Ranking EVERY board game I played in 2023! 

nothing so far from 2023 is what I would call S tier. In general, my S tier games are rewritten variants so they wouldn't mean a thing to you without having learned the (better) rules.

Three Sisters ends up in my S tier for sure. The combos are superb and I printed off an unofficial light solo campaign from BGG that really elevated game play for me! Fleet is also from 25th games and is incredibly fun solo. I also have Hadrian’s wall constantly at the ready in my coffee table and am working through that campaign. I will say that the campaign can be incredibly challenging for me when it comes to achieving the next game set-up bonuses on some of the forts and I can’t crack the needed strategy! Any suggestions?

@@Leilataj85 somehow I just don't gel well with write up games.

@@kosterix123 I’m really new to gaming so I’m solidly in the middle-light and middle-weight complexities. Roll and writes seem to saturate that area. I’m also a sucker for polyomino placement too. Haha What are some of your favorite games?

@@Leilataj85 yeah sure go for it if you like roll and write, sure. I played a few during gaming cons, welcome to, cartographers and something-london. And patchwork for polyominoes, as well as Ubongo the travel variant with the pins (some female youtuber recommended it and it's really good, 100 puzzles in one). For solo I prefer light but elegant, intuitive rules so I don't have to look up every minute. Preferably adventure games: - The Last Stronghold, and The Forgotten Road, two games from Gabe Barrett, I didn't like his rules so I wrote my own (you can find all the details and download to the rule sheets that fit into the box. Summarized, I added more agency and difficulty levels, you start at Very Easy and unlock each new difficulty level at certain points. - Aftermath - I wrote a Reference Guide for it comprising all the 400+ questions into a coherent ruleset, added a true solo variant and tested it out. - I like One Deck Dungeon campaign mode, but so far have only completed the easiest dungeon, but printed out the fan created heroes and bonus dungeons. - Palm Island, played a lot, and more recently played Galdor's Grip. - I also enjoy shooting videos of my learning process, because nobody does that yet everyone has to suffer through that. You can find everything at my channel kosterix123, it's free, non advertising so won't hurt to take a look 🙂maybe see you there ♪

Thank you so much! I'm glad you're here and that you've been enjoying them 🥰

Thank you very much for your kind comments 😊 oh I really hope you enjoy Abomination when you get to play! Don't forget to check the Igor variant out if you find it's a little long or needs a bit of a kick to get going as that helps a lot (I love how it plays without it anyway!). Happy gaming!! 😁

Yes thank you someone else just pointed that out to me also!! I didn't know that existed how exciting!! You're right I play Carcassonne very rarely but it's quite a calming and short game so a solo option would be good. Like you, don't think I would get rid of it either so it would be good to get a few extra plays of it whilst it's sat waiting on the shelf...🥺😂

not available anymore. Carcassonne is S-tier, for the sole reason it's a hit with any group.

It‘s available as a print-out. Just google Carcassonne solo play and you‘ll find the file.

Oh that's fun I hadn't seen him do that! I'll have a look. I tried to do that swiping thing before when I had a much smaller collection but can't imagine doing that with a collection perhaps as large as Paul's! :O Great to hear you've enjoyed Rollplayer Adventures! I was eyeing up that Kickstarter when it was first out and it did look so good but wasn't sure how much I'd be able to get it out as it took look like a big undertaking. Interesting to hear you say that it was quite easy to do so though. I really enjoyed playing the basic Roll Player (and that was an online play which I usually dislike!). Thank you so much for watching and your comment :)

What website?

@@Tutoriaisheresounds like PubMeeple’s ranking engine. It’s quite a fun exercise and I’d love to see it here!

Wow thank you so much for sharing! We have reasonably similar taste!! Agree Hallertau is fantastic, was a shock that it was so good as you don't hear it talked about that much. I'd love to play Cthulu Death May Die, it's intrigued me a lot so thank you for talking about it from a solo point of view. Maybe one day I'll get a chance to grab a copy! Auztralia is another that has such a cool theme and intrigues me also! I bounced off of Obsession a bit but I haven't played it in a long time now so would like to give it a go again. Thank you very much for sharing, it's always so interesting to see what everyone else is playing when you're wrapped up in your own little solo gaming world! 😅

I absolutely plan to do that - that sounds fabulous and completely my thing, thank you! And thank you for watching and your kind words!

@@bluedogboardgames I told another new solo gamer about a Three Sisters solo campaign that I found in BGG that I adore. It adds fun variety to each game and is similar to Hadrian’s Wall in the layout.

