I reviewed the original game – sans expansion – here on the OG. (Campaigns consist of 4 games – which explains the longer playing time noted above.) The solo system works brilliantly, btw – so far, I’ve managed to beat the first four campaigns but am stymied by the fifth. Tom managed to add start worlds and goals to Jump Drive (along with a few more cards to make it playable by 5 players)… and in one of the classier moves I’ve seen in a while, brought in the gentleman on BGG (Eric Kaminsky) who’d designed a solo campaign system for the game and used it! Thankfully, no games were harmed in the making of this expansion. Jump Drive is the quickest member of the Race for the Galaxy family of games and certainly the most self-contained… so I was somewhat surprised to hear that designer Tom Lehmann had created an expansion. Yes, it’s a ridiculously long post – you can read the whole thing OR you can simply use it as a guide for finding solo games you might be interested to try. (Note: this is not necessarily how much I like a particular game for solo play – for example, I think Terraforming Mars is an excellent solo game design but I only played it once as a solo game in 2023.) So, what follows are my thoughts on the fifty-nine (59!) different solo games I played in 2023 – ordered by the number of times I’ve played them. (A bit of perspective: I had 849 plays of 293 different games in 2023.) Solo gaming is now a decent-sized chunk of my gaming experiences – while I still play a lot of games with friends and family, 20% of my gaming in 2023 was solo. This new era of well-designed automata and solo modes for multiplayer games, coupled with excellent new solo game designs, is actually quite heartening to someone (me!) who finds something really satisfying about physically playing a game: shuffling cards, moving pieces, seeing it all spread out in front of you. There were actual solo games that saw a lot of play during that time as well: Chainsaw Warrior (Games Workshop), Ambush! & Mosby’s Raiders (Victory Games), RAF (West End Games), Voyage of the BSM Pandora (SPI), and B-17 (Avalon Hill). While one of my good friends was happy to play Squad Leader and Panzerblitz and Wooden Ships & Iron Men, most of my wargaming time was spent playing against myself – choosing actions and rolling dice for both sides of the conflict. and, for a short while, Ares (SPI’s magazine that included a sci-fi or fantasy game in each issue). At different points, I had a subscription to both The General (Avalon Hill’s magazine) and Strategy & Tactics (SPI’s magazine that included a wargame in each issue)…. In junior high & high school (1977-1982), I played a lot of wargames. But my solo gaming started a lot farther back than that. I’ve been writing these solo gaming reports since March of 2020… yes, early on in the pandemic.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |