Top 10 Pallet Cleanser Games

10. Parade

This one is one that I just got back to the table recently. It’s a good time and it’s a very simple game. You are creating a line of characters from Alice in Wonderland. The theme is not that important, but the game play is very cool, you are putting them down and based off of color and number. You are trying to collect as few points as possible, which is a fun twist. And you score the face value unless you have the most of a color in which case the cards are worth one point. It plays very fast, but you need to think about what you are playing down.

9. Ohanami

This one is even lighter than Parade in what you are doing. You are drafting two cards from a hand and adding them in three columns. The trick is you need to always go higher or lower than the numbers in the column. Now that’s not too hard with three columns, but if you get stuck with bad cards you need to have planned for that. Plus the scoring is fun in that you score blue, then blue and green, then blue, green, grey, and pink over the various hands. It creates a nice puzzle of when you ideally draft cards. Very fast, light, but fun game that gives you enough to think about.

8. Point Salad

Point Salad is another drafting game, this one where you are trying to get the most points possible. This is a play off of euro games where everything you do gets you points, which is there point salad comes from. In this case you are either drafting cards that make up your salad, two of them on a turn, or a card that will give you points based off of what you have in your salad. The only question is can you balance getting cards that give you positive points for the vegetables that you have. Good game with the simple concept but that adds in enough to think about.

7. Draftosaurus

This is going simpler than say Point Salad or Parade, but not by much. I call this game a roll and write, even though you aren’t writing anything down. Instead you are drafting dinosaur meeples and placing them onto your board. You do roll an die and that decides where the dinosaur can be placed. Each dinosaur pen gives different points. The game plays in about 15 minutes and it’s one that you’ll reset and play again. This one is really good if you just don’t want to think about much of anything until later in the game because the first few picks will determine what you need.

6. Metro X

I didn’t want to put too many roll and write games on the list, but a lot of them make good pallet cleansers. So I picked ones that could be played solo and pretty quickly. I really like Metro X as a pallet cleanser because you do have interesting choices to make. The bus routes interconnect and when you hit a filled in bus route that stops your placement. So you need to get skips which allow you to pass over stuff, and you need to optimally place your filled in stops. And a game takes 15 minutes solo.

5. Ganz Schon Clever

Yes, it’s another roll and write, and this might be one people thought of first. I do have one higher on the list. This is a good one because, one there is a very nice app, but too it is very satisfying. You get a lot of combos in the game, so you can plan out or take huge turns as you fill in everything you can. It’s a good puzzle to figure out, and even when you’ve figured it out, it’s a good puzzle to optimize. The follow-ups, Doppelt So Clever, and Clever Hoch Drei are also really good pallet cleansers, but I didn’t want only roll and writes.

4. Railroad Ink Challenge

The final roll and write on the list, this one I like because it provides a bit more variability for a roll and write, and again a nice app. The variability comes from the challenges that you have, which can really shape your game, if you let it. It challenges you to try and get them done because 12 points is solid and you have a timer in this game for when you can get those points. The original would also work if I wanted something a bit lighter to play without the challenges.

In the game, though, you are trying to connect bus and train routes around your board. You get points for going through the middle spots but also the more you connect. And you can use special things to fill in spots a few times a game. There’s just enough to make this game really fascinating to play.

3. Hanamikoji

By far the thinkiest game on the list, a two player on game that plays fast, Hanamikoji was one of the first ones that I thought of. In this one you are trying to win the favor of seven different Geisha or at least the majority, but giving them gifts. Generally at the end of one round the player with the most favor wins, but it can take several rounds to reach a win threshold.

But to give them gives you have four actions you can take and you can take each one once a round. The are discarding two cards that won’t be used face down, playing a card face down that will be used as a gift, giving three cards for your opponent to pick one from, and letting your opponent pick between two sets of two cards. That’s it, but there’s so much to think about that it makes the game very challenging. It might be too thinky for some people. At least to be a true pallet cleanser.

2. A Gentle Rain

The last two games are purely solo games, this is the lighter of the two. In this game you are just flipping out a tile and matching it on the board. You are trying to create spots where all four corners meet. At least if there were corners, there aren’t but when you do complete that, you can place a disc into the open spot. The goal is to get all of the discs onto the board. It’s simple in what you do, there is a little strategy, and just enough to keep your mind engaged as you play. Only downside I have with it is that it takes up a bunch of space.

1. Orchard

Finally, no shock, we have Orchard. This game makes you think more than A Gentle Rain does. The dice placement piece works so well. And I love the card placement as well. In this game you stack cards so like trees cover each other, when you do, you place a die. The higher the stack of overlapping you can make, the more that tree produces. It’s just playing down 9 cards, but you need to think about each placement. And you just see if you can beat your previous score. But I love to sit down and play this one on repeat while watching sports.

