I talked about big group games yesterday, but you might have a solo gamer in your life. What are some good solo board games, or board games that can be played solo for them? You could look at what I’ve been playing on Malts and Meeples, but here’s a list of a few of solo games you might want to check out.

Orchard: A 9 Card Solitaire Game

This is going to be a little solo game. It says it’s a 9 card game, so you’d expect a small package. In this game you are overlapping cards to grow fruit. The more fruit you get the more points that you have. But you need to overlap the same types of trees, so it makes it an interesting puzzle.

This is a very fast game to play. And while it says 9 cards, it comes with 18, so you split the cards and you can play it twice very quickly. Which I think works well for the game. This is a game that I sit down and play 4-10 times in a sitting because a game takes five minutes or maybe 10 if you are trying really hard to optimize everything.

Marvel Champions: The Card Game

A bigger game, this one can be played multiplayer, but solo you take a hero against a villain to try and beat them up and stop their schemes. I really like this one as a thematic Marvel game. Each hero plays very differently, and you can change up how they play through deck building. The villains play differently as well.

And this is a game where the base box comes with some heroes, but you can get additional heroes. Now, there are a lot of heroes and a lot of content out for the game. And while I own it all of it, you don’t need to. If someone you know likes Thor, get them the base box and the Thor expansion. Or maybe they like Spider-Man and his villains, give them the base set and the Green Goblin pack. You can customize who the person can get really easily.

A Gentle Rain

Back to another small game with A Gentle Rain. This is for the casual gamer who might like that solo activity. A Gentle Rain is meant to be a relaxing game and it really is. You are flipping over tiles trying to match sides. If you can get it so that you match all the corners, you put a disc down. The goal is to get all of the discs out or as many of them as you can.

This one is a simpler game than Orchard and takes up a bit more space, but both of them fall into a category of fast and little games to play. This game also has a really nice aesthetic. This is even a solid one that you could give someone to take into work as something to fidget with when they get stuck on a work problem or something like that.

Super-Skill Pinball: 4-Cade

A lot of roll and write games can be played solo. I could have picked Metro X, Ganz Schon Clever (or any of that trilogy) and a whole lot more. But Super-Skill Pinball 4-Cade is a fun one because it’s a thematic roll and write. In it, you are playing a pinball game basically seeing how high a score you can get.

The cool thing about this roll and write is that they have four different boards, plus four more coming in an expansion. Some of the boards are easier, or pinball machines, so you can learn the basic concept of the game on that, and then move onto harder boards. And even the harder boards don’t make the game much longer or more difficult. If you want a good thematic game in a small package, this might be it.

Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon

On the flip side, this is a very thematic game, but in a very big package. It’s also going to be harder to find than some. I know places like Game Steward, I believe, still have copies of the Kickstarter available though, so not impossible to find. This is a big survival game that can be multiplayer, but also works well as a solo game where you control one character.

This is a dark retelling of the Avalon and Arthurian legends. And it has an amazing story. I recommend playing it in story mode because it’s a great story to experience and the survival in the regular mode can be very challenging. I’ve played through the main quest and started on the expansions and talked about it a lot because it’s an amazing game. It’s going to be more expensive but such a good experience.

Honorable Mention Solo Games

Of course, I can add in a few honorable mentions. Onirim is a fun little solo game where you are trying to deal with nightmares and create patterns in cars you play down to get doors. There is a lot of shuffling and A Gentle Rain and Orchard have replaced it for me. I could have put Gloomhaven or Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion on the list as well. Those can be played solo, but unlike Tainted Grail where you can play with one character, in Gloomhaven you need to control two.

What are some solo games that you’d want for Christmas or that you’d recommend to others?

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