Yashima’s 2022 Top 20 Solo Games

#20 I think the bot massively cheats but it is easy enough to handle (not too many edge cases—last game was a few months ago so… I may misremember). I like the variability of setups because of the huge amount of content in the CE with all the expansions and promo tiles.

#19 or Legends. I don‘t differentiate between the two. It took me a game or two, to understand how the bots for the solo work. Bots—because each tribe/nation has their very own bot. Initially, I had a lot of trouble grokking this because the rulebook is not the best at explaining despite solo being the best way to play this. Would definitely not recommend playing with more than 2. Once more love it for the variability of trying out different decks against each other. I very much enjoy how unique they all are. Setup is a bit of a hassle with all the different decks that need to be sorted and shuffled.

#18 This was my first encounter with Uwe Rosenberg‘s worker placement solo modes since losing solo-Agricola more than a decade ago. This was also one of my first „big“ solo games that I wasn‘t two handing. Same as with many other entries to the list, I enjoy the variability that comes from using different decks that each shift the focus slightly and the different setups for the card markets do the rest. It is a very classic worker placement game though and I like having that on my table. Blocking yourself from worker spots by switching colors every turn and the fast snappy gameplay, makes this one a treat to play. I have never played this multiplayer because after setup there are so many boards and it all looks so busy that people shy away from it that play far more complex games all the time. And this isn‘t even my favorite big Uwe game

#17 I have the complete West Kingdom trilogy with all the expansions and while Architects is my favorite at multiplayer, I think for solo purposes Viscounts is the best. In Paladins I feel like I mess up the bot players turns all the time. Viscounts is a bit easier on the bot handling while the gameplay lends itself more to soloing than Architects which I feel is the most interactive of the three. I do not think the expansion are required in this one. But I have only played 1 game with those. So this may not be my final answer. I enjoy the rondel nature of the game and the unique mashup of deck-building and engine-building this provides.

#16 I prefer playing this one multiplayer. But the card play is so compelling that despite having a dislike for the Wakhan bot, every once in a while I bring this to the table just to enjoy playing with the cards. In my opinion, Wakhan has too many edge cases. It gets a bit easier with practice but having to spend a lot of time figuring out the bot turn takes away from the solo fun, so I recommend playing multiple games to figure out if this is a solo for you. Despite Wakhan‘s shortcomings, this is such a good game, it made my Top 20.

#15 With the „Challenge“ mode this route building roll & write became that much better. I dislike a little how messy my drawings tend to become and so I play more on the app than on the table. But this is great fun either way. I love route building in general and this does all that in such a great format. Since playing this and to this day this is my favorite roll & write and the only one that has a secure place in my collection. There are others I enjoy occasionally. But this one is the most satisfying of all of them by far.

#14 Apparently, this game has a multiplayer mode. I have never played that. This is a quick little game of tile laying but with very little setup and no need to have a bot. Just a fun puzzle that stays tense until the final tile is placed. I have only played the „short“ game so far. Because that‘s what it is for. A quick diversion. I don‘t think this would be fun in multiplayer as it lends itself to optimizing tile placement and I think I would get impatient for the AP-prone players to get anywhere.

#13 Now that I have tried it I will only play solo with the expansion. I would generally only play with the expansion but I have recently played on BGA with a friend and BGA does not have the expansion. So… This has the same solo style as Nusfjord where you switch between 2 player colors blocking some spaces for yourself each turn. I have come to enjoy Feast more than Nusfjord because the variety of strategies is greater (some people say this game is a bit of a sandbox and maybe they are right) and because I really like all games with „tetris“ tiles (other people call them polyominoes). And this is not the last one on the list.

#12 By far my favorite game involving cats and blankets. This is such a smooth brain burner puzzle. Reasonably fast setup, no need for a bot. This is a game I can play before breakfast or after lunch. I had not played in a while (I sold my German copy to replace it with the KS version from the Verdant KS) and I noticed how bad I got at this. But I have always played this fast rather than puzzling long for each tile. I‘d rather try again. And the more I play, the better I get. Lovely, if you like patterns, hex-tiles and puzzles.

#11 A recent addition to my solo table. (Mine is actually the giant box of everything edition). I have now tried both solo modes: Rugworth and Mistweave. The first is just a quick, dice rolling bot to enable you to build your own village without waiting for a second player while the other provides more of an opponent that feels a bit like another player. I have enjoyed the village building quite a bit and I have a thing for „Aufbauspiele“ and because this is fairly new to me this comes in as high as it does right now. Lots of variability with the different expansions—cannot tell yet which ones I favor because I haven‘t even played with all of them.

#10 Yay, Top 10 I very much enjoy deck builders and the recent number of combinations with worker placement are such an interesting variant that I cannot seem to get enough of. It‘s really whichever one I played last that is better in my mind. This one has that mechanism we know from Terra Mystica (have not touched the new solo Automa or it might have made this list) where you try to drag out your turn for as long as possible. And so each of the 5 rounds gets longer and longer. The bot is easy to handle—I have yet to scale up the difficulty. And I will very much only play with the expansion content because it makes the game more interesting to have a unique player power. But the expansion is not required, the game is great without it.

#9 I am a huge fan of all things Science Fiction. Not that big of a Dune nerd but along with the latest movie these are exciting additions to a great franchise. As stated before I love deck builders and this one allows for a good variety of different combos and some good engine building. The Rise of Ix expansion fixes some of the boring worker spots and bolsters the deck, so I highly recommend that. The solo plays against one of the other characters via a bot deck. There is an app for that but I find using the actual deck more intuitive. I enjoy this very much and can‘t wait for the next expansion.

