Top 10 Solo Only Board Games

Almost all of these games are ones that I’ve featured on the Malts and Meeples YouTube channel. I will put out videos for all of them that I have one so you can find them all here.

10. Snowfall Over Mountains

This one is a nice and peaceful board game. Snowfall Over Mountains is a card laying game, and you will see a lot of these. You create a layout of cards that score for different types of terrain. You score rabbit tracks one way, ponds another, trees another, and so on, and this scoring can change. But you want to get as high as score as you can and that’s it for the game. It is fast, it is easy to shuffle up and play again.

9. Cursed

This one is all about trying to defeat a curse before time runs out. You need to defeat a certain number of monsters before the deck of cards runs out, or the witch gets your soul. The game play is all about pushing your luck and deciding how many cards to use to try and defeat the monsters. I like how all the cards have a few things on them. They might have special rules or treasure, but they can all be used for attacking and they are all monsters.

8. Numbsters

Why is six afraid of seven? Because seven eight nine. Yes, that is the basis for this game, and it it works. You want cards to eat each other and you want to end up with as few cards as possible. So you create a line of cards (or you can play it in your hand) and you need to use the rule at the front to eat cards, or just to eat cards that are one higher. It’s a little game, part of the Button Shy Line of games, and it works better than a lot of them for me.

7. Relics of Rajavihara

Maybe you remember the video game Chips Challenge. If you are like me, you loved that game growing up and trying to figure out every puzzle you could. Relics of Rajavihara gives you some of that same feel in a board game. You need to manipulate blocks in ways that let you get to the relic on each level. If you get stuck, you just reset the board and try again. It is one that I owned, played, sold, and now I got it back because I just want to go through them again.

6. Bargain Basement Bathysphere

This is a crazy game when it comes to board games names. But Bargain Basement Bathysphere is a fun campaign roll and write game. It is meant to be solo and it’s campaign only in the loosest terms, less of a campaign than Welcome to the Moon for example. But it’s fun to play and it’s fun to figure out how to manipulate the dice and get down to the bottom of the sea and get back out before your oxygen runs out. There is just a little bit of tension in the game, and that works well.

5. Grove/Orchard

Yes, this is two games at once on the list. But Grove and Orchard are very similar in what they do as board games. I could also add a game like Sprawlopolis to this, but I like what Grove and Orchard do better. In this game you are trying to grown the most fruit that you can. You gain fruit by overlapping cards so that matching fruit symbols cover each other. And that’s the majority of the game right there. Grove adds in some extra scoring challenges which are fun to play with as well.

4. Under Falling Skies

Have you ever wanted to play space invaders with Independence Day? For me, that is what the game Under Falling Skies feels like. At it’s core, it is a dice placement game where you want to get big numbers so you can fight the aliens, drive them back, and research how to stop them. But the higher number you use the faster the smaller alien ships descend. And if too many of them make it into the Earth’s atmosphere, well, that’s game over, man.

3. Final Girl

Final Girl is the one game on the list that I haven’t played yet on Malts and Meeples Youtube. I need to refresh myself on how to play it and then get it to the table. Though that might wait until the fall because Final Girl is all about horror. Every game you play takes you into the setting of your choice and you are the final girl. You need to survive and beat the killer or other things as you play.

And there are really a ton of different options as to what you can do. I love the mix and match nature of the horror setting your are in with the variety of final girls who you can play as. And it is all time management and resource management to try and win the game. Of course, the longer it goes, the scarier it gets. Can you find what you need, rescue others, and defeat the scenario?

2. Kingdom Legacy: Feudal Kingdom

This is the one with the most recent playthrough on Malts and Meeples. And I blame Meet Me At The Table for getting me into this game. This is a legacy game, which is a bit odd to put on the list. But it’s a game all about managing a deck of cards to build up your kingdom and get as many points as you can. I love how streamlined it is and how almost all cards throughout the game can be upgraded as well as be resources that you use to upgrade other cards. So the decision how to use a card is always a challenge.