What games do you like to sit down with when you want to play something fast that keeps you still engaged? And do you play board games to ever clear you mind like I do?

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10 – Criss Cross

This was one of the first roll and write games that I picked up. I saw it on the Brothers Murph YouTube channel, found here. I really like the simplicity of this game, and how it plays so incredibly fast. All you are trying to do is get like symbols in columns and rows, which is easy enough to do in one of them, but in both can be a bit tricky. And the more you get the more points it is. The main thing you have to pay attention to is that you aren’t blocking yourself into a single spot in two places on the board because you have to place the rolled symbols adjacent to each other. This one also works really well over Zoom or some other meeting software. You can find my full review here.

9 – Metro X

The newest game to the list is Metro X, this one I just wrote my review about yesterday, you can find it here. I like how this game makes you think for something that is pretty straight forward in what you are doing. I think that it works well solo as the game is really a multi-player solitaire as a lot of these games are. Some of the excitement that comes from the game is seeing what cards are going to be flipped over, especially when you really need a skip or maybe that free space card to show up way more often than they do, or they show up at the wrong time where it really doesn’t help you that much. And the components are really nice for the game.

8 – Second Chance

Another one of the first roll and write, or really a flip and write, that I got. Second Chance is a lot of fun and a very peaceful game. I don’t think there are that many board games that I would consider to be really peaceful. Now that isn’t to say that I don’t fine most games to be pretty relaxing or destressing anyways, because I just love games, but Second Chance is really peaceful, which is great. You flip two shapes, and everyone places them on their board, and then repeat that. It is peaceful as you doodle on your board, filling in the shapes that you’ve placed, and while you can plan ahead a little, most people don’t too much. Just a good game overall that you can find my review of here.

7 – Twice as Clever!

There are going to be a number of games from this series by Wolfgang Warsch. While there are older roll and writes out there, Yahtzee missed my list but an obvious forefather, this line of roll and writes definitely brought them into the board gaming spotlight. You are rolling dice in all of them, picking one, setting aside anything lower, repeating the process until you don’t have any dice to roll or you’ve used three dice. Then the other players pick a die to use from those that you didn’t. This version is my least favorite just because I feel like it’s a bit more complex, but mainly for complexities sake. This one has combos but it doesn’t feel like the combos do as much.

6 – Super-Skill Pinball: 4-Cade

A newer game to me, though not as new as Metro X, this one has a theme that I was really excited for. I like playing pinball machines, though in 2020 it hasn’t happened as often. So when there was a roll and write pinball game coming out I thought it’d be interesting. I’ve written some opening thoughts on it here, but I want to play it more to give it a full review. What works so well for me is the flow of how you fill in spaces. There are the bumpers in the upper section that you can just ping around on for a while, but once the ball drops out of that, it will start falling, so you need to figure out, best you can, how to control that fall, hitting the sides along the way, before you flip it back up. Point scoring is nice and easy, for the most part, and the components are really good.

5 – Clever Hoch Drei

The next of the series by Wolfgang Warsch , and actually the most recent of the roll and writes, Clever Hoch Drei, which I’m getting from Germany, has been a blast to play. This one returns you to a ton of combos in the game, something I feel like is missing slightly in Twice As Clever. But it actually has some really interesting choices in it with how you fill in the sections. I like that this and Twice as Clever also incentivize going for specific things, like rerolls or plus ones, to get even more bonuses. The main mechanics stay the same as well, so it makes teaching it easy if someone already knows either That’s Pretty Clever or Twice as Clever.

4 – Cartographers

I almost missed this one when I was ranking my roll and writes because I have it on another shelf. This one is set in the Roll Player world, which really doesn’t matter. It’s about making a map, but that’s fairly weird how that works or doesn’t work, because there are monsters on the board. But it’s still a lot of fun. There are two things that stand out to me, the first being the scoring system where you play through four seasons and in the first season you are scoring objectives A and B, then in summer, B and C, but when you get to Winter, you are scoring D and A. So each thing gets scored twice, and you have to balance how much you go for scoring, because if you push hard for B in rounds one and two, you might not score as many points later. I also find the monsters interesting. It makes the game less multi-player solitaire because your opponents place the monsters (unless you’re playing solo) and they are going to try and place it in the worst spot possible for you. You can find my full thoughts on Cartographers here.

3 – That’s Pretty Clever

The first and my favorite for the roll and writes that are part of what currently sits at a trilogy of games. I fully expect that there could be more because they are certainly popular enough. I like this one for a couple of reasons better than the others. Firstly, it was the first that I really played of them, which there is a nostalgia factor. But I also like it because it is the simplest. It makes it the easiest to teach in a lot of ways, and playing it over Zoom works well because while it takes a minute to draw out the board, it can be done easier than the others. The dice mechanics are the same, and overall, just a game design that I really like. You can find my full review here for more information on the game.

