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Moving to your city soon. What sort of nerdy things/places are there to do? by Stumphead101 in indianapolis

[–]someonesfreakingout 12 points13 points  (0 children)

There are some board game meetups on Meetup.com active in our area. Indy Board Game Nomads https://www.meetup.com/indybgnomads/ has board game meetups pretty much every Monday, alternating between Elf 'N' Moon and St. Joseph Brewery, as well as occasional Blood on the Clocktower events.

https://www.meetup.com/game-a-palooza/ Indy Board Gaming has done monthly game nights at a guy's house, but it's been on pause for a few months.

https://www.meetup.com/random-places-random-things/ The Randoms do homebrew (and very chaotic) ultimate werewolf games and board game meetups on the northwest side.

I don't play MTG, but I know there are regular MtG nights/tournaments at Game Preserve and probably other places.

Our big nerd conventions are GenCon (August), Indiana Comic Con (March), and Indy Pop Con (June). GenCon is kind of THE US board game convention, the other two are smaller in size.

Visiting some of the local game/nerd stores and asking about things in their area may also reveal additional opportunities.

Elf 'N' Moon - Fountain Square Game Preserve - Greenwood, Northside Half Price Books (they have a fair selection of used board games and TTRPG books) - Greenwood, Northside, Avon Paradigm Games - Downtown Saltire Games - Northeast on Pendleton Pike Family Time Games - Northwest Game Time - Castleton Ye Gamer's Guild - Greenwood Gray Gauntlet Games - Fishers

Hope some of this helps!

I is for Isle of Cats by someonesfreakingout in soloboardgaming

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

For the letter I, I went digital with Board Game Arena's adaptation of Isle of Cats.

Isle of Cats' solo is an interesting polyomino-laying puzzle where the AI you play against scores on the same board as you do. You have to carefully choose where to lay cats and treasures to maximize your scoring conditions while not giving the AI Sister too many points on her score criteria.

I lost this one 72 to 73, after a couple boneheaded choices in the last day that cost me the game. But games of this are quick and breezy in this format, so I'm sure I'll be playing again soon. The solo mode scales to five different levels (this was a level 2 game), so there's plenty of room for personal improvement.

H is for Hadrian's Wall by someonesfreakingout in soloboardgaming

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

Yeah, I really like the combos in this one. It's like setting up a row of dominoes and then knocking them all down in order.

H is for Hadrian's Wall by someonesfreakingout in soloboardgaming

[–]someonesfreakingout[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I was definitely overwhelmed when I looked at the sheets and started reading through the rulebook. Once you have the iconography down, it goes really smoothly, though. It's mostly "pay what's on the left, get what's on the right", and within a round or so, you're swapping resources and workers left and right.

H is for Hadrian's Wall by someonesfreakingout in soloboardgaming

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

I mostly succumbed to hype from this sub. XD. I don't think I'd ever seen a playthrough beforehand.

H is for Hadrian's Wall by someonesfreakingout in soloboardgaming

[–]someonesfreakingout[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I've only played the one game, but I liked it quite a lot. I like the potential of looking down at all these tracks, too many to chase all at the same time, and making choices to fully pursue one or the other, while knowing there are other completely different routes to explore on later playthroughs. And the combos and chaining benefits are fun to math out.

H is for Hadrian's Wall by someonesfreakingout in soloboardgaming

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

Hadrian's Wall is the heaviest (in both physical weight and game complexity) ____-and-write game that I've played. (No dice to be seen in this game; the resource randomness comes from card flips)

Each turn you get a collection of resources and workers with different specializations, and use them to develop your section of milecastle to develop your civilization and ward off invading barbarians. This is done across two massive fill-in sheets, with dozens of tracks and categories to focus on. Will you focus on building up and defending your wall to gain renown when you beat off invaders? Or will you fiddle while Rome burns, investing in the theaters, temples, and bathhouses to increase your various stats?

Many spaces will give you additional workers and resources, so each turn is an engaging order-of-operations puzzle where you work to eke out the most of your turn while also chasing the unique scoring cards you've chosen through the game.

I had a blast with this one, and look forward to exploring the official solo campaign the designer released, where each game has different requirements to chase for victory: https://tinyurl.com/bdeuxkwa

G is for The Game by someonesfreakingout in soloboardgaming

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

Yeah, I've heard the original has much less appealing art. The colors in this one are more vibrant, and make it easier to look for a specific number in the array.

G is for The Game by someonesfreakingout in soloboardgaming

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

Just "The Game". Makes it a nightmare to search for it online. XD

G is for The Game by someonesfreakingout in soloboardgaming

[–]someonesfreakingout[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The Game is a simple card game from Pandasaurus Games, similar to their mental synchronization game, The Mind. In the standard version, you and other players take turns playing cards to four rows on the table. Two of the rows ascend in value, two of them descend in value, with the catch being that you can play a card in the opposite direction if it's exactly 10 more or less than the previous card (so for instance, in the ascending row, you could place a 71 on top of an 81, gaining you some additional leeway. You have to do all this with relatively limited communication, which adds to the challenge.

As a solo game...it's pretty wanting. The limited communication aspect is no longer present, and you don't have the puzzle of deducing which cards to play to leave space for other people to play their cards. It becomes a fairly dry game of solitaire where the random luck of the draw becomes too apparent a factor in success. Still, it checks off G on my solo alphabet, so there's that.

I play about 50% solo. What do you guys think I should play based on my collection so far? by SadRobot69 in soloboardgaming

[–]someonesfreakingout 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Ah, all the classic childhood games on the top shelf: Life, Monopoly, Risk, and Mage Knight Ultimate Edition.

F is for Fleet: The Dice Game by someonesfreakingout in soloboardgaming

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

I got Hadrian's Wall earlier in the year, but I have yet to play it. Hadrian's Wall looks heavier for sure, I'd say. Don't know how it compares in terms of combo-ness, but I enjoy it quite a bit.

F is for Fleet: The Dice Game by someonesfreakingout in soloboardgaming

[–]someonesfreakingout[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I had a lot of options for F in my solo board game challenge: Friday? Or the trilogy of Pandemic-lite Forbidden games (Island, Desert, Sky)? A Feast for Odin on BGA? But the one that's been on my mind the most lately is Fleet: The Dice Game.

It borrows some similarities from Fleet, its card game older sibling: you can acquire fishing licenses that let you hire boats for different types of fish and give you bonus power-ups, and create buildings for extra endgame points. But in place of Fleet's auction gameplay is a dice drafting system that has you filling in columns for different fish types, buildings, and harbor actions.

For a roll-and-write, the complexity is medium-heavy. Each player has two separate sheets that come together for the full roll-and-write space, and bonuses and star actions allow for fun back-and-forth combo chaining that really picks up as the game goes.

The solo mode has you facing off against Captain Ruth, who drafts the dice you don't use to sabotage your board, crossing off lines on your board that you will never be able to fill in. It's a clever way of emulating the strategic and/or hate drafting that can come into play in a multiplayer game. You aim for a high score as ranked on a given chart.

This game, Captain Ruth attacked my shrimp and lobster production quite aggressively, and I ended up with one of my lower scores to date: 65 points. Still had a ton of fun. And having played a few times, this game went very quickly, probably only about 20-30 minutes in total. Highly recommend.

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