THE SOLOIST

We’re at war with ourselves

Solo wargaming sounds almost antithetical to the core concept of conflict. After all, you need something to push against, and that’s usually the enemy soldiers – and a friend plotting against you across the table. As with all solitaire games then, we’re looking for the ‘trick’ in this particular corner of gaming – and for us, that’s the puzzle of the map.

Not every game mentioned here counts as a ‘wargame’ in the mechanical sense, but that’s simply for variety – I’m hoping to give you the breadth of games that feel like war rather than a deep dive into to one foxhole.

THE PUZZLE OF THE MAP

The puzzle of the map is the idea that, like in any other wargaming situation, players are attempting to take control of an area of a map, or several areas without expending too many resources (usually known as soldiers), and that the calculation of where to extend your forces is the puzzle. For the most part this comes in the form of moving some of your forces into areas containing enemies that you think they can defeat, and manoeuvring other forces in a way that protects your own defensive objectives. The puzzle here is knowing what your opponents might do. In a two player game this becomes the social meta game, but in solo mode we’re often handing this over to dice, decks and directives. How these interact with the map is the measure of their success.

There is a wealth of token wargames out there for one player, like the excellent Field Commander Rommel from DVG, which asks you how you’d try and win different conflicts if you were an infamous Nazi general.

The themes of games like this can be a bit unnerving from the outset – Phantom Leader Deluxe, for example, has you bombing in Vietnam – but they are created as historical projects and much of the reality of history is replaced by its puzzle. In Rommel the enemy AI is a little bowl of tokens that you draw on their turn at random – if you get a ‘Go!’ token, an operation is carried out by the allied forces. Battles are dealt with in with the roll of a dice – which adds further randomness and chaos to the war effort and probably represents the realities of war more than many would like to think about. This might sound a bit like it’s all down to the dice, but ultimately, we’re usually taking something out of our control in a solitaire game, so why not in this case?

For those looking for a more controlled experience however, then we cannot recommend the excellent Rurik: Dawn of Kiev enough. A wargame inspired Eurogame that we gave a Must-Play last year uses auction programming to create what feels like a full strategic plan for how you’re going to meet the enemy. When that enemy is actually a deck of cards, you might imagine their strategy becomes erratic – but not here. Instead the AI player reacts based on the board state, and you track their priority, which means they’re always reacting to your advances in some way – the puzzle of the map returns. In some ways, the solo mode uses the map more than the multiplayer mode, as it reads it for your enemies actions, rather than just for points and control.

If cracking out the miniatures was your goal however, there’s obviously one great game that stands up to solo play above all others. And that game is Frostgrave. The game of wizarding battles asks you get out your tape measure, your wildest painted minis, and whatever you can spare for skeletons, zombies, trolls and wraiths. Frostgrave stands up to solo play because the rules only need minor tweaking. This mostly comes from the removal of the distance that enemies activate from, to avoid you taking the long route to avoid conflict and changing the activation sequence, so the solo player doesn’t get a huge first move advantage. Beyond that it’s a straightforward affair of using your troops and wizard to secure loot, defeat the enemy, and claim objectives. For those looking for the chaos here, that comes in the chance of frying your brain every time you cast a spell, or the generation of monsters.

Depending where you want your solo gaming to take you, wargaming for one can be a rich entry point into the hobby. Whether that’s a way to sneak some model painting in, looking for the historical friction, or you’re in need a of a puzzle that has some pointy bits and high stakes.