1. For Northwood

Finally, we have For Northwood a solo only trick taking game. And you might think, like I did, I like trick taking but how is it going to work solo? Well, it is my number one, so I think that it works well solo. In the game you need to win at each grove. When you win at a grove you get access to a leader who can help you in future rounds and you get points. But it is hard because each grove needs an exact number of tricks one.

I love how the game gives you powers and abilities that you can use. Though, you are only allowed to use them once per hand of cards. So if you need to spend it early, well that might be rough if things start to go sideways. But it just works and the challenges work well as well for once you have conquered the base game.

Final Thoughts

Now I know I have a lot more solo only games that I’ve played. There are a ton of Button Shy Games like that and only one of them made the list. Why is that? I think it is because a lot of them feel similar and they are all very small games. That isn’t a bad thing because for the most part I enjoy them a lot. And I know that I have a lot more to play from littler games like Friday and Palm Island to bigger solo only games like Mr President, Hallas of Hegra, and Hoplomachus: Victorum.

Is there one of the solo only games that you want to see me highlight on the channel? Let me know that down in the comment section or over on the Nerdologists Facebook page or on the YouTube channel.

Five Solo Board Games to Play on Malts and Meeples

But what are my Top 5 solo only games that I want to get played? Well, let’s do one last final list really quickly and in no particular order.

1. 20 Strong – This looks like a fun game and it’s from Chip Theory Games, but it’s small. And you decide what setting you want to play, so it can be their new one for the game or it can be one of their existing ones.
2. Mr President – This one would be a huge undertaking and that is why I haven’t played it yet. Have you ever wanted to be the President of the United States? I honestly can say that I don’t think I have, but in this board game, you can play as them and make decisions but you need to balance everything.
3. Forage – This is going to be the easiest to get to the table. It’s in the same line as Grove and Orchard, so I should just stream this one.
4. The Ratcatcher – This is the Pied Pipers story, in some ways, in a board game. It is one where you want to catch all the rats before they get too much cheese. I’ve heard the rulebook is tough but I still want to give it a got because of the theme.
5. Hoplomachus: Victorum – The second Chip Theory Games game on the list. This one is not small and it’s a campaign. But it is a short campaign. Can I build up my troops and combat prowess to get through the whole thing?

Which one of these should I play?

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Top 10 Wish List Board Games

The list of board games is 1 through 10 instead of the other way around. This is a mistake, but how I wrote it, so I didn’t want to redo it.

1. Violet and the Grumpy Nisse

This one just sounds fun. It’s a two player trick taking game. I really love the sound of this as the two players kind of fight against each other for the tricks and each of them has some unique things for it. Right now it’s hard to get. I believe it was on crowdfunding, but I’m not sure it’s ever gotten a wide release.

One of the people is playing Violet, a girl who is on a journey to meet a friendly troll. Unfortunately she is going through the woods of the nisse, Torech who is not happy with that idea. He wants to stop her and get her light to go out and make her travel as hard as possible. I just love the idea and sound of that as a thematic trick taking game.

2. Nova Aetas Renaissance

This one I get to blame on Meet Me At the Table. I think that’s the only one that I can blame on them. There are others that will definitely get blamed on other YouTube channels. This one looks like a blast as you take a team of characters up against the enemies. I get a real Assassin’s Creed vibe to it, but it’s not that, there is an Assassin’s Creed Game. I like the story of the game and I like the “fun” that it looks like.

One thing that I really dig is how the action point system works. You move your characters along a rondel determining how many of their actions that they use. Some of it might be used on movement and some on fighting. They have to go up to the point where the next enemy is. But you can potentially work it to get a couple of turns pretty quickly. For me that’s a really fun concept and twist on a dungeon crawler. But it’s also still a dungeon crawler, tactical game, when it comes down to it.

3. Rove

This one I won’t be able to write much on. It’s still coming to crowdfunding and I’m very curious about it. What I know , and I don’t know much about the game play, is that it’s from a designer who made The Crimson Scales, a fan made expansion for Gloomhaven. They then built out something much bigger, their own epic campaign and fantasy game. How it is going to work mechanically, I’m not sure. But I think that this was supposed to fund on Crowdfunding last year, now it’s supposed to be this year. But I like it when companies are fine delaying to get it right.