2 – Sonora

Now, for something completely different. Flipping cards or rolling dice to fill in stuff on the boards is common and normal, Sonora, by Pandasaurus Games, is a flicking game and then you fill stuff in. I think it might be possible to get good at the flicking aspect of it, but you don’t need to be great. No matter where you end up with flicking, you will score points, and that’s fun, and you can generally land it into the large area that you want, you might not get double the area if you can’t flick as well. This game is all about the combos when it comes to filling things in, and there are four areas to do it in. If you wanted, you can really focus on one area, or you can diversify to some extent, and the scoring seems really balanced in all of them. Definitely a really fun game to checkout, and you can find more about it here.

1 – Welcome To

Finally, my number one, still, though, I think that all of the top 4 could be my number one on any given day, is Welcome To. I really like this game, and I’m not even always that great at it. I like building my perfect Stepford neighborhood, with it’s white picket fences and most definitely not anything crazy that will go wrong there, but that’s for someone else to deal with, I’m just building Helmouth on a Hell Mouth, a pet cemetery and probably more cursed things, and that’s just the flavor I add to the game. This game has a lot of different ways to score points and you can push your luck as well, but there’s also strategy as you consider how many of each number have passed by, I always seem to find something else that I want to think about or try in the game each time that I play it. I’ve had this one in my Top 100 games since I’ve played it and it’s stayed strong, you can see why I love it so much here.

Now, I have a few more roll and writes on my shelf to try. I have the Red Box for Railroad Ink, Booomerang, Floor Plan, Welcome to New Las Vegas, and Patchwork Doodle all to try as well. And I had two, Cat Café and Yahtzee that just missed the list. Yes, I still do enjoy the original, Yahtzee, as well, though that game mainly plays itself now.

What is your favorite roll and write game?

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10 – Potion Explosion
Now, Potion Explosion is not that unique in terms of video games, but for a mechanic in a board game it has something very cool. You are taking/collecting marbles to mix together in your potion. That piece is pretty standard set collection fare that you see in a lot of games, but it has a mechanic where, because you are pulling marbles from a tray and then more marbles drop in, that if you pull a marble and then like colored marbles hit, you take those marbles, and if more like colored marbles hit, you can take those, so you can set-up a big chain reaction of marbles to use on your potions. It’s a simple mechanic to add into the game, but they execute it well with the tray that holds the marbles and allows them to roll. There’s also more strategy than it feels like there would be, but is still a simple game to teach.

9 – Captain Sonar
This one is interesting to have on the list, because I don’t know that it has a single completely unique mechanic, but the combination of trying to figure out hidden movement, breaking down and repairing systems, and navigating all at the same time, and getting systems loaded, there’s just a lot going on in this hectic game. But they work together extremely well. You get that pressure of trying to hunt down the enemy sub and figure out where they are and what they are up to. And if things go poorly and you need to resurface, all of a sudden they have a chance to find you. This game is also interesting because it’s a big group game but doesn’t have a party game feel.

8 – Dice Forge
I believe that there are a couple other games that have done this, but none, in my opinion, as successfully as Dice Forge, and that is dice customization. In this game, which is basically just a seeing who can get the most victory points over a few rounds, you are swapping out the faces on your dice so that you can get more of several different resources, whether it’s to purchase more and better cards that give you points, or if it’s money that you can spend to get more points, or maybe even just more points. The game gives you a number of strategies for it. But the most fun part is popping off the side of a die and replacing it with something better which really then allows you to customize your strategy going forward.

7 – Hats
Hats is an interesting one to put on the list because it’s just a very small card game and all you’re doing in it is collecting hats in front of you and trying to keep what you want for scoring on the table at the Madd Hatter’s tea party. But how it works is interesting because the cards you get for scoring are from the table. So if you aren’t careful, you could set it up that a color of hat you’ve been collecting might not be able to be scored anymore. So it’s a give and take of collecting a variety of hats but also keeping a lot of scoring options open. It can be pretty thinky at two players. Just the play of the table and how you get cards in front of you feels different and unique to me. So many games you use your own hand for scoring, but in Hats, what you have in your hand, you might not use for scoring at all.

6 – Photosynthesis
First the theme is quite unique, growing trees is not that common a theme, but it has one really interesting and cool mechanic and that’s the sun. In this game the sun rotates around the board and there are games that do that with the moon as well, but the sun rotating can determine if you’re tree is going to get any sunlight and give you points to grow your trees more so and eventually remove your biggest tree which will get you points. But the game is played a certain number of rotations of the sun, and there are a number of spots it can be, but the taller the tree is, the more shade it casts, so it’s a balancing act of blocking your opponents trees at times while getting your own to get the sun in a lot of situations or consistently getting energy to use from the sunlight.

