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Christopher Ebert
United States
Cape Coral
Florida
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Disclaimer: Everything in this blog is an opinion that I have. I will not state any facts nor tell people "how they should play". So I would like to ask for the same respect in turn. If you don't feel as I do, you are welcome to share your opinion, but don't degrade mine.
I just read a blog (Here) that got me thinking and decided to blog my thoughts. I'm not really into blogging that much, but every-so-often I do get an inch to write something, and now I have it and need to scratch it.
I definitely love to play board games solitaire. Whenever I see 1 to X amount of players, I tend to want to look more into that game. But it wasn't always like that. While I do enjoy the social aspect of gaming, I do tend to prefer to spend the majority of my time alone. I'm not a social butterfly, but I'm not a complete loner either. I'd say my desires are 85% to be by myself 15% desire for social activity.
When I was young, I was into video games. I loved them. I wasn't a "gamer" persay, cause I was more into band at school and other things. But when I had nothing to do, I could be at home, play a game by myself, and not have to worry about my skills vs someone else. When online multiplayer finally came around, I found it as an opportunity to play with friends occasionally or whenever I got the bug to play against people, I could at any time I wanted. Xbox live really helped that out. (Even though it destroyed multiplayer gaming at the same time)
Still though, I mostly stuck with RPGs and Single player campaigns cause there I was in my own little world... there I was king... there I was the best player... there I had the best skills. Then I'd go over to a friend's house, play games with them, and get my butt handed to me. Sure, I'd always hear, "Just practice more and you'll get better!" but I just could never seem to get to that point. It's as if I get to a "plateau" to my learning ability and get stuck there and can't get any further. The more I learned, the better everyone else seemed to get.
So far, I liked playing by myself, liked cooperative games, and hated being competitive. And even though I play to have fun and not to win, it does feel nice to win every once in a while. I lose interest in something I lose over and over and over at.
So now fast forward some years as an adult, and a friend of mine introduced me to the world of board games I didn't know existed. I never looked into it and thought board games were just things like Monopoly and such that you played on family game night. (Which we had and mostly consisted of Monopoly and The American Dream Game)
He showed me games like Descent, BattleLore and Tide of Iron. Heroscape was another one he got me into that I took to more than the rest, but I realized I just liked designing maps more than actually playing. (I only subbmitted on of them to Heroscapers.com, found here. http://www.heroscapers.com/community/showthread.php?t=3772) There were many others but I just can't remember any at this time.
Funny thing is, almost 99% of the time, I always won the first game we would play. But then after that, just like in video games, I would get beat more than I won. This friend wanted to play these all the time cause he was really into them, but I just didn't want to. For many reasons. First being I was still more of a solitary gamer and didn't want to play board games many times a week. Second being he was the type of gamer that played to win, and would gripe and not have fun if he was losing, and if I ever did win, never acknowledged that I did a good job at besting him that time and would blame it on some fault with the game as why he lost. (He's since got a lot better with this). And third, as with competitive gaming, I would lose 99% of the time. I'm just not good at playing against other humans. I like playing against the game's A.I. or system.
I had moved away for a while, then wound up moving back. He still tried getting me more into board games but couldn't convince me. Even though we both got Space Hulk (third edition). This is actually the first game I wrote a solo variant for. He had moved away so I had no one to play this with, even though I rarely played it anyway. But, I thought, "well, I like to play games by myself, maybe I'll play both sides". It was the first time the concept of playing a game by myself really hit me. I could play both sides and win, yet lose, at the same time. I had heard people do it with chess all the time. How was this any different? Well, I learned a lot about this game by doing that. I learned more, than playing against someone, cause my mindset wasn't trying to prevent yet another defeat. Then I decided to go online and see if anyone maybe came up with a way to play solo. That was the day I discovered boardgamegeek.com. Mostly all I found was threads pointing to the old Deathwing solo variant. I tried it, and didn't like how it worked. So I decided to make my own solo variant and worked a long time creating an "A.I." for the GS. I feel I did a pretty good job when I finally got the rules down and got to the point where I lost 75% of the time.
Well, my friend had moved back as well (we seem to somehow return here) and had a new game he wanted to show me. I went ahead and gave it a try. Memoir '44. I don't know what it was, but this game is what turned on the light inside of me for big interest in board games. It might have been that I was (and still am) a big Call of Duty fan and over the years was becoming more and more interested in WWII games, documentaries, and movies. My favorite movie still being Enemy at the Gates. So needless to say, I loved playing Memoir '44. (Even though I was still losing all the time). Then he introduced me to deck building games with Dominion. I liked it. But he wanted to show me Thunderstone first cause he had a feeling I would like that more. Well, he was right. Sorry Dominion, but I really like the theme and gameplay of Thunderstone a lot more.
That was late 2010. My board game collection and playing dramatically increased and my video game playing decreased as much. I became more active on BGG as well. But... I still had all of the same issues. I wanted to be alone more than socializing, etc. While my collection was growing, I was looking more into games that had players as 1 - x number of players so that I could play them by myself. That was another reason Thunderstone was more desirable than Dominion, it came with solo rules. Pandemic could be played solo... well, any co-op game. And you know how I feel about co-op. Solo rules were a beacon for directing me toward games. If they weren't there and I still liked it, I'd try to find solo rules, and/or create my own. I even made a geeklist for them, Shacky's Solo Variants
Now, if you've stuck with me this far, here's where I get to the point of the title of my blog.
One day while randomly searching around on BGG for soloable games, I came across a geeklist that changed my life.
Always alone... the definitive list of single player games.
I saw entry number 2, Ambush!. Wait what!? A board game that was designed for only one player?! And this has been around since I was a child? How did I not come across this earlier?
I had always thought board games were meant to be multiplayer but had solo variants. So you can imagine my surprise when I came across a solo boardgame with a multiplayer variant. This made me think about a post I saw once where someone asked why would you want to play a board game solo? Why not just play a video game. Well, I am a video gamer. But there's just something about board games. I like playing them. Besides, here I just discovered that there were games designed for people to play solo!
I found this geeklist, Solitaire War Games and got excited. My first solitaire game was RAF: The Battle of Britain 1940. I eventually added Astra Titanus, got a copy of Ambush! from a BGG trade (for a copy of Memoir '44 Air Pack, I had 2), Hornet Leader: Carrier Air Operations, D-Day at Omaha Beach (I became a fan of John H. Butterfield it seems... hehe), and yes, even got a copy of Outdoor Survival from a BGG auction just cause of how ridiculous it is.
Being RAF was my first solitaire game, I was immediately taken to it. I had read some bad reviews about it but some good ones as well. I find it a lot of fun. I've only played the Lion side of things and plan on the next time I play to try out Eagle.
D-day at Omaha Beach, Ambush, and Hornet Leader are definitely my top 3.
I have a small table in my game room off to the side I play these games on so I can leave them up over time. (something you really have to do to play an RAF campaign). I'm currently playing through a campaign of Ambush and I'm recording all of my moves to enter as my first session report, but I will also be making a geeklist for it cause I want to sorta write an RPG story element to it. (I hope to do the same for my solo fun with Space Alert as well in the future)
Overall, I love solitaire gaming. I do still enjoy the social aspect that comes with board gaming with others. Games that don't come with solo rules are also a lot better with others than playing by yourself, but that is just my preference. Thanks for sticking with me this far and my random thoughts.
And thank you
Patrick Carroll
United States
Carver
Minnesota
"If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly." (GK Chesterton)
"That's how the light gets in." (Leonard Cohen)
for giving me this itch to write. It's all your fault. 
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