and lend them pre-constructed decks of each faction, and if there are any recommended ones maybe due to synergy or something then I'd appreciate the help.

Alternatively, if there aren't any particular decks of note and I'll have to build the decks blind, maybe some non-spoiler tips for beating Carnevale of Horrors? Like atleast a deck archetype that I shouldn't build because it performs terribly in Carnevale? (Asset decks will do likely terrible in the Essex County Express, for example)

I already know I love it, I'm asking which design paradigm it fits better

I'd say it's eurotrash, though I'm not 100% sure what the difference between eurotrash and burgerspiel is.

We ran across the same problem. We played the core box campaign last winter, but the person who was the imperials last time now wants to switch to being a rebel. No one has stepped up to take the mantle because we were hoping that the app would be out soon. So, in the same boat... Curious question for you. When you do play, do you just let the imperial player pick any units they can afford out of all the expansions, etc., or do you limit them to the ones that were out with that set so that they are more thematic...like only snow troopers on Hoth, etc.?

There is a solo board game players guild on BGG.com and also many Solitaire games to print off and play for free there. I've found that community to be super helpful if I have questions on how to play something solo. Right now I've gotten into solo rpgs...some the style of those old gamebooks from the 80's. I feel like playing solo is making a comeback even though most do solo times with video games or other hobbies. I feel like I do a combination of those things, just depending on how I feel. I also end up playing lots of games two-player with my spouse as I've corrupted him into playing board games with me and he's supportive of that because it is "facetime".

Stonemeier games has a lot with a great solo mode if you like to play that way. Scythe, Viticulture, etc. If you haven't yet, check out the Solo guild on bgg.com. boardgamegeek.com/guild/1303
They even list challenges every month and maintain lists of solo games.

Is anyone or has anyone tried making your own game? How did it go or how is it going?

You might want to try Shadows of Brimstone or co-op play Descent.

>solo rpgs...some the style of those old gamebooks from the 80's

where can I do this?

I'm on it and turns out throwing random elements in is a lot easier than having players make meaningful decisions, and casuals can't even tell the difference.

So, Scythe?

I've thrown effort at such a project on and off. Was looking at a sort of bag builder where the players are cliched evil overlords competing for world domination, acquiring minions with various skills (differently colored cubes) and sending them to do evil things (Fill recipes on player mats) in order to score points.

Haven't got to the "Prototype it up and see how it plays" phase though and wouldn't know what to do if I did.

Was considering it, but then I met a regular man who does create games. His designs were so well thought-out but also total garbage, and he seemed completely oblivious of their badness, he raved about them.

I just don't want that to ever be me.

the guy who started my game group came up with a game about being in the ER, cases come in players try to stabilize or whatever.

he took it to a local con and got second place in a demo, people seemed very interested- the novel concept took him very far, the shit mechanics lost him 1st.

basically make a prototype and either whore it around or make a kickstarter on your own

>he seemed completely oblivious of their badness, he raved about them.

every fanfic ever and every "artist" on deviant art

So what, is it Tales of Arabian Nights?

The original difference between euro and ameritrash was the removal of the possibility of player elimination, a focus on mechanics rather than theme and the inclusion of abstract, non directly confrontational ways to advance your game state and opbtain victory.

Then it got expanded so now the main difference people recognize is that euros have an apparent lesser focus on luck, especially on dice rolls, which is insane as many euros have card draw and lot of them still have dice, they are just not used to determine how many dudes get killed.

No, ameritrash are older, crappier games that focus on 'story' and 'roleplaying' instead of gameplay. Eurogames are more modern games with more developed and interesting gameplay.

Basically, "euro" is just "boardgame", while ameritrash is "boardgame + stupid gimmick".

So, every modern game is an Euro regardless of direct confrontation, random resolutions, conflict and theme?
Is Twilight Imperium an Euro? Is Descent an Euro?

>Is Twilight Imperium an Euro? Is Descent an Euro?
No, because these are shitty games with gimmicks to give you an illusion of 'le epic storytelling'.

Basically, if you strip away the gimmicks and the game is still fun then it's a euro.

Define "gimmicks", especially in relation to the cited games

Your definition is a stupider gimmick than any of the games you dismiss out of hand, sir.

There's almost zero randomness in Scythe

TI 1-2 would be more ameritrashy, TI3 and onward are definitely hybrids where it got German/Euro stuff like having things to do not on your turn.

I had this idea of a multi dimensional wargame where you start at one play board and then jump between different boards to reap more resources or flank others. Then as I thought more about how things would function I figured the amount of keeping track would make it such a clusterfuck it would work better as a videogame.

Another issue is that a lot of people are designing games now, so good doesnt cut it anymore, it needs to be great. While making a cool game would be fun, I think I have enough fun playing the new stuff coming out.

I guess I think of Euros differently...more about certain subtypes of games...and yes, less luck-based. Personally I really enjoy a good dungeoncrawl that is dice-based, the quintissential ameritrash as you stated for the minis. I have a really good time even with people who have vastly different skills, because the luck of the roll evens some of that out. The more Euro it is, the more I have to pick out competitive players who are at my level, who understand the goals of the game and how to get there. Some people are better at different types of play like resource allocation or worker placement, but not so good with tile-laying, etc. I am happy to see so many hybrids, like Marco Polo or TI3 or Scythe...that have some of the mechanics or aspects of both parents.