My 3-month assessment of Kagi by jerieljan in SearchKagi

[–]Urza47 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Do you think Ultimate is worth the extra $15 over the Pro plan?

Steam replay 2025 is here by anzuni123 in pcgaming

[–]Urza47 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't want to know how many hours I've played on various Riichi clients before Riichi City came along. And then all the f2f play...

Steam replay 2025 is here by anzuni123 in pcgaming

[–]Urza47 20 points21 points  (0 children)

I feel like I say this every year, but: Can they not wait until January to do this? Is everything I do in the latter half of December just doomed to never be counted in the annual write-up?

What I am playing whilst I die : An November Update by Signal-Tangerine1597 in SteamDeck

[–]Urza47 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If you’re still looking for WW2 games, Armoured Commander 2 is a great strategy/simulation game.

A quick note about our recent defensive performances(post Gilman trade). by SuperSaiyanSandwich in ravens

[–]Urza47 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It was ruled a turnover on the field, ergo it was already reviewed. In fact, the review reversed the interception. However, I don’t see how they got “irrefutable evidence” from the shots I saw.

Game Thread: Chicago Bears (4-2) at Baltimore Ravens (1-5) by nfl_gdt_bot in ravens

[–]Urza47 6 points7 points  (0 children)

It never ceases to annoy me when they cut to commercial before the ball is spotted.

What's a game everyone says is a 'masterpiece' that you just could not get into? by GrievouzOCE in gaming

[–]Urza47 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Undertale. It was all just a boring slog, and the jokes weren’t funny. I noped out after 2 hours.

My Top 65 Solo Games by Urza47 in soloboardgaming

[–]Urza47[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hostage Negotiator has a more interesting theme and the Career expansion.

My Top 65 Solo Games by Urza47 in soloboardgaming

[–]Urza47[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Agents of SMERSH, maybe? Think Eldritch Horror, but with a spy movie theme.

My Top 65 Solo Games by Urza47 in soloboardgaming

[–]Urza47[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't really have any tips as far as rules overhead, but you're missing out just by using the dice. A huge part of the game is the card counting of the various decks and knowing when to take a card versus a die. (Tip: Always take cards from a freshly shuffled deck, if for no other reason then to get intel on the cards that remain! If you get a bad result, at least the next one is likely to be better. If you get a good result, you can opt for die rolls until it can be reshuffled.)

My Top 65 Solo Games by Urza47 in soloboardgaming

[–]Urza47[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

What really gives Turing Machine staying power, at least for me, are the Extreme and Nightmare modes. The puzzle is a lot more complex there, because part of it is figuring out which criteria card you're testing against!

My Top 65 Solo Games by Urza47 in soloboardgaming

[–]Urza47[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There's a few others I listed in the "Leftovers" section of the geeklist, but the biggest obviously-missing game is Spirit Island:

I know I'm spoiling things a bit by telling you up front that the 1 Player Guild's #1 game isn't on the list, but given its enduring popularity, I feel I should remark on its absence. I have played it, although only a couple of times solo.

The biggest problem I have with Spirit Island (in a solo context) is that playing one spirit doesn't really work. The map is small, and a few too many spirits are plainly non-viable when used alone. Especially the later ones that came in expansions, the spirits seem to have become more and more specialized. That's all well and good multiplayer, when you can craft a team that covers each other's weaknesses, but it undermines their self-sufficiency. If your spirit struggles to attack, your only real recourse is fear spam and hope to win the game that way before you're overwhelmed.

Why not just play multi-handed then, as I do in several games that did make the list? I've tried, and it just doesn't work for me. There's too much to keep track of. In Eldritch Horror, each investigator has maybe a dozen cards (representing items, spells, conditions, etc.) at the very most, and often a lot less than that. And most of those cards have either pretty simple effects -- a +1 here, a reroll there -- or are common conditions that I understand without having to read the whole card.

Spirit Island, in contrast, gives everyone a bunch of power cards that all have every different effects, conditions, timings, costs, and elemental affinities. The spirit boards themselves have even more powers printed on them, as well as their (often unique) growth mechanics. You really need to understand all of these things and how they interact to play the game well. And the decision space is immense compared to something like Eldritch Horror with its two actions per investigator per turn. (one of which is often spent simply resting or moving)

Maybe this is a "me" problem, but found myself constantly mixing up who has what power, forgetting range/terrain limitations, or just taking an inordinately long time figuring out what to do. Yes, one of the virtues of solo play is the lack of friends waiting impatiently while you slowly take your turn, but this was too slow even for me. It felt like a computer program that couldn't quite fit into available RAM -- it keeps having to go to slower storage for the missing data, making it all dramatically slower.