5 – Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game
Not the most unique mechanic anymore, because they’ve come out with two more Crossroads games, though only one of them has been well received. But Dead of Winter is a zombie survival game where you have a main objective, personal objectives, and possibly a traitor, but what makes it unique is that there are Crossroads cards. These cards will only get triggered in certain situations, maybe if you take a certain action or go to a certain place or have a certain character. But that’ll immediately interrupt your turn and you’ll be given a little bit of story and then have to make a decision, it can be something that might help the colony, but most of the time it isn’t and you’ll have to choose between a couple of bad options. It’s a fun mechanic that adds more theme into the game and makes a pretty tough game considerably harder.

4 – Gravwell: Escape from the 9th Dimension
You’ve been sucked through a wormhole and are being pulled into a black hole, so you really need to get out of the 9th Dimension. Fortunately you have a bunch of random elements on the ship that you can use for fuel, unfortunately you’re not sure how well they’ll work. What makes this unique is that the elements do different things, they’re all going to move someone, but some might move you towards the nearest ship, some might push you away, or some might pull ships towards you. And when your ship fires off is completely dependent upon the element that you’re using. The elements fire in alphabetical order, so you might have a card that’ll move you a long ways but it’s later in the alphabet, so you need to use that when you’re confident that it’ll pull you towards a ship that’s ahead of you, and not the wrong way. It’s a simple mechanic but one that works well and causes a lot of tough decisions to be made.

3 – Cartographers
This flip and write does a fair number of things that other flip or roll and write games have done before, or even other board games with the scoring set-up. And combined those by themselves are pretty unique, but there’s one very unique thing that this game does. It causes you to pass your sheet and someone else will write on it. As you are creating your map, monsters might show up, and when they do, you pass your sheet either left or right and that other player puts the monster in the least useful spot possible. And you get negative points if you can’t completely the map around the monsters. Just that screwing over of your fellow players is very interesting and normally roll and writes can be a bit solitaire so this adds in some more interactions.

2 – Xenoshyft: Onslaught
So, in the introduction I gave an example of how a lot of deck building games aren’t that unique. I think that Xenoshyft: Onslaught does something unique in how you can use the cards. In most deck building games, even cooperative ones like Aeon’s End, there are certain steps that you have to do to help the other players at the table. In Xenoshyft, however, you can simply pass them a card while you are setting up your defenses. This means that the person in charge of the armory who can get weapons cheaper can pass the medic a weapon, or maybe someone has six troops in their hand, they can pass an extra to another player to add to their line of troops. Compared to other cooperative deck building games, and actually many cooperative games in general, this one allows you to cooperate and collaborate more on what you are doing.

1 – Betrayal at House on the Hill
Now, this one I’m putting here because of the two halves on the game. There are other games that have multiple distinct parts, Galaxy Trucker for example, but with Betrayal at House on the Hill, you go from a tense cooperative game of exploring a house, mainly tense because you don’t want someone to get too much stuff or too powerful, to a game where it is one versus all as someone becomes the traitor. It does a good job, in my opinion of balancing the tension. There’s less to say on this one, because the mechanic is pretty simple, find enough omens, have a bad enough roll and bad things will happen.

Now, I’m sure I’m missing some that I’ve played and many that I haven’t played that could be unique or do a twist on some more common mechanic. What are some of your favorite games with unique mechanics?

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So what are my top 10 cooperative games?

10 – The Lost Expedition
Number ten on the list is the smallest game of the group but also one of the easier ones to teach and get to the table. In this, you are your fellow players are trying to lead your team of adventurers on hikes twice a day so that they can get to the Lost City of Z, but the jungles are dangerous, and you never know what might be coming up next. But that’s for you to decide as players, without discussing, you put down cards for a morning and evening hike that might get you more food or cause you to find bullets or maybe you get hook worms, and no one wants that, but there are difficult decisions to make on each card, and you can discuss that part. One of the games that really has something built into to stop alpha gamers from being able to run the game. It’s a lot of fun, and it plays fast as well, which some of the games further on the list won’t.

9 – Arkham Horror: The Card Game
The first, but not the last Lovecraft Mythos game on the list from Fantasy Flight, this one is the smaller or the two, though it packs a lot of punch. In this one, like all of Fantasy Flight’s Lovecraftian Games, you are an investigator working together with the other investigators trying to stop whatever horror is being called through by cultists. But in this you can be fighting, but much of it is investigating, and the game is just basically cards and a bunch of tokens. You don’t need a bit board to tell a big story or change up the game. The different things that the cards can do and how they can use them to create a town or house or other locations and it feels different is impressive. Now, with the base box, it’s only a 1-2 player game, but with another core box you can play up to 4, so if you have a larger group it’s something to consider. And Fantasy Flight does a great job of supporting this, as they do with all their living card games, so there is always more story coming out.