#8 It is such a unique theme and such a great mix of worker placement and tile laying that I cannot recommend this enough. There is very little handling of the „bot“ each turn, it gets a die roll and a table says which tile it buys from the market. Each different bot just has fixed scores to beat but the variety is so great that it just works. Lovely, lovely game best played with some tea and biscuits.

#7 Another puzzle game and more route building. The multiplayer has a real time aspect that is not part of the solo. In the solo you have a fixed stack of machines you draw from each turn and that you either play or don’t. Every time I play, I play multiple rounds because it is so compelling to connect these machines in the best possible way. The solo is really quick to play and I have yet to move on from the easy A side boards because I only win every other game of this.

#6 I mentioned I love polyominoes games. This is the polyominoes game to rule them all. By far my favorite of all of these. It has huge variability and very satisfying combos with the different tracks you move up on depending on which territory you placed this round. This is also the game that proves that tracks can be fun. This is a solo puzzle, no bot needed. But in the solo you have to play with events to keep things interesting and get your target score. It is a bit expensive for „just a polyominoes“ game but then, you won‘t need another one. I have played it multiplayer and the Lazy Susan that gives each player just 2 tiles to chose from each turn really works wonders to bring that together, too. But mostly I play this solo and still haven‘t managed to try all planets and corporations. Very satisfying, highly recommend if you like fitting tetris tiles on a map.

#5 So… this game… I have only played it once on a PBF and not even solo. It is sitting next to me on the table—the package arrived today. But I made the ranking with the expectation how much I want to play this and how good I expect the solo to be from others who have stated that it is. The card play is extremely compelling and I cannot wait to try this right after I have finished this list (I may not publish the list until after I have finished the game… or maybe I will). I am 100% sure the solo is great so #5 it is. (Not using pubmeeple it would have been in honorable mentions I guess, but pubmeeple is fun to find out things about how much you like or not like some games)

#4 This only arrived here in the cardboard recently, though I had played it online before. Because it is very new to me „on the table“ I am quite excited to play right now. The gameplay is so very satisfying, each turn you get to place both a hex tile (I love hex tiles—see Calico) and an animal token. Both contribute to your score. Each turn two good things happen. The solo is as easy as Calico, just Slide Over something to the discard and refill the market. The different setups using different scorings for each animal make each game unique. Love it. It may slide down when it is not as new. But maybe it won‘t. See my #3

#3 If I had made this list since 2018, this game would have been in my Top 5 solo games every single year. Variable setup, a bit of route building, tile laying, city building… some of my favorite things. What‘s not to love? And for some reason it never gets old to me. I can play this over and over and over… This is the game that made me seek out a huge variety of other small games to be played solo but I found none that came even close (I have Agropolis and I have preordered Naturopolis but the original is still best). The game is so small, setup so quick, gameplay so easy and my scores vary wildly. Some goals of course are much harder than others but every single game I ever played has been satisfying—even the ones I lost. I am still looking for small games that can compete with this.

#2 So. Another game with a caveat: I play this almost exclusively on my tablet. Every once in a while I go and put it on the table. But the setup is a huge hassle. But of course that allows me to add in other expansions besides prelude which gives some variety. I play the solo mode with Prelude. You have 12 turns (14 without Prelude) to push all 3 terraform gauges (temperature, oxygen and oceans) to the max or you lose. At first, I lost every game. But over more and more attempts (50+ recently), I got better and now I win most games. There is a bit of luck of the draw at the start. My current highscore came with Ecoline and a really good matching draw of prelude cards and initial cards. I loved this engine building game for the theme and for the gameplay from the first time I played it at a friends house and next thing I knew I had made an all-in pledge for the Turmoil Kickstarter Even on the table I rarely play with more than prelude and one other expansion. The game has simply got too much content to use it all at once. And some people really dislike that this huge deck sometimes puts you in a bad position and there aren‘t enough mechanisms in it to help you cycle through the deck to get your combos done. After playing a lot of games, I know all of the base game cards by heart and I agree sometimes you have it easier when you get certain cards at the right time. But playing smart, I can still win more often than not. And the card play is compelling and getting those gauges filled is satisfying. Getting a good combo of abilities played is great fun. And when I lose I can often see how I focused too much on a certain card that ended up being „unworthy“. There is a reason this ranks so high on BGG as well: it is just such a good game.

#1 When I rank games on pubmeeple, I don‘t even need to include this one. It has been my favorite game by miles since I learned it. There are so many cards, so many spirits and so much variety in this, I cannot see myself getting tired of it. I normally play 2 spirits. My favorite is Thunderspeaker who is so very protective of the Dahan. I played Thunderspeaker more than any other spirit. After the first few games I highly recommend adding the content from Branch & Claw (the first expansion, it adds the tokens & events and two more great spirits). Jagged Earth is definitely „more of the same“ for people who are fans of the game already. It is the best game solo or with two people. I have rarely played with 3 and a few times with 4. Two spirits is the best way to play this and get the satisfying feel of synergy from working together. I could gush about this game for a good while. But it is already my #1 and would have been #1 for all the years that I‘ve had it on my shelves where it will stay indefinitely. PS: but I do hope that after Nature Incarnate there won‘t be more big expansions. Please do not become the next Catan or Carcassonne. The same concept can only be milked for money for so long. This is the only way that I will eventually tire of the game when the content and spinoffs become to numerous to keep up.