THE SOLOIST

Playing the cards against yourself

Everything is in your own hands when it comes to playing with yourself. In this case, smut aside, literally. The deck builder is a genre of gaming that lends itself nicely to solo play because in a handful of ways, it’s an improvement on playing games with others. Most deck builders offer cooperation at their heart – players versus a deck of cards. And in solo you don’t have to wait for anyone else’s turn, watch them ruin your plans, or the worst option of the bunch: discuss what everyone is going to do before doing it, ruining any immersion and leaving everyone feeling like they might as well hand their cards over to the play who ‘gets it’ the most. So then, let’s explore the world of solo deck building games.

The core loop of deck building is always going to be similar. You’re going to start with some rubbish cards in your hand, then, through mechanics like ‘defeating you enemies’ (buying), ‘researching new technology’ (buying), or ‘exploring’ (buying), you’ll add cards to you discard pile to later get shuffled back into your deck to crop up later. At some point you’ll realise your deck is full of weak starter cards and you’ll want to expunge them somehow from your collection to speed up your access to the more powerful cards.

Not all games have their buying mechanic within the main loop however, Dark Souls: The Card Game, uses the deck to represent health between healing at bonfires. Here

everything you’ve collected is on the line until you return to safety to reconstruct your deck from your collected inventory and the ‘stamina market’. The recent Aeon’s End: Outcasts did an excellent job of making the deck destruction element something that happens between characters, flipping the usual ‘use a power to remove a card from your deck’ into ‘use a power to remove a card from your buddy’s deck’.

This is one of the few downsides of many of these games, which is you may have to, occasionally two hand the game to get the most out of it. While Aeon’s End does have pure solo rules that bends ‘assist’ cards to effect your own character, playing two handed can make for interesting choices. DC Deck Building Game: Rebirth is one of the few that doesn’t ask for a two hander for solo play, but does give you a bonus hero who can help stall villains – the sidekick option. Dark Souls: The Card Game prepares you to die alone too, which is fitting in its theme.

Many of these games come with interesting legacy style campaigns, offering immersive experiences that aren’t just the equivalent of ‘beat the points’ style solo games.

Of course, this relies on how much theme you like in your gaming – the science-magicians of Aeon’s End aren’t for everyone, but then, neither are superheroes. If there is a world you’d like to explore in a game however, you’re likely to be covered by the impossibly highly recommended Legendary series, there’s nearly a theme for everyone in this parade of large (usually around 600 card) boxes. Well, assuming you’re a fan of TV (X-Files, Firefly, Buffy), film (Alien, James Bond, Predator), or comics (Marvel).

The solitaire joy of these games comes from the fact that you can play as fast as you like. While we often mention how good it is to be able to leave a game out for solo play

(if you have space), returning to it like a bowl of snacks, you can also set these games up quickly, with minimal fuss and blast through. It doesn’t matter if you’re working turns ahead, because the game is happening in your brain as much as it is on the table. And it’s this that lets you have the surprises in the game, you will stumble, you will draw a bad hand, and suddenly have to reassess what you’re going to have to do. In Dark Souls:

The Card Game you’ll be caught up by your success in one fight, only to wander into another under prepared, losing what you’ve already accumulated. With the boss battle format of Aeon’s End players will be pushing for early damage, caught on the high of some lucky boss deck draws, and then suddenly be faced with multiple sources of damage as the minions pile up and the attacks increase in magnitude. These are the challenges we need to overcome in solo deckbuilding, and unsurprisingly, they’re of our own making.