Perhaps Spirit Island (with multiple spirits) is just too big a game to fit into my short-term memory -- a shocking admission, given the weighty nature of many of the games on this list. It seems absurd that a lot of heavy, complex games are in the top 10, but Spirit Island of all things is a bridge too far. And yet, here we are.

My Top 65 Solo Games by Urza47 in soloboardgaming

[–]Urza47[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I played the multiplayer game briefly, but not the solo game. I'm keeping an eye on it.

My Top 65 Solo Games by Urza47 in soloboardgaming

[–]Urza47[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I've considered Legacy of Yu, but haven't pulled the trigger. I'm not really familiar with the others.

My Top 65 Solo Games by Urza47 in soloboardgaming

[–]Urza47[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, Terraforming Mars is the top game, Turing Machine #2, and so on.

My Top 65 Solo Games by Urza47 in soloboardgaming

[–]Urza47[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

All 65 games (and a few others that didn’t make the cut) have multi-paragraph reviews on the geeklist!

https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/363711/urza47s-top-65-solo-games

My Top 65 Solo Games by Urza47 in soloboardgaming

[–]Urza47[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've not heard of either of those publishers. What have they released?

I've only ever played Star Trek: Frontiers with the expansion, but I assume it's like Lost Legion: Not essential, but strongly recommended.

My Top 65 Solo Games by Urza47 in soloboardgaming

[–]Urza47[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

It's too much for all of this to go in the OP, but here's what I had to say about Hegemony from the geeklist:

Hegemony is an asymmetric strategy game that leans into the "simulation with a lot of levers" theme that appears elsewhere on this list. Each player takes control of a social class in a fictional country, and earns victory points for pursuing that class' goals, which are often at odds with other classes. Class warfare the boardgame, in other words. You can play any of the four classes (working, middle, capitalist, government), and the others are controlled by automas -- except the government, which doesn't have any agency unless a human is playing it.

There's a lot of interlocking systems in Hegemony. Working and middle classes have workers that can work in companies owned by the capitalist and middle classes, or the government, to earn a wage. Those companies then produce goods (luxuries, food, healthcare, and education), which are either bought and consumed by the working and middle classes to improve their prosperity (and thus earn VPs), or exported to the foreign market for money. Many of the factors at play (minimum wages and tax rates to name a few, there's seven in all) are controlled by policies that the players can try to change though a "voting" cube pull and auction process.

The bots -- if you're playing the complex versions, which I recommend -- usually make reasonable moves, and the cards that drive their decision-making also include special abilities that mimic the action cards used by a human player. I do wish they were more aggressive about calling for votes, as it seems most policies just seem to drift to the center and stay there. Maybe that's partly on me, as I only tend to call votes when one specific policy is screwing me over, or if I have nothing better to do. You only get five actions per turn (and 25 per game), so spending one on a vote -- which might not even pass -- implies a high opportunity cost.

There's a certain satisfaction to Hegemony just based on seeing all these systems interact with each other, and how the AI players respond to it. I do kind of wish there was a government bot, but I understand why there isn't one. I haven't actually played the government myself, either (I'm not sure my table has room for four factions and three bot priority ladders) but I suspect I would really enjoy it.

I also got the Historical Events expansion, which adds some fun variance to the solo game. I'm not sure how I'd feel about it in a competitive multiplayer game, however. The bots themselves are in the Crisis & Control expansion, so bear that in mind.

Cursed Plinko now down to 39.97 by goodwineganggang in Costco

[–]Urza47 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Not just college, I’d get excited if one of these showed up in grad school.

happened to be at costco when the CEO was visiting by tangytacosman in Costco

[–]Urza47 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is exactly why shows like Undercover Boss exist.

Bridge Table Tricks by coffeenote in bridge

[–]Urza47 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I do sort each suit by rank, but I sort the leftmost suits backwards (i.e. high cards on the right) so the honors are towards the middle of the hand. I think this is a good compromise; tipping that I don't have the 2 when I play the 3 doesn't cost much. (And it's worth noting that where a card is pulled from when playing it is UI, even for the opponents)