RogerBW's Blog

I felt like having a lazy and anti-social bank holiday Monday, so I played a bunch of solo games (something of a tradition for BoardGameGeek's 1 Player Guild). With images; cc-by-sa on everything.

First came Space Race. I ordered this in its 2016 Kickstarter, and it arrived in May last year – and I still hadn't got round to playing it, mostly because I hadn't taken time to learn the rules before taking it to my local games club. It's unusual in some respects; in particular there's basically no way to play from your hand into your Agency (active cards that do stuff), so one has to keep this in mind. But it was fun, and I now feel confident enough about the rules to try multi-player. (And I won the solo version, but it was mildly challenging. I note with interest that it could be used to make a third or fourth player in games with multiple human players too.)

Next, Onirim, which I was kindly given at the first 1PG UK meet – and have barely played since. This time I got it to come out, mostly by spending keys as exploration elements to make rows of three rather than holding onto them for the doors.

After a quick break for the pub (which now has a gin menu), back for Xenon Profiteer. First time with the solo rules, and I messed them up on the first game by not including all the tokens, but I still managed to win both times. It's not as good as the multi-player version – for my taste, too easy to get xenon out quickly – but still one I'll try again.

Finally, Sagrada, which has a pretty tough solo mode… I came close to winning, but didn't make it. I think I'm sidling up on a way of thinking which will make this game work for me, but it'll take more practice.

Five games in three and a half hours, and I didn't have to go anywhere or be pleasant to any fellow players when I was in a bad mood. I don't suppose I'll do this every weekend, but it's certainly likely to happen again.