Become the leaders of scientific teams venturing into uncharted boreal territories to observe and photograph the Arctic’s most adorable inhabitants. Play cards from your hand to one of 3 locations on your player board to snap a photo and send your scientists sliding to the left and to the right – but only if their colors match the ones printed on your card! Line up vehicle symbols, race to claim objectives, and arrange animals in pre-determined end-game scoring patterns to earn the most points and gain everlasting fame at the Society for Polar Inquiry. Who knows? Maybe you’ll even get your own tiny snow-covered island named after you.
The trick-taking game Tax the Rich features a deck depicting characters of various social ranks from the Poor to the President. Each round begins with a simple bidding phase to determine both the trump color and the number of tricks required to score bonus points. The winner of the bid must then acquire the required number of tricks, together with their ally.
The game is played as a trick-taking game in which the highest social ranks are the strongest cards. However, if at any time all remaining cards in your hand have a flag symbol, you may trigger a “revolution” by revealing your cards. This flips the social hierarchy upside down so that the lowest-ranked cards become the most powerful. Having called for a revolution, you stand publicly exposed, playing the rest of this round with your cards face up.
The game includes thirteen rule cards that add variety by giving certain character cards special abilities related to their profession: Workers “unionize”, the Billionaires “power grab”, the Police “stop and frisk”, Scientists “debunk” etc. You can play with random rule cards or use one of the scenarios suggested in the rules.
With an optional variant, players can also collect cards with a feminist icon to trigger a feminist revolution, boosting the value of all female characters.
ALUBARI: A NICE CUP OF TEA (2019): Rank 2478, Rating 7.2
It probably doesn’t take a reading of the tea leaves to know that a remake of Snowdonia features worker placement to do everything – get resources, spend them on rail etc – and that there’s a weather system that adjusts how powerful various actions are thru the game which you tactically plan around. Getting contracts to give you direction as to what buildings to focus on is important as they provide an unfairly high chunk of scoring – and hugely unsatisfactory if you miss out because of weird stuff. Like the game-end mechanism indicating the game is 25% done and 5 minutes later the game is over because the weather was sunny and three people built 4 rail each. What the …? Strategy schmategy. I also disliked how anything other than first spot at an action was a gamble because players going before you have the ability to ramp up what they take with bonus powers – will they use them or not? I’m happy to leave this in my wake.
Howdy, partners! In the sun-baked dust of Dusty Gulch, where shadows stretch long and strange, disagreements find resolution not with a six-shooter, but in the Rowdy Ring. Here, common sense yields to the thrill of a wrestling match, proving that in this corner of the Wild West, might makes right — one suplex at a time. Rowdy Partners is a team trick-taking game played over a series of rounds, with each round being composed of eight tricks. Work with your partner to beat the other players by draining their health through calculated strikes and sneaky counters. Swap wrestlers mid-match, unleash signature moves, and collect Pop to gain the upper hand. The team that first pins one of their opponents wins!
In junior high & high school (1977-1982), I played a lot of wargames. At different points, I had a subscription to both The General (Avalon Hill’s magazine) and Strategy & Tactics (SPI’s magazine that included a wargame in each issue)…. and, for a short while, Ares (SPI’s magazine that included a sci-fi or fantasy game in each issue). While one of my good friends was happy to play Squad Leader and Panzerblitz and Wooden Ships & Iron Men, most of my wargaming time was spent playing against myself – choosing actions and rolling dice for both sides of the conflict.
This new era of well-designed automata and solo modes for multiplayer games, coupled with excellent new solo game designs, is actually quite heartening to someone (me!) who finds something really satisfying about physically playing a game: shuffling cards, moving pieces, seeing it all spread out in front of you.
I’ve tracked my game playing via spreadsheet long before BoardGameGeek allowed you to do it with your game database. In 2018, I started using the excellent BGStats app to track plays… and that has made it much easier to crunch the data to get a better look at my hobby/obsession.
Join me as I peek behind the digital curtain and see what solo games have been landing on my table over the last six years.
In the last year, I’ve played seventy-one (71!) different games solo… and this annual post is my attempt to share my impressions of those games and make some recommendations to my fellow solo gamers.
I’ve been writing these solo gaming reports since March of 2020… but my solo gaming started a lot farther back than that – being a wargamer in the 1970s/80s meant that a lot of your collection only saw table time if you played against yourself – choosing actions and rolling dice for both sides of the conflict. There were some actual solo games (Chainsaw Warrior, Ambush!, Mosby’s Raiders, RAF, etc.) – but the new era of well-designed automata and solo modes for multiplayer games was still a decade or two away.
Solo gaming is now a decent-sized chunk of my gaming experiences – while I still play a lot of games with friends and family, nearly 24% of my gaming in 2025 was solo. For comparison, the yearly total for 2024 was 31%, 2023 was 20%, 2022 was 22%, 2021 was 33%, 2020 was 19%, and 2019 was 6%.
So, what follows are my thoughts on all those solo games I played in 2025 – ordered by the number of times I’ve played them. (Note: this is not necessarily how much I like a particular game for solo play – for example, I think Voidfall is an excellent solo game design but I didn’t play it at all in 2025. It’s also not a measure of how much I enjoy a game as a multi-player experience – another example: I think the solo mode for Rome & Roll is not very enjoyable – but I like it a lot as a 2-3 player game.)
Yes, it’s a ridiculously long post – you can read the whole thing OR you can simply use it as a guide for finding solo games you might be interested to try. I’m good either way.
Coming tomorrow: a post about six years of solo gaming & what I learned from crunching the data!
Solo Gaming: My Personal Journey of the Past Six Years
In junior high & high school (1977-1982), I played a lot of wargames. At different points, I had a subscription to both The General (Avalon Hill’s magazine) and Strategy & Tactics (SPI’s magazine that included a wargame in each issue)…. and, for a short while, Ares (SPI’s magazine that included a sci-fi or fantasy game in each issue). While one of my good friends was happy to play Squad Leader and Panzerblitz and Wooden Ships & Iron Men, most of my wargaming time was spent playing against myself – choosing actions and rolling dice for both sides of the conflict.
There were actual solo games that saw a lot of play during that time as well: Chainsaw Warrior (Games Workshop), Ambush! & Mosby’s Raiders (Victory Games), RAF (West End Games), Voyage of the BSM Pandora (SPI), and B-17 (Avalon Hill). I still own Chainsaw Warrior.
This new era of well-designed automata and solo modes for multiplayer games, coupled with excellent new solo game designs, is actually quite heartening to someone (me!) who finds something really satisfying about physically playing a game: shuffling cards, moving pieces, seeing it all spread out in front of you.
I’ve tracked my game playing via spreadsheet long before BoardGameGeek allowed you to do it with your game database. In 2018, I started using the excellent BGStats app to track plays… and that has made it much easier to crunch the data to get a better look at my hobby/obsession.
Join me as I peek behind the digital curtain and see what solo games have been landing on my table over the last six years.
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