Players: Games with Solitaire Rules

Sagrada (Revised Edition)

Draft dice and use the tools-of-the-trade in Sagrada to carefully construct your stained glass window masterpiece.

In more detail, each player builds a stained glass window by building up a grid of dice on their player board. Each board has some restrictions on which color or shade (value) of die can be placed there. Dice of the same shade or color may never be placed next to each other. Dice are drafted in player order, with the start player rotating each round, snaking back around after the last player drafts two dice. Scoring is variable per game based on achieving various patterns and varieties of placement...as well as bonus points for dark shades of a particular hidden goal color.

Special tools can be used to help you break the rules by spending skill tokens; once a tool is used, it then requires more skill tokens for the other players to use them.

The highest scoring window artisan wins!

Kanal

The Oranienburg canal, which gave this game its name, was built between 1832 and 1837 in Brandenburg. The Havel River was difficult to navigate near the Oranienburg mills, so a canal was built from the Havel that crossed the older Ruppin canal, thereby forming the Oranienburg canal cross. During the industrialization in the 19th century, lots of companies and businesses were formed at this important waterway. Moreover, additional streets and railways were built.

In Kanal, you erect new industries and shape the infrastructure by building pathways, streets, railways, and canals. Most important of all are bridges that connect buildings. To do all of this, you have access to various actions that you select in the right moments.

At the end of the game, the player with the best industrial area and the best infrastructure wins.

Formidable Farm

In Formidable Farm, you tirelessly try to fulfill the wishes of the village population for field crops.

At the start of the market day, you set the number of trades you need to fulfill until the evening. Initially, you do not know the details of the village population's wishes, and you can only work through the trades one after the other.

The village population follows simple rules for all their wishes: If you supply the needed field crops, you will get a reward. If a customer wants tomatoes, they give you two bags of wheat. If you organize a hoped-for sheep, the customer trades your surplus cucumbers for pigs. For two cucumbers and a bag of wheat, you immediately get details for another three wishes.

If you have delivery problems, you can make additional trades at the market to get needed rewards. You also can use each of your fulfilled trade cards to pay for advantages.

If you are the first to fulfill the wishes of the village population, you win Formidable Farm and enjoy an early end of the work day.

Cthulhu: Dark Providence

Set in the Cthulhu: Death May Die, Dark Providence is a competitive game in which players take on secret roles of Investigators, Cultists Or Dissidents from the most influential cities of the United States during the Great Depression. While the Cultists explore the nation's vulnerability seeking to remake it into a twisted version of itself by consorting with unspeakable beings from nightmarish dimensions, Investigators take the opposite side, standing against this dark providence. Meanwhile Dissidents are no longer part of either side. Dissidents score points for assassinating Agents and for sealing and protecting Gates. As enemies of both sides of the struggle, concealing their identity is paramount.

Each player's secret alignment determines how they’ll score points at the end of the game, however, this is not a cooperative game. During the game players use Influence cubes to bid for the right to claim Asset cards, take control of cities, and gather Mythos cards. Each new Asset card acquired improves the players’ deck and therefore the resources and actions they can perform during a turn. At the center of Dark Providence’s deck building mechanics lie the Asset cards. All players start the game with the same 10 initial cards. Regardless of their strategy, acquiring new Asset cards is fundamental to improve their decks.

Trying to keep their identity secret and avoid insanity, players perform a multitude of actions, swaying Hired Agents to their side of the battle, assassinating other players’ Agents, gathering additional help from Mythos cards, blocking other players from claiming cards, and sealing or protecting Gates, among others to gain Victory Points. At the end, only the player with the most Victory Points of the dominant side of the battle will win the game!

Dark Providence also has a brand new solo version in which a single player comes face-to-face with an Elder One attempting to corrupt the nation. The player takes the side of Investigators and plays against 1 of 6 Elder Ones, each with unique features and goals.

The Hobbit: There and Back Again

The Hobbit: There & Back Again is a competitive adventure game in which players draft dice to make pathways, collect resources, and perform actions that help them to reach their chapter goal.

In more detail, each of the players has their own adventure board book open to the same chapter of the game, and they play in turn order starting with the shortest player. That player rolls all of the dice, then selects one, then the next player selects one, and so on until all dice have been chosen, at which point the next player rolls all the dice once again.

With your chosen dice, you use a dry-erase pen to mark the current chapter of your book, drafting a path to evade trolls, battle goblins, solve riddles, and pen the best conclusion to each chapter. The game takes players through the eight most iconic challenges faced by Bilbo and the Dwarves in The Hobbit, such as overcoming trolls, goblins, wargs, and giant spiders; reclaiming the treasure of the dwarves; and defeating the dragon Smaug. In the end, you want to complete the most rewarding journey to The Lonely Mountain.

The Hobbit: There & Back Again includes a solo mode, as well as a way to increase the game's difficulty, whether for some players to balance different skills levels or for everyone to increase the challenge.