Players: Games with expansions that add solo play

War of the Ring: The Card Game

Inspired by the best-selling and award-winning War of the Ring board game, War of the Ring: The Card Game allows players to journey to the world of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and create their own version of the dramatic conflict between the Dark Lord, Sauron, and the Free Peoples of Middle-earth.
In War of the Ring: The Card Game, up to 4 players compete in two teams, the Shadow against the Free Peoples, each player using a specific and different card deck representing the strengths and weaknesses of the different factions involved in the war.
The Free Peoples desperately try to complete their quest to destroy the One Ring, while at the same time defending their homelands from the encroaching hordes of Sauron and from his evil allies.

The Shadow players must strike quickly and decisively, before the Ring-bearers can complete their quest; or try to slowly corrupt Frodo, burdening him with wounds, toil, and the sorrow for the loss of his Companions.

During the game, players will take turns playing cards representing the characters, armies, items, and events of the War of the Ring. Each card they play will help or hinder the journey of the Fellowship as it progresses on its Path; or be used to defend or conquer the strongholds of Middle-earth, as they fight to control the new Battleground cards activated in each round.

With more than 100 original illustrations from the greatest Tolkienian artists in the world, including an amazing gallery of landscapes from The Shire to Mordor by John and Fataneh Howe, War of the Ring: The Card Game is more than a game – it also a memorable collection for all lovers of the world imagined by J.R.R. Tolkien.

This is your chance to forge the destiny of an age, like you never did before!

—description from the publisher

On the Underground: London/Berlin

The London Underground is the world's first underground passenger railway, having opened in 1863. Its 11 lines move about 5 million passengers a day to 270 stations, along 400 km (250 mi) of track.

The massive network of London Underground stations makes up one of the most complex transportation systems in the world, and On the Underground challenges you to develop it. Build the most successful lines, connect them to landmarks, and attract passenger traffic!

Gameplay Overview

In On the Underground, the players build the Underground lines in London or the U-Bahn lines in Berlin. Each player controls 2-4 different lines, depending on the number of players.

On each turn, four destination cards are available, corresponding to stations on the map. You can take up to four actions; an action is either building track by placing one of your track tokens on the board or taking a branch token. A player may use two branch tokens to branch out of an existing line (whereas normally lines can be extended only at the endpoints).

After each player's turn, a passenger token is moved along players' lines, avoiding walking as much as possible, to reach one or two destinations determined at the beginning of the turn. The destination cards corresponding to the visited stations are then replaced by new ones, then the next player takes their turn.

Players score points in two ways:

By building track and connecting their lines to various types of stations, by building a circular line (in London), or at the end of the game if they have collected tiles from specific landmark stations (in Berlin).
By having the passenger use their lines when moving.

After all destination cards have been drawn and all players have taken the same number of turns, the game ends.

Differences from the First Edition of On the Underground

For their first turns only, the player first in turn order takes three actions, and the player last in turn order takes five actions. (Previously, everyone other than the start player had a few points added to their score as a balancing mechanism.)
The passenger is no longer removed from the board immediately when the draw deck is empty.
There is a new Berlin map, along with its corresponding cards and tiles.
On the London map, these single connections have been made double connections: Paddington-Shepherd's Bush, Shepherd's Bush-Goldhawk Road, Goldhawk Road-Hammersmith, Waterloo-Borough, London Bridge-Bank, Stratford-West Ham, and West Ham-Canning Town.
On the London map, this double connection has been made a triple connection: Borough-London Bridge
On the London map, the New Cross station has been removed, as has the connection between Aldgate and Canada Water.

Beyond the Sun

Beyond the Sun is a space civilization game in which players collectively decide the technological progress of humankind at the dawn of the Spacefaring Era, while competing against each other to be the leading faction in economic development, science, and galactic influence.

The game is played over a variable number of rounds until a number of game-end achievements are collectively claimed by the players. The winner is the faction with the most victory points, which are obtained by researching technologies, improving their economy, controlling and colonizing systems, and completing various achievements and events throughout the game.

On a turn, a player moves their action pawn to an empty action space, then takes that action. They then conduct their production phase, either producing ore, growing their population, or trading one of those resources for another. Finally, they can claim up to one achievement, if possible.

As players take actions, they research new technologies that come in four levels. Each technology is one of four types (scientific, economic, military, commercial), and higher-level technologies must match one of the types of tech that lead into it. Thus, players create their own technology tree in each game, using these actions to increase their military strength, to jump to different habitable exoplanetary systems, to colonize those systems, to boost their resource production, to develop android tech that allows growth without population, and more.

Trekking Through History

We designed Trekking through History for gamers and non-gamers to play together. The goal was to make a game inviting for non-gamers, but with a little subtlety under the hood for gamers.

In the game, you go on a three-day tour of human history, traveling thousands of years in a time machine to experience great moments from our past.

The game takes place over three rounds, each representing one day of your trip. Each day, you visit a series of historical events, spending a different number of hours at each.

On each turn, you choose to visit one historical event, and spend a certain number of hours doing it. Doing so will yield benefits, like checking off items on your itinerary for points, and earning Time Crystals so you can bend the space-time continuum on future turns.

Along the way, you’ll also score points for visiting historical events in chronological order.

The player with the most points after three rounds wins.

—description from the publisher

Space Explorers

The conquest of space was one of the greatest achievements of the 20th century.
In 1957, the first satellite - named Sputnik 1- was launched into orbit. Just four years later, Yuri Gagarin was the first human in space, aboard the spaceship Vostok 1.

This game is dedicated to the early space explorers: all the outstanding people who worked to make space travel possible. As Yuri Gagarin said at the moment of his launch: “Let's go!”

You are the head of a Research & Development Hub in a Space Research Center, competing with other such Hubs in the spirit of the Golden Age of Astronautics. Your goal is to complete large- scale space projects by gathering the best and brightest minds humanity has to offer.

Thanks to your efforts, satellites, manned spaceships, and orbital stations will be launched into space!

You score Progress points by recruiting Specialists and completing Projects. The game ends when all available Projects are completed, or you have recruited 12 Specialists to your Hub. The player who made the most Progress is the winner!

Key game features:

Closed loop resource system: when recruiting a Specialist to your team, you pass Research tokens to a player to your left.
Specialists are assigned to the Divisions according to their skills. The more Specialists you have in a Division, the easier it is to recruit new ones to that Division.
All Specialists have unique abilities. Only the ability of the top card in each stack is active. Therefore, by adding a new Specialist, you often get a new ability but lose the other one. Think carefully what is more important for you at that moment in the game!