Absolutely! They're such fun and I didn't want them to get lost within the massive load of much larger heavy games. They're great in their own right. The games you mentioned really are brilliant games - and Too Many Bones is definitely an investment but you don't need to go overboard with the content. There's plenty in the base game alone! I'm not sure of the differences between the first and second edition of GWT so I'm not much help there! That's a shame though - maybe you could grab the second edition again due to the solo game?! :)

@@bluedogboardgames maybe not anymore, Im waiting for Alexander Pfister's new game Pirates of Maracaibo but Too Many Bones is still on my wishlist :)

Oh wow which 4?! Those two are extremely strong games for me so definitely good picks to give a go in my opinion!! 🤪

Thank you so much for watching! Yes it surprised me a little, never thought a co-op game like that would be quite so difficult to run when there's plenty of other larger and more complex co-ops that I find a lot of fun!

Yes they definitely can be...but this was just a bit of fun and I really tried to not think overly hard about each choice. If I think about a game nowadays and don't get that excitement to play I think I need to start evaluating if it deserves a spot in my favourite games...even if I know they're really really good. Cascadia is a new to me game so, like Bitoku, I wonder if it has the 'new game' excitement a little. However I'm very much enjoying the zen like gameplay it has when playing solo. It's very much a game that I can turn most of my brain off and just, as you say, just take tile after tile. I'm just coming to the part of the solo scenarios where target scores are higher so I'm looking forward to seeing if I still enjoy it as much when I need to think a little more and it's a bit less zen! I like to have a few more 'cosy' games on an evening sometimes and I feel it definitely fits that. I love the art too. I didn't know Carcassonne has a solo, that's great thank you I'll have to have a look! Agree with Micro macro - we have gifted a copy of the original as fell in love with it when we first tried it (to a non gamer so don't know if they ever tried it out, will have to play it with them sometime so they can see how it works!) Such a brilliant game 🥰 Thank you for watching 😁

@@bluedogboardgames Well "them bastards" have taken down both the Dutch and the English solo variant. Commercial reasons no doubt. From what I could find... === Carcassonne’s solo board game rules see a single player - or several players working together as a team, making it a co-op board game instead - alternate between three stacks of tiles and meeple colours. Tiles are placed using the same rules as the multiplayer game, connecting up roads, fields and cities. Once a tile is placed, a meeple of the current colour must be placed to claim a feature on the tile - with the exception that meeples can never be placed as farmers to claim fields. Completed features - fully enclosed cities, finished roads and monasteries - score points for one of the meeples on that feature, of the player’s choice. At the end of the game, triggered by one set of meeples running out, the player (or team) scores the amount of points equal to their lowest-scoring colour, making balancing the three colours necessary to score high. The solo board game mode can be adjusted in difficulty by adding more meeples of each colour or even introducing another colour to the mix, with Hans im Glück adding that Carcassonne’s various expansions are also compatible with the variant. === In other words, summarized gameplay is you "play every color and score like in Tigris and Euphrates, without farmers". So far, so good, but I'm not sure that this makes the best game possible for me - you seem to be more inclined to "dry" point games, it might be good for you - I'd rather see something like this: === 0. Decide on conventions: a) scoring mini city (2 tiles) was 2 points, later 4 points; recommend 4. b) farm rule: city score 3 for dominant farmer(s); there was an older rule giving 4 points to dominating area. Recommend 3 point rule. 1. Select difficulty. Walk in the Park = only 1 opponent color; Easy = 2 opponent colors; Normal = 3 opponent colors; Hard = 4 opponents; Good Luck = Hard but you play with 1 meeple less. Your goal is to beat the game consistently in best of 5 fashion, to unlock the next difficulty. Play your first game in Walk in the Park mode. 2. Choose a color for you and X others are your opponents. (X = 1..4) Make an ordered half circle of each set of same color meeples. For X=1-3: Base Carcassone comes with 5 colors, use a single meeple of the 5th, unused color, to score for the AI. Leftover meeples go back in the box. For X=4, one color plays with 1 meeple in play and is use that meeple instead to track scoring. This represents the "player order" going clockwise starting with you. 3. On your turn you play as in a normal multiplayer. 4. on opponents' turn the bot takes two decisions: - where to put and rotate the tile; Starting from the tile you placed draw an imaginary line north until you reach the farthest tile away from you, the first space to consider is the one to the north of that. Try each rotation of the new tile on that space. If placement is not possible consider the next space (clockwise). If no placement possible, score nothing, tile goes into the game box, next player. After a legal tile placement was found: - what meeple role to take; Bot prefers to place their meeple according to this recipe: monastery > town > road > farm. (He-man > normal meeple if you play with the Cath&Inns expansion) Resolve ambiguities in N > E > S >-W fashion (north being opposite of "you"), 5. Scoring: Whenever something scores you score as normal, opponent tracks score with the 5th color meeple. End game - tiles end - score farmers. === this could be generalized for river and sheep and whatnot other expansion but you have something that will give you at least 18 game sessions 🙂