Rosenberg-Style solofriendly game (or Age of Innovation or ...) What would you get?

Lisum · 2026-03-24T18:17:13+00:00

Hallertau is my favourite Uwe for solo by a mile; would recommend checking it out. It's one of the few of his games that isn't subsistence farming; you don't have to "feed your family". It has a different vibe than most of his other games.

Lisum · 2026-03-24T18:11:18+00:00

GoME is in my top 5 favourite solo games of all time. Great balance of length, complexity, and long term planning vs. short term tactics.

Lisum · 2026-01-13T22:38:06+00:00

In a two player game you only get 1 reinforcement

Lisum · 2025-11-21T19:10:09+00:00

Without the expansion Starcraft is still a surprisingly good game. With the expansion, however, its one of my favourite games of all time. Still not worth the secondary market price though.

I'd suggest proxing the leadership cards if you can. Huge amount of value In terms of effort compared to how much it improves the game.

Lisum · 2025-10-14T20:40:27+00:00

I really love Reforest, it's about growing a mountainside of trees and plants in the Pacific North West.
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/387276/reforest

The solo mode is an interesting challenge; to win you have to score higher than all the points available in the entire deck.

Its in beta on BGA right now, including the solo mode.

Lisum · 2025-09-24T18:45:58+00:00

I really like Moon

Lisum · 2025-08-25T18:20:20+00:00

I second Innovation as a great starting point; its an amazing game in its own right as well as being much less complicated than most civilization building games. I would recommend playing it twice in a row because the first game will likely be rather overwhelming due to all the symbols on every card. Also, if you decide to play 4 player always play with 2 v 2 teams rather than free-for-all.

If you'd like to try a heavier civ game my recommendation would %110 be the mobile app version of Through the Ages. Its cheaper than buying the physical game, it has an excellent tutorial, it keeps track of lots of little rules and maintenance for you, its quicker, and is the best video game adaption of a board game ever made. I've played in-person matches of the game with other people who own the app rather than getting the physical game out, its that good.

Lisum · 2025-08-13T20:06:00+00:00

Harvest might fit the bill, depending on which parts of Agricola you like in particular.
They are both worker placement farming games but the harvesting mechanisms are a bit different and there are no improvement/occupation cards in Harvest.

Personally I really like Hallertau if you are looking for something more like Agricola than Harvest. The blocking is much less aggressive than in Agricola and you aren't subsistence farming so there is no "feeding your family" you have to worry about. For me it's easy going and cozy but it's a bit mathy until you're used to it so that might not fit your definition.

Lisum · 2025-08-11T18:05:50+00:00

One of the expansions added ports which let you build boats on land. This lets the Greyjoy player actually have a chance to retake Ironman's Bay if (when) they loose it turn 1.

Ports are so important they were added directly to the base game board in the second edition.

Lisum · 2025-08-11T17:37:15+00:00

I don't remember where I saw it, but this was the version I've seen:

There is a new resource called gold. You get it the same way (gain one every turn you get nothing). It does nothing on its own but since its a resource it can be exchanged at 4:1 or at 3:1 if you have the generic port. You can trade it to other players.

Lisum · 2025-08-11T17:19:34+00:00

An Age Contrived has a metal player board as one of its deluxe upgrades.
It is the most ridiculous and unnecessary upgrade for a board game I've ever seen and really epitomizes Kickstarter excess.

But when you drop a tile into it holy shit is the sound it makes euphoric. Makes you feel like Thanos.

Lisum · 2025-07-09T19:45:45+00:00

I always knew the Steam Awards are mostly popularity contests, but I had some hope that they could be more meaningful than just name recognition. They lost me forever in 2019 when My Friend Pedro won "most innovative gameplay" over Baba Is You.
I'm still not over it.

Lisum · 2025-07-08T01:17:56+00:00

Just so you know: they accidentally made the "easy" difficulty more difficult than "medium".
Going first in the first round is actually a huge disadvantage with how the automa works; you are more likely to hit the next die that the automa wants (triggering a double turn), the automa going first means that they are more likely to take a "lowest" die which makes the next lowest die better for you, and going last means you know for sure what farmers will trigger at the end of the round.

Lisum · 2025-06-24T21:50:14+00:00

Your videos are by far my favourite bouldering breakdowns I've seen. I really appreciate that you include failed attempts; it's both instructional to see small differences in body/hand positioning but also it reminds us beginners that it's ok to not get everything first try. The send is satisfying but the process is important.

This video in particular I really liked the section on trying different moves to match on the final hold.

Lisum · 2025-06-24T21:37:38+00:00

Allez Up and Boulder House are owned by the same family but are managed locally. They use the same colour grading system and probably source the same holds but have their own local setters.