4. Euthia: Torment of Resurrection

I passed this one by twice on crowdfunding, I kind of regret it. But Euthia looks like a lot of fun. It’s a competitive, cooperative or solo sandbox RPG style game. Competitive I don’t care that much about. But cooperative and solo, I care about those. Plus it’s now been picked up by Steamforge so that increase the chances that I might pick it up. It’s not a cheap game, but then again how many campaign games are. For me this would go onto a list of campaign games that need to be played.

5. Aeon Trespass: Odyssey

Aeon Trespass: Odyssey is another campaign game and another huge game. I want to find this one, but like Euthia, I’ve passed on it twice. It’s again one that I really want to play. From what I can tell it’s an epic boss battling style of game more than a dungeon crawler. Do I need another huge game like this, I don’t. But it’s one of those that if I find it used, I’ll pick it up. Right now I want to just get Kingdom: Death Monster started up or Oathsworn in that boss battler area.

6. Mind Up!

I watched this one played on The Dice Tower, so another one that I can blame on a YouTube channel. Mind Up! Looked like a lot of fun because it’s just a little card game that does some simple things. All your doing is playing out cards to get other cards. Which one you get depends on where your number falls into the order of cards played. After that it’s all about set collection and seeing how many points you get for getting cards of the same color.

I really want to get this one because I see it as a small and fun filler game. I love to find games like that, and it doesn’t eat up too much space on my shelf which is a good thing. As I’ve talked about before with Sea Salt & Paper, if a game is a small box filler game, it tends to stick around in my collection.

7. Café Baras

A coffee shop with capybara’s, I’m in. It is super cute sounding and from KTBG (Kid’s Table Board Games) it is going to look very nice. See everything I said about Mind Up being a small filler game, that is the same with Café Baras. From what I can tell, this is a hand management game about fulfilling orders. Cards are multiuse, which is fun and offers some solid tension, and well, did I mention that there are capybaras in the game?

8. Witchcraft!

This is a successor to a game Resist. Resist is not one that I’ve played, but one that looked interesting as a solid experience. Witchcraft, however, just sounds more interesting to me. And it is a solo only game, which I like as well. This one I can also blame on The Dice Tower for me being interested.

The mechanisms also sound interesting. I like the sound of doing some deck building and hand management in the game. But also with push your luck elements to it. I want to know more about how this one plays. Because how it looks, both mechanisms and aesthetically look intriguing.

9. Ancient Knowledge

Another one for the list of blame it on the Dice Tower is Ancient Knowledge.  Ancient Knowledge is a civilization building game. That’s an area of board gaming that I’d love to play around in more. Ones where you are building up tech trees and advancing what you are doing. And how Zee and others on the Dice Tower talk about Ancient Knowledge it just sounds really good.

A lot of these types of games you build to doing more and more and more. That’s the case here, but as time passes, some knowledge is going to be lost to the past. So the engine that you are building is always changing and you need to plan for those changes as the knowledge disappears. I like the sound of that so much, because it requires a good adaptive strategy and things move on.

10. Hoplomachus: Remastered

Finally, a Chip Theory Game, and I debated if this one would be my #10 on the list. Hoplomachus: Victorum is a game that I own. And it’s a solo only game, I need to learn the rules and play it. It’s kind of a campaign like experience from Chip Theory Games. And generally, I like the other Chip Theory Games that I’ve played. I really like Burncycle. And I think that Too Many Bones offers a ton of fun and is one that I want to dig into more.

Hoplomachus is more of a battling game and a battling arena for head to head combat. And on Board Game Geek, most people do prefer it at two. But it offers solo play and I want to try it. Unlike the others, because I own Hoplomachus: Victorum, it’s less likely that I’ll pick this one.

Final Thoughts

Right now, who knows when I might buy one of these board games. It isn’t high on my list to add in new games to my collection. Some of the small ones, or Rove which is yet to go to crowdfunding, are the most likely. But I want the chance to checkout any and all of these if I can over the next few years. For some of them, though, that might be a little bit.

Of these board games, which is the most interesting to you? Which is the one that you’d buy first and add to your collection?

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