8 – Aeon’s End: War Eternal
When it comes to deckbuilding a lot of them do similar things, you add cards, you maybe buy more cards or attack, and then you draw a new hand until you can’t fill the hand and then you shuffle up your discard and repeat the process. Aeon’s End: War Eternal is unique because you never shuffle, when you discard cards, you choose the order they go so that you can create, if you’re good at card counting, a hand or combo that you want to get because it’s going to be strong. It’s a lot of fun to see how that piece of the puzzle fits together. Plus, you’re all trying to take down a nemesis who is bent on taking out the town of Gravehold. And each nemesis plays differently. I have really enjoyed both plays of this game, and it’s a good challenge, there are a lot of mages, who play differently, and there are expansions galore for the game with even more nemesis and breach mages to choose from.

7- T.I.M.E. Stories
One of the most unique games on the list, T.I.M.E. Stories has an element of an escape room game, it has some role playing aspects, and there’s a good amount of narrative to it. You are all part of a time agency who is trying to stop unwanted time incursions from happening and messing up the timeline. This means you might be going to the earth in the 90’s, or another dimension where there is magic and dragons. And it can change that wildly in each of the expansions and each time you play. Now, each scenario can only be played once, but to get through and beat the story it is at least a couple hours of excitement for 4 players, if not up to 3, and it’s cheaper than a movie at that point. Plus, the upside, and sometimes downside, is that because it’s such a sandbox, you can do anything in the games, and the creators have done a good job of doing that, creating interesting puzzles and mechanics to test out along the way.

6 – XenoShyft: Onslaught
You and your fellow crack team of marines, scientists, and medics have been tasked with protecting a mining facility from hordes and hordes of giant monstrous bugs. Why did they build a mining facility on this remote planet, money of course, but now you’re about to overrun with bugs, can you fend off the waves they’re throwing at you? This is a very tough game, even though it makes it’s deck building easier than a lot of others. You can help other people, you can give them troops or weapons that you’ve bought for your deck to help them shore up their defenses, they can give you stuff in return, or use stim packs and grenades to help you when it’s your turn to face a wave of monsters. This game is clever in what it does, and it creates a good amount of tension, plus I like that the game is basically all simultaneous so there isn’t downtime for anyone.

5 – Pandemic Legacy Season 1
Seems a bit on the nose to be playing right now (article written 4/13/2020 during Covid-19 Pandemic), but it is a really good cooperative game. I could have put down either season of Pandemic or base Pandemic on the list, and any are great options. Can you prevent the spread and find the cures to four diseases before they run across the world and destroy everything? This game is pretty simple compared to the other ones, but still offers a lot of good choices and you always feel like there are 1-2 more things that you need to do on your turn and you hope that you’ve picked the right things so that you don’t have an outbreak on your hands. Also, do you have a good combination of characters that are able to fight it off and can you use it to the best of your ability. A lot of questions, but it’s a good game, a simpler game, and one that you can play faster and with more people than some because it an easier game to pick up.

4 – Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon
When Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table came to the lands of Avalon, they were wild and untamed and the Wyrdness and Foredwellers twisted the land, but they forced it to their will, creating Menhir, but now that was long ago, and the Menhir are starting to go out and the Wyrdness is coming back over the lands. You and your fellow adventurers are only going out because those who were supposed to have saved you and your village have gone out and not come back. Can you survive the twisted lands of Avalon? This game works really well as it’s a very tough game where survival is the goal but not a guarantee, and you spend so much time exploring and discovering new things about Avalon and you might not have wanted to know. Then you go from the exploration piece of the game and jump into combat which can be tough as monsters aren’t always meant to be beaten and diplomatic encounters can turn violent if you’re not careful. There are chunks of the game that are pretty well split up where you can do daily actions separately or explore while someone else fights, but this is a grand free flowing game that tells an interesting story.

3 – Mansions of Madness 2nd Edition
You, and your fellow paranormal investigators have been called to a mansion to explore some unnatural goings on. This might be a crazed cultist leading a band of cultists and trying to summon a deep old one. It could be you’ve made it to late and a town has been overrun with Deep Ones and you need to figure out how to escape. You and your fellow investigators could get split up in two different timelines and need to work together to solve the mystery and get the one who time traveled back. There are a lot of different scenarios, and an app that helps you keep track of everything. The game is set in the Lovecraft Mythos, but it has more of an investigative feel to it, than leaning into as much horror. If you want a game that is fairly big but doesn’t feel as daunting as some dungeon crawlers, Mansions of Madness is a good option.

