Solitaire Games

Colonists

Description from the publisher:

In The Colonists, a.k.a. Die Kolonisten, each player is a mayor of a village and must develop their environment to gain room for new farmers, craftsmen, and citizens. The main goal of the game is full employment, so players must create new jobs, educate the people, and build new houses to increase their population. But resources are limited, and their storage leads to problems that players must deal with, while also not forgetting to upgrade their buildings. Players select actions by moving their mayor on a central board.

The Colonists is designed in different levels and scenarios, and even includes something akin to a tutorial, with the playing time varying between 30 minutes (for beginners) and 180 minutes (experts).

Arkham Horror: The Card Game

Description from the publisher:

Something evil stirs in Arkham, and only you can stop it. Blurring the traditional lines between roleplaying and card game experiences, Arkham Horror: The Card Game is a Living Card Game of Lovecraftian mystery, monsters, and madness!

In the game, you and your friend (or up to three friends with two Core Sets) become characters within the quiet New England town of Arkham. You have your talents, sure, but you also have your flaws. Perhaps you've dabbled a little too much in the writings of the Necronomicon, and its words continue to haunt you. Perhaps you feel compelled to cover up any signs of otherworldly evils, hampering your own investigations in order to protect the quiet confidence of the greater population. Perhaps you'll be scarred by your encounters with a ghoulish cult.

No matter what compels you, no matter what haunts you, you'll find both your strengths and weaknesses reflected in your custom deck of cards, and these cards will be your resources as you work with your friends to unravel the world's most terrifying mysteries.

Each of your adventures in Arkham Horror LCG carries you deeper into mystery. You'll find cultists and foul rituals. You'll find haunted houses and strange creatures. And you may find signs of the Ancient Ones straining against the barriers to our world...

The basic mode of play in Arkham LCG is not the adventure, but the campaign. You might be scarred by your adventures, your sanity may be strained, and you may alter Arkham's landscape, burning buildings to the ground. All your choices and actions have consequences that reach far beyond the immediate resolution of the scenario at hand — and your actions may earn you valuable experience with which you can better prepare yourself for the adventures that still lie before you.

Lagoon: Land of Druids

Lagoon is a game in which 1-4 players (4 play as opposing teams of 2) each lead a circle of druids to shape the fantastical world of Lagoon by harnessing the power of its magical lands to bend destiny. The landscape bristles with three divine energies. Every player action alters the balance of power among those energies, and thus the players collectively determine Lagoon’s destiny. One divine energy shall inherit Lagoon, and the player who best served it wins!

The world is built using hexagonal tiles, and a new tile is drawn from a bag each time a druid explores a site. Site tiles are double-sided, and each side represents a different mystical site offering a unique magical power to the druids. Each site is also enchanted with one of three divine energies: Elemeen, Vowelon and Deonin. Since the two sides of a site tile are always linked to different energies, every site explored presents a choice of which energy to advance over the other two, as well as what magic will be put into the world for use by the druids. Players also strategically deploy their druids to unravel sites aligned with an energy they choose to oppose, removing such sites from the world and tipping the balance of power towards the other two energies.

The energy with the most sites in play at the end of the game becomes Lagoon's destiny, and the player who most supported that dominant energy is the winner. Support is tracked in two ways. First, whenever exploring a site and expanding an energy's reach in Lagoon, the exploring player gains a divine seed token matching the explored site's energy. These seeds can be spent in various ways over the course of the game, but any seeds of the dominant energy remaining in a player's supply at the end of the game are worth 1 point each. Secondly, whenever a player unravels a site, it is removed from play and placed in front of that player. At the end of the game, unraveled sites not matching the dominant energy are worth 2 points each.

The Game

Players in The Game try to discard all 98 cards in the deck onto four discard piles in order to win, but they need to do so in the right ways.

Each player starts with 6-8 cards in hand depending on the number of players, and four discard pile prompt cards are on the table: two showing "1" and an up arrow and two showing "100" and a down arrow. On a turn, a player must discard at least two cards from hand onto one or more discard piles, with cards on the 1 piles being placed in ascending order and cards on the 100 piles being placed in descending order. One tricky aspect to play is that you can play a card exactly 10 higher/lower than the top card of a discard pile even when you would normally have to play in a descending/ascending order, e.g., if a 100 discard pile is topped with an 87, you can play any card lower than 87 or you can play the 97.

After a player finishes their turn, they refill their hand from the deck. During play, players cannot reveal exact numbers in their hands, but they can warn others not to play on certain discard piles or otherwise make play suggestions.

Once the deck is emptied, players are required only to play at least one card on a turn. If you play all 98 cards, you win! If you get good, the rules suggest that you play at least three cards a turn to increase the challenge.

Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building Game

Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building Game is set in the Marvel Comics universe. To set up the game, players choose a mastermind villain (Magneto, Loki, Dr. Doom, etc.), stack that particular villain's attack cards underneath it, then modify the villain deck as needed based on that villain's particular scheme. Players then choose a number of hero decks – Spider-Man, Hulk, Cyclops, Wolverine, etc. – and shuffle them together; since players use only a handful of hero decks out of the fifteen included, the hero deck can vary widely in terms of what's available.

Over the course of the game, players will recruit powerful hero cards to add to their deck in order to build a stronger and more resourceful deck. Players need to build both their recruitment powers (to enlist more heroes) and their fighting ability (to combat the villains who keep popping up to cause trouble). Players recruit heroes from an array of five cards, with empty slots refilled as needed. At the start of a player's turn, he reveals a villain and adds it to the row of villains. This row has a limited number of spaces, and if it fills up, the earliest villain to arrive escapes, possibly punishing the heroes in some way. Some villains also take an action when showing up for the first time, such as kidnapping an innocent bystander. The villain deck also contains "master strike" cards, and whenever one of these shows up, the mastermind villain (controlled by the game) takes a bonus action.

As players fight and defeat villains, they collect those cards, which will be worth points at game's end. Players can also fight the mastermind; if a player has enough fighting power, he claims one of the attack cards beneath the mastermind, which has a particular effect on the game. If all of these cards are claimed, the game ends and players tally their points to see who wins. If the mastermind completes his scheme, however – having a certain number of villains escape, for example, or imposing a certain number of wounds on the heroes – then the players all lose.