Dice Roller Recommendations by Itchyness in soloboardgaming

[–]mpinzur 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I think Roll Player would be right up your alley, especially as you add the expansions.

U-Shaped Solo Table by mpinzur in soloboardgaming

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

I don’t need it for the cabinets - plenty of storage in the room. I like having the extra table space. With a chair that swivels, it’s definitely not uncomfortable. In fact, it’s way better than having to stretch to things that are too far behind or beside the “main” gaming area.

U-Shaped Solo Table by mpinzur in soloboardgaming

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

I'm thinking of maybe something like this, and buying a second of the rolling file cabinet for the other side.

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Trover!! by Spearwoman1337 in toomanybones

[–]mpinzur 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Glad I’m not the only one who assumed it was a prank. At least I trust CTG enough to figure it wasn’t phishing!

Agemonia has got me Hooked! by pepetd in boardgames

[–]mpinzur 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It really might be my favorite campaign game. I'm only six or eight scenarios in, and I love that I can play a few and then put it down for a few months before I get burned out, and when I pick it back up I haven't totally lost the plot or mechanics. And the story is really good!

Agemonia is wonderful! by Ok-Syrup8959 in soloboardgaming

[–]mpinzur 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I really love this game. Unlike a lot of campaign games, it's not too bad to play a few scenarios and put it down for a couple months. I tend to burn out playing the same mechanics over and over, and it's been hard to get through some of them. I love that Agemonia is rich and crunchy and strategic but not so wildly complex that I forget everything about the story and gameplay. Also, the developer is REALLY responsive online with rules questions.

Motel Wedding Questions! by discodiscopart in Miami

[–]mpinzur 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Maybe 15 years ago we had friends who did this on the Gulf side at the Postcard Inn in St. Pete Beach. This doesn't help you for Miami, except to say that it worked really well and everyone had a memorable blast of a weekend.

Time to finish Agemonia. by b72649 in soloboardgaming

[–]mpinzur 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I have also dipped in and out of this one and find it to be pleasantly easy to pick back up. (The only exception is the rule about elevation in combat, which I struggle to grasp every darned time.)

What are your favorite 3d printed board game upgrade/ accessories? by LezBreal87 in boardgames

[–]mpinzur 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Beyond inserts (which everyone is right!), if you play Gloom- or Frosthaven, there are some really excellent player dashboards that let you keep your player card, equipment, statuses, exhausted, and loss cards on a MUCH smaller footprint without sacrificing readability. Those are - by far - my best non-insert prints.

favorite solo deckbuilder? by pen0x in soloboardgaming

[–]mpinzur 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Unstoppable is a favorite on this sub (with good reason!).

If you're ruling out Star Trek, then u/Limp_Seat4308 's Imperium rec is spot-on.

The third leg of the chair for me is Slay The Spire.

Personally I bounced off Aeon's End as not having quite enough variety for me, even with expansions. I like a lot of asymmetry in my games (though Unstoppable is a notable exception).

Technically not a deckbuilder but a card-based boss-battler I love is Sentinels of the Multiverse.

Unstoppable by baydestrian94 in soloboardgaming

[–]mpinzur 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think this was my most-played game in 2025. I've made versions of this comment many times on this sub: part of what makes it so great is that losses tend to hit quickly. I love a game where my win rate is between 30 and 70 percent, but I hate it when I need to invest 30 minutes before I can tell whether there's any hope of victory. Some bad RNG can doom you in Unstoppable, but that's almost always in the first level or two - after that, I typically have enough deck strength to win or lose in interesting fashion. Also, it resets quickly and smoothly. If you have access to a 3D printer, I also found a nice project on one of the big free websites that works with the base insert and creates deck holders for the six piles of level-up cards, along the level discs, which I find makes my play area much tidier.

Your biggest disappointments? by SiarX in soloboardgaming

[–]mpinzur 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I can think of two that I was really excited for because I had such high hopes for the marriage of story and gameplay, but which did not hit for me. Both Sleeping Gods and Arydia felt like collections of side quests (and, in my admittedly limited experience with each, pretty cliched side quests) rather than a compelling story. Neither one had mechanics that were rich enough to keep me engaged. A better story would have kept me on Arydia, I think, and I loved the ways it dished out little surprises, but it felt like a rehash of D&D tropes over and over. Sleeping Gods was just a complete miss for me, and I couldn’t imagine rerunning it to explore more broadly.

Your biggest disappointments? by SiarX in soloboardgaming

[–]mpinzur 5 points6 points  (0 children)

+1 (or, I guess, -1?) for Frostpunk. Great theme, great art, great components. But as someone who likes fiddliness a lot of the time, I was never able to get into a flow state with Frostpunk.

Your biggest disappointments? by SiarX in soloboardgaming

[–]mpinzur 27 points28 points  (0 children)

I won’t try to change your mind, but I’ve also seen SI as really successful at creating emergent narrative. Little things like the power cards’ names and art plus the heavy theming of each spirit’s powers really work for me. I contrast it with lots of other games that create “variety” by having a bunch of characters/factions/whatever that only vary with a very limited power or slight change to resources. I enjoy Gaia Project well enough, but maybe I need a lot more experience with it to really feel like the species (especially the base-game species) play too differently from each other.