2 – Marvel Champions: The Card Game
This game has made it on a lost of lists and it’s working it’s way up to being one of my favorite games of all time. The game just feels like you’re in a comic fighting a villain. And you get the full comic feeling as you can team up superheroes as well as flip back and forth between an alter-ego and superhero side in order to rest and recover if the villain knocks you around to me. The game does a lot of clever things, and you can create the team-ups that you always wanted, or at least some of them, eventually Fantasy Flight will come out with more heroes so you can create any team-up you want. And they’ve managed to make the villains feel different as well as the heroes, so you can get a lot of unique games.

1 – Gloomhaven
No surprise here, though there are some slight semi-cooperative elements of the game, mainly having specific goals that you need to do in a given scenario depending off of some card draw, but for the most part it’s working together, and those goals are just perks and don’t make or break the game if you don’t get them. Gloomhaven is an epic dungeon crawling and character leveling game where you and a group of fellow mercenary adventurers go through and try and figure out what strange things are happening in Gloomhaven and the surrounding areas. The story is fun but it really shines with a puzzly sort of card based combat that makes everything work together. And it feels like there’s always more to explore in the game.

I think that one thing I really like about cooperative games is that you get so many great shared stories out of them. Even the ones that aren’t just storytelling heavy can still have great moments in them as you roll the right number to get what you needed or draw the right card. It’s such a shared victory and moment that they often stick out to me. And I know that I have so many more cooperative games sitting on my shelf that I like and that are waiting to be played again or for the first time. What are some of your favorite cooperative games or cooperative gaming experiences?

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10 – Onirim
Technically you can play the game with two players, but it’s a solo game through and through. It’s a fun puzzle type of game as you are trying to escape or sort a dream before the nightmares can get you. But to do that, you need to play down colored cards in pairs of three of the same color, you just can’t have the same symbol back to back. And beware the pesky nightmares, that can ruin a good hand or will you push your luck in other ways to deal with the nightmare? The game plays fast, and app for it is great, but I like playing it with the physical game, even though there can be a lot of shuffling. There are also a lot of expansions/variations that you can play out of the box as well, so it gives you good variety in the game.

9 – Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game
The name is a mouthful, but the game offers a lot of interesting fun solo. In it you play as Harry Dresden and two other characters when solo and you build out a hand for each of them. So really it’s a multihanded game at that point, but compared to the normal three player game, I believe that you end up with less cards to work with, and in a game where cards are at a premium, it makes is very tough still even with perfect information. The game is definitely a puzzle to be solved at that point in time, and with a few lucky die rolls maybe it’ll be an easy solve, but you never know. If you’re a Dresden Files fan, I’d say that it matches the books well, if you’re not, I think the game is interesting, but probably not as strong.

8 – Welcome To…
This flip and write offers you an interesting game that you can do solo as you build up your perfect Stepford, I mean perfect town. It does one thing that isn’t my favorite in a solo game, it’s a beat your best score sort of game, but it works well as a solo game. You have a lot of choices to make as you have to use two cards from a combination of three. Now, this is the solo mode that comes out of the base box, I do believe that they created another solo variant for the game at a later time that might be even better or give you another challenge for winning besides just trying to beat your best score. It’s a good solo filler game.

7 – Arkham Horror: The Card Game
This is the game that a future game on the list is loosely based off of, but this one holds up well on it’s own. In this game you construct a deck for your investigator and then you send them off to investigate some weird goings on and solve the mystery that is happening. I like it solo because as compared to some where you are just trying to beat a point total, in this one, you have a clear objective and with only one player, the game moves along really nicely. I have played this one player and two player, and while two player is fun because you can share the story, at one player you have no downtime. And there’s a ton of content for this, so you’re not likely to ever run out of material to play in the game.

6 – Aeon’s End: War Eternal
One of a few deck builders or deck constructions games, Aeon’s End: War Eternal is a really fun game and works really well solo. On Malts and Meeples, I played through a game of it solo and it worked well to play it two handed. You can play up to 4 breach mages, but I think that two works fine and is easy to keep track of. But because you aren’t shuffling the decks that are being built ever, it keeps the downtime of not playing the game to a minimum because you’re always just flipping for the next turn. The game has a lot of cool mechanics, and I think that the not shuffling the deck is one of the coolest, and I really like the turn order mechanic as well where you’re just flipping from a deck so you never know who is going to go next.

5 – Xenoshyft: Onslaught
I’ve played this one solo, kind of, I’ve played it solo in the app, and while the game worked well solo, the app is horrible and I’d strongly recommend not playing it that way. It definitely doesn’t work on a phone and maybe would on a tablet. But it’s a game that you can find and have a variety of how you play it depending on which character you pick. I expect that it’d be more challenging solo, though, you only have to make it through 3 rounds at each difficulty level. The downside is that the health of your base is way lower. The game offers good challenge and I like the somewhat silly nature of the game because it reminds me of Starship Troopers and a bit of Ender’s Game as you’re defending a base against bug monsters.

