Some Good Solo Wargames, & What's Up with Worthington?

They don't have to have rules for 1 player, but play well in solo mode.

My top 2 settings would be around the Revolutionary War, and Ancients warfare. After that would be Napoleonic time period.

Has anyone tried Commands & Colors: Ancients with the solo rules Stuka Joe wrote? Stuka Joe's rules for solo play apply to many other games he's listed, has anyone tried his method, does it work well?

Worthington Games
I remember a few years back many people here praised Hold the Line, is that a good game for solo play?

Worthington has War Along the Great Lakes on Kickstarter until March 4. It is the 3rd game in the 'War Along the…' series (they call it 'War of 1812 Campaign Series). The first one is War Along the Chesapeake , this series is marketed for 1 or 2 players.

'War Along the Chesapeake' was published in 2018, and has practically no ratings (6 ratings), War Along the Gulf Coast has 3 ratings. Has anybody heard anything about this series of games?

Why did Worthington limit first 2 games: Chesapeake & Gulf Coast to 250 Kickstarter copies?

Is Worthington just pumping out game for Kickstarter? Is Worthington a lot smaller than most wargame publishers and have to do limited runs like this, which get no exposure, and hardly anybody reviews these games?

They also have another game on Kickstarter: Freeman's Farm: 1777 . That box art does not look appealing. Especially the gradient in the font, and the overall dark drabiness of the box. But who knows if the game is good.

My top solo wargame is fields of fire. It's dense and a bit of a mess, but there's nothing like it. It's wonderful but I can't recommend it to everybody.

Second would be Comancheria and to a lesser extent Navajo Wars. They're not totally wargames but are also a very, very unique form of civ siege game.

Can't speak to the Worthington stuff, I'm a GMT and MMP man myself! Hope others pop in.

I'd probably avoid hold the line. It is in essence Command and Colors but with dice rather than cards. Having played it, it just reminded me that the cards are the one really great things about C&C. It ends up being a very vanilla experience and a bit dull.

As a solo game it could work i guess, but it would just be rolling dice and marching dudes at you in a rather dumb fashion.

I don't know if worthington really do solo games.

Ahem, clear the way please.

ASL, which I play solo obsessively, is extremely amenable to solo play (and I don't mean the module ASL Solitaire, I mean the regular game) partly because it is so complex so there are thousands of permutations of play. Some minor adjustments for any hidden shit and you're rolling.

COIN is always good. Fire in the Lake is excellent and is easy to solo as bots are provided to really fuck you over. Liberty or Death is also excellent for this (and I HATE the ARW as an actual topic, but this is very good).

Any of The Gamers Civil War stuff is great because you have to write orders and stick to them. I have just recently bought a load of these second hand.

Operational Combat Series (Case Blue, Baltic Gap, Burma, Tunisia etc) are very good solo experiences as there is no hidden stuff to worry about

Card driven games are the hardest to solo but there is guy out there who has set up a pretty decent solo system for Paths of Glory, For the People, Pursuit of Glory and it runs a two handed game very well.

Any of the Next War series are easy to solo and a great puzzle solver on the most efficient ways to obliterate Pyongyang and the like

I agree with Gary on Comancheria and Navajo Wars, I really like both of them and they are designed for solo play.

Got put off C&C at a WBC event some years ago when I realised it was super trivial. Haven't tried Fields of Fire or Up Front both of which are designed solo games.

I like Hold the Line. Not the deepest game in the world but you can solo it and have fun. I have the old version. Very pretty.

I like Frederick's War as well (same series) and Horse & Musket, the newest one, seems to be getting a lot of traffic. Haven't played that one yet. It's a Print & Play from Hollandspiele if you're interested in trying it on the cheap.

If you really want a Commands and Colors game on the American War of Independence, look no further than Commands and Colors: Tricorne from Compass Games (also just got an expansion adding the French). It’s certainly better than Hold the Line.

Just reupping this thread. This is a great game on Rhodesia.

This from the blurb:

You play the White government of Rhodesia, besieged by a Black guerrilla army, using your potent armed forces to hold it back while you try to persuade your colonialist voters to compromise and move to a system of Black majority rule. The balance of military and political factors makes for an intriguing and very different sort of game

The rest of their solo games are definitely worth a look as they are all intriguing ranging from Gorbachev : The Fall of Communism to Mrs Thatcher's War and more.

www.whitedoggames.com/thewhitetribe

A mechanic that I like in a game when it comes to solo play is chit pull. It adds a little chaos and narrative that my mind craves when playing solo.

MMPs A Victory Lost and A Victory Denied are two that do this well.

The best in my opinion is At Any Cost: Metz 1870 by GMT and Hermann Luttmann. It has orders and chit pull and the chit pull includes more that just Corp activations... it has events and special rules.