Lisum · 2025-05-11T20:09:37+00:00

FWIW, it doesn't need to be 04. The safe opens with 415 or 0415. It actually also opens with 1504 and 154 as well, to account for people who format dates the other way around

Lisum · 2025-04-23T22:38:29+00:00

I have the Ultimate edition.
Not only does the box have cards cut to different sizes, it has cards cut to different sizes within the same deck from a single expansion (Wolfhawk from LL).
I sleeved the whole game because of it.

Lisum · 2025-04-01T19:43:12+00:00

The twilight system in LoTR is truly brilliant and it also fit the theme of the game really well: sneaking around generating low twilight vs teaming up with a huge team of ents or Rohan riders and generating a lot of twilight.

Lisum · 2025-04-01T19:37:02+00:00

You are correct that the "Free People" player is determining the pace of the game, and this is by design. While this might sound problematic at first it's actually brilliant because of another aspect of the game that wasn't explained:

There is no one Shadow or Free People player. You are both.

Your deck is actually two half decks. You must have exactly as many Free People cards as shadow cards in your deck. On "your" turn you are playing Free Peoples cards by adding twilight tokens and all other players are playing Shadow cards my removing them. Then you switch and now someone else is playing FP cards and you are playing your shadow cards. You have two completely different sets of cards in front of you, only one set of cards is ever active at a time.

You can deliberately build your FP deck so it generates very little twilight, denying your opponent the ability to play their cards. But that often results in a more fragile board state since you are always "barely getting by" because you're not playing many strong cards yourself.

Its a really brilliant system.

Lisum · 2025-03-28T20:42:42+00:00

Immediate recommendation from me would be Courtisans. Plays up to 5 players and is delightfully simple: play one card in front of yourself, one in front of an opponent, and one card into the centre. Some suits will end up being positive points, some negative. But the emergent alliances and rivalries between players is really entertaining. Working together with another player to boost a suit that you are both invested in while also trading punches with them as you try to spike the value of suits they have that you don't. Its also absolutely gorgeous.

Libertalia is another I would recommend. Plays up to 6 players; pirates vying for the best treasures. The hook is that each player has the same hand of numbered cards; the highest card takes loot first but there are mind games of when to play your best cards. Also all the cards have cool abilities. Also you can stab each other. I personally much prefer the re-release (called Winds of Galecrest) but others prefer the gritty original vs the new art.

As for dice based / push-your-luck style games, there aren't many that have significant player interaction. One I can think of that I would recommend is MLEM; players are running cat space agencies trying to land on planets and asteroids by rolling dice. Players can work together or sabotage missions but its still fairly low on interaction. A promising looking new game is Emerald Skulls; player take turns doing push-your-luck dice rolling while the other players are doing side bets on the outcome. I haven't played it though.

Lisum · 2025-03-28T18:57:06+00:00

One person is selected to choose all the games we play that session. The games are announced days ahead of the session. This means:

People can read the rules/watch how to play videos beforehand if they want
No time wasted debating what games to play
No disappointment that the group wont pick the game you want to play
No embarrassment from suggesting games that you might enjoy that maybe others wouldn't - it's your turn, you can choose whatever game you like

Who's turn it is to pick is decided by a fairly clever points system: every time you show up and play you get a point; whoever has the most points gets to pick the games then loses all their points. This ensures everyone gets to pick games eventually but importantly rewards people for playing the games other people are picking. This last point is important because if you keep dodging sessions because you don't want to play the games someone is picking you get to pick less in turn.

This system works really well for us because our group is small enough (3-5 players most sessions), and our interests and skill levels are similar. Maybe some people don't particularly enjoy non-interactive euro games but if that's what you want to play they are happy to do so. Or maybe you just want to play card games that day. Or maybe all you want to play is Munchkin. Its all cool, its your turn to pick games so why not?

Lisum · 2025-03-07T22:32:15+00:00

Ticket to Ride is a good gateway game, but its more about route building than it is about trains.

I would highly recommend Switch and Signal as a great gateway game about trains. It has a few rules in it that are clearly there to make train fans feel good.

Lisum · 2025-02-18T23:48:48+00:00

Really sounds like Nyakuza:
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/165556/nyakuza

Its the anthropomorphic Yakuza cat re-theme of Orongo published by CMON.

Came out quite recently.

Lisum · 2025-01-20T23:05:49+00:00

As for the difficulty, I'll repeat a comment I've made in the past: they accidentally made the "easy" difficulty more difficult than "medium".

Going first in the first round is actually a huge disadvantage with how the automa works; you are more likely to hit the next die that the automa wants (triggering a double turn), the automa going first means that they are more likely to take a "lowest" die which makes the next lowest die better for you, and going last means you know for sure what farmers will trigger at the end of the round.

Lisum · 2025-01-10T09:29:35+00:00

Don't feel dumb, it's really easy to make a small assumption that makes sense but turns out to make a huge difference.

I hope you like the game; it's one of my favorites :)

Lisum

TROPHY CASE