4 – Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon
The downside to putting this one on the list is that it’s going to be extremely hard to find. It was a Kickstarter at the end of 2018 that delivered at the end of 2019. There are going to be some copies on eBay, but I’d expect them to be expensive, but I really like this game solo. It’s a massive story driven survival game where you are sent out from your little farming village after the real heroes of the town have gone out and not come back. Can you fend off the Wyrdness that is creeping across the lands of Avalon and solve the mysteries that the game presents to you. The game is done in chapters, and I find the chapters to be a solid bite of the game that you can play in a sitting or two and get interesting and good story. It’s going to be spendy, but it’s really good.

3 – Mansions of Madness: Second Edition
When you want a mystery to try and solve, Mansions of Madness: Second Edition gives you that. I have played this solo once I believe, and I thought it worked pretty well. Board Game Geek users don’t think it’s bad at one, they just like it at higher player counts, and I think the most heavily story driven games I find that to be true, but it works well in a pinch. As you’re playing against the app which is laying out the mystery, you might find that you’re not having enough time to do everything, and that’s even the case with multiplayer. The app lays out the board and mysteries as well, so even if you’ve played a scenario once and lost, you can play it again and you’ll notice little things that are different about it. I really like this game, and because of the app integration, it’d be a really good solo game.

2 – Marvel Champions: The Card Game
I’ve played this one solo a few times and while I’ve only beat it multiplayer, that is because I was learning it more so playing it solo. The game is a lot of fun, you feel like the superhero that you’re supposed to be playing with the actions that they have and equipment. The deck building aspect is interesting as well because you can really change up the character with the aspect that you give them, maybe you want Iron Man to be defensive or a leader or aggressive, by swapping out some of the generic cards, you’re able to build the character so that they focus in a unique way. If you’re a Marvel fan and a board game fan, I’d say that this game is a really good choice, and the solo mode for this time works extremely well.

1 – Gloomhaven
This is one of them that I haven’t played solo, but you can, even though you need to play it two handed solo. I can see the solo working really well and I know it’s very popular solo, because you can really work on synergies and strategies that you might not be able to do in a multiplayer game. They recommend in the rule book for solo that you play up a level of difficulty for that reason because you’ll know precisely how fast both the characters are going. Now, with Gloomhaven , playing is solo, I’d say that the Gloomhaven Helper app is a must, and I’d even think the Foreteller app with the 51 base Gloomhaven scenarios and coming soon the side scenarios being read to you, it’d offer more feeling of discovery and immersion. Now, Gloomhaven is, of course, massive, so I’d recommend getting an organizer and even leaving it set out if you can.

What are some games that you like to play solo? I know that I have more on my list, such as Aeon’s End Legacy, Folklore The Affliction and 7th Continent that I need to play. Plus there are games like Sword & Sorcery and Legends of Andor that’d work well solo but didn’t make the list for me. Now is really the time if you can dig into a bigger adventure game to tackle one of those solo as we probably won’t be able to have many in person gaming experiences for a while.

Are there any games that I should checkout for solo play? Do you think that any listed don’t work well solo?

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10 – Homebrewers
It’s time to fire up the old brew system and see what sort of beers you can bring to the judges in this quick engine building game with some interesting options for action points. You have a limited number that are determined what they are based off of the dice you roll, which is something you’ll see more of. However, you’re not locked in, you can always trade with other players or spend some money to change to dice to face whatever side you need. This game is quirky fun and has cool pieces and a cool look to it. While the theme might seem a little specific to people who love beer or brew beer, I think it can be enjoyed by most, and like I have said, it plays fast. Definitely a fun game with action points that are dice you’re spending.

9 – Village Attacks
Village Attacks is a fun game where you are the monsters who have been terrorizing the village, and now for some reason they are trying to storm your castle with their pitchforks and torches and just ruin the nice thing that you had going on. In the game you have a certain number of actions as the number of dice that you have, you’ll see that kind of come into play later on the list as well, however, this one is fixed in terms of dice. You roll them hoping to get what you need or making due with what you get. There are plenty of choices for being locked in though, because each scenario is going to lead you in a different direction. Plus, there is some mitigation of the dice if you roll three of a symbol you can reroll all of them. I like the theme of the game and while it has got dark artwork in it, the game actually plays pretty light.