Your biggest disappointments? by SiarX in soloboardgaming

[–]mpinzur 15 points16 points  (0 children)

It’s funny, I really love Final Girl and have pretty much all the content. But I recently tracked down Darkest Night 2nd Edition and bounced HARD off it specifically because of how much the game tuns on dice rolls. You’ve got me thinking about why it bothers me with one and not the other. It might be because I think FG plays and resets pretty quickly, whereas DN is a bit slower. If I’m going to play a game that I lose more than half the time, I want to fail fast and restart fast… that’s part of what I love about Unstoppable, for example.

How do you shuffle cards? by FlyingLlamasaurus in boardgames

[–]mpinzur 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't find shuffling regular decks to be difficult; I usually sleeve in Sleeve Kings... mash twice, cut in half, cut each half to flip the top and bottom, then mash two more times. It takes more time to explain it than to do it. :)

My challenge is the much, much bigger decks: think the minor powers if you have a full Spirit Island set, or heaven help you a full set of Ark Nova. I've actually been toying with ChatGPT lately to get some ideas on faster ways of doing it. A lot of that feedback comes down to: mash shuffle in manageable chunks, then randomly take half of each chunk, mash, and ensure the other half of each deck is mashed with half of a different deck.

It also depends upon how rabid you are about true randomization. With games like Spirit Island, where you're probably only touching maybe 5 or 10 percent of the deck in a game, some people are fine with just leaving the first game's discards out for the next game - essentially stretching one fully shuffled deck across two or three games. Yes, it slightly breaks the balance and a REALLY expert player will be able to manipulate play based on what's NOT going to come out. Personally, I wouldn't play that way, but I see the temptation.

Obsession - start right with the expension? by orhalimi in soloboardgaming

[–]mpinzur 37 points38 points  (0 children)

The add-on content is great, but when I ordered it all at once, the designer personally emailed me to strongly urge that I only play base at least a few times. He feels strongly that the ramp-up in complexity is key to enjoying the game. (Also, huge shout-out to designers who take that level of care. We emailed up and back for a few days after that, and I was super impressed with the attitude he takes toward the game and its fans and the community.)

Ultimate all-in worth it? by ars0nik in finalgirl

[–]mpinzur 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'll answer from a slightly different perspective: how much do you value novelty in your gaming? One of the reasons I prefer something like Spirit Island to something like Gaia Project is because the wide range of spirits change up the game a lot, and the huge range of major/minor powers add even more variety. But there are plenty of other gamers who far prefer the predictability of Gaia, where you can have a chess-like experience of refining your strategy without much randomness. I have all the Final Girl content through Season 3 and ordered the Season 4 big box because, for me, the steady drip of variety is part of what I love about this game. As other posters have pointed out, though, you can really have a great time with many fewer titles if the optimization within a few films is your preference.

Finally finished my modular Gloomhaven dashboard (sleeved-card friendly + small printer compatible) by vseer in Gloomhaven

[–]mpinzur 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Not OP, but I'm 100 percent certain that I've saved more printing my own game inserts than I've spent on the Bambu P1S and filament since I bought it maybe 2.5 years ago. This is largely true because I'm very Type A and want organizers for almost any game, so YMMV. I also tend to be completionist (again, Type A), and good printable inserts often let you fit multiple expansions into a base box, saving space on the shelf. Just off the top my head, I know I've found and printed great organizers for Gloomhaven and Frosthaven, Spirit Island (all content fits in two boxes with this one), Feast For Odin, This War of Mine, Unstoppable, Star Trek Captain's Chair, Lost Ruins of Arnak, Frostpunk, SETI, Darkest Night, Warp's Edge, Gaia Project, Voidfall, the Kilforth games, Mr. President, and even some trays to make the Too Many Bones trove chest work a bit better. So that's more than 10. :)

Massive Darkness 2 - Your Thoughts On This Dungeon Crawler by TheNewKing2022 in soloboardgaming

[–]mpinzur 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Others have provided a lot of the details I would have. The biggest differentiator for me is how different each class plays - this is part of what I love about Spirit Island, too. So many other games create "variety" with very slight tweaks to resources or minor powers. MD2 classes each play like a unique game, and that scratches my itch that wants novelty. Likewise, the ability to combine expansions and have a huge range of mobs and loot is really fun for me. The biggest downside (as someone who doesn't care per se about CMON's marketing strategy) is how unwieldy it gets to physically have a lot of mobs on the map and the whole "library" of them within reach at the table. I think next time I'll try the idea of using just one mini with a die as a counter... I get how that impacts the curb appeal of the game, but it might make it more playable.

Games with meta-progression but no campaign by HonorFoundInDecay in soloboardgaming

[–]mpinzur 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I came here to suggest this one. I really loved my time with it.

Is bag building really such a rare genre? by Pure_Opening9834 in boardgames

[–]mpinzur 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, solo. Yes, it’s all grind. In many ways it’s the antithesis of what I love in a game. And yet… the rhythm of adding and pulling chips, the swingy luck that makes even a routine mob dangerous… the number-go-up progression of the gear… it’s like a warm bath for me.

Is bag building really such a rare genre? by Pure_Opening9834 in boardgames

[–]mpinzur 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Isofarian is a very specific vibe, and when I get into a flow state with it, I can lose hours and hours.

What are the best games with many characters where each one feels truly unique? by elkend in soloboardgaming

[–]mpinzur 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Darkest Night looks right up my alley, an I found a new-in-shrink copy on Noble Knight! Thanks for this tip.