8 – Photosynthesis
This game gives you an allowance of action points that you can save up over rounds if you wanted, but it’s all about using those points to grow and harvest trees at the right time so that you’re setting your trees up to get more sunlight the next turn to get your more points for planting more seeds, growing more trees, and gaining more points. This is an abstract-ish game that works because of the aesthetic of the game. You’re trying to set it up as much as possible so that you’re not being blocked for growing your trees and getting more light while blocking opponents, but if you just focus on blocking, you probably won’t be doing as well overall in gaining the light points that you need. A clever way to get your allowance of action points and a lot of fun to play.

7 – Sword & Sorcery
My favorite dungeon crawler doesn’t work for this list, but Sword and Sorcery does as it gives you regular and combat action points to play with, plus some standard actions that don’t require action points that you can do as well, and you can do them in any order, so it gives you a lot of variety for your turn. Combat action points are simple, it’s just about how many times you can attack, but the regular action points, you can use them to leverage more damage on combat or you can use them to break down locked doors, or other actions. I actually think that the action point system in here is a little bit weak as it’s very much overshadowed by combat. You feel like you’re mainly just using it for aiming, but there’s certainly the possibility to use it in more interesting ways.

6 – Dead of Winter
I like it when games change up how you can do action points or action allowance, it’s not just having a certain number of points to grab from your actions, what you roll on the dice matters for what actions you can do. It helps focus in a turn that could otherwise have almost too many actions to do, and you can get more actions by saving more people, but that might end up costing you in the long run, because you’ll likely need to produce more food, and you’ll definitely need to place more zombies at the end of each round. But having those extra dice can help decrease the likelihood of a bad roll so fairly often it’s worth it to get those extra survivors so that you’re able to pull your weight around the colony. And to get what you need in order to be able to complete your objective.

5 – Star Wars: Rebellion
This game is sneaky with how it let’s you do actions, it doesn’t seem so much like action allowance or selection, but you are really limited to how many leaders you have, and if you’re the Empire and you can capture an enemy leader, it is a big advantage. Plus, you have tough choices as to how you want to allocate your leaders. You pick missions at the start of each round at the same time as your opponent. You can assign as many of your leaders as you want, but if you do that, you won’t be able to move ships or try and thwart the enemies leaders on their missions. So you can limit you actions and how many of your action points you spend on missions to try and stop the other person, but you’ll get less done and not get closer to your goal. It’s a fun system of figuring out how you want to use your action points each round, and you get more as the game progresses.

4 – Mansions of Madness
First of two back to back Fantasy Flight Lovecraftian games. I really do love their system, and I’ll talk about it more with the next game as well. But it just works, they limit your actions and you really feel like you’re getting close and you can do most of what you want, but most of the time it feels like one action, one thing short of what you needed to do on your turn. Good action point games give you just enough to mitigate most of the issues while slowly building up the threat of whatever it might be in the game over time, at least for cooperative games with action selection. And while it’s something that Fantasy Flight has been doing for a long time with the Lovecraftian Mythos games, it still works and offers a great challenge.

3 – Arkham Horror: The Card Game
As said before, Fantasy Flight has a standard thing with their games where you have a limited number of actions that you can take. However, you get to pick from a great variety of actions and all of them feel like it’s a good option but never enough. Whether you’re moving, searching for clues, playing cards, gaining resources, etc., the two actions you get on your turn is never enough. Even when playing the game in story or easy mode, you still feel the pressure as you try and determine what are going to be the most helpful things to do. They have a system for their Lovecraft games, and it’s done well.

2 – Pandemic Legacy
Four actions per turn, but you can do whatever actions you want. This one is what I qualify as an action allowance game simply because every turn you get the same number of actions. It works well in this game, because the four actions that you get, they never feel like quite enough. That’s a common theme for action allowance is that you never have quite enough. Combine this piece of the game into a tense experience as the story unfolds, it does a good job of creating pressure that makes a familiar game be more challenging but also feel fresh again.

1 – Blood Rage
Blood Rage is a round based action limit game where you can spend actions to help with your area control, get monsters onto the board and possibly even gain more action points. This looks like a dudes on a map game with lots of great plastic pieces. But there’s more to it, there’s a strategy in using your action points that starts with the cards that you draft in order not to be out of the round too early and let your opponent have more access to the areas and be able to ramp up their number of troops and actions early on in the game. And some strategies might need a lot of action points while others are going to be more focused on maintaining a board presence, so it doesn’t just lock you into trying to get those points.

The most interesting part about this was actually figuring out what qualified as an action point or action allowance. For some of them, you can spend a whole lot of action points at once, but it might limit you in the future, Photosynthesis for example can go from having 15 sun points one round and 0 the next round depending on where the sun is facing on the board. So I think when I started this out, I thought that Action Points were going to be a little bit more straight forward, but it really is a mechanic that games use in a wide way.

What are some of your favorite games that use action points or action allowance as one of their main mechanics? Did I forget any big ones in your opinion? Are there some that I should checkout?

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