Top Ten Solo Games of 2020

It's that time of year again! That beautiful season when Kevin Erskine from BoardGameGeek runs the People's Choice Top Solo Games competition. I believe this is the 6th or 7th year he's put this on and it is a blast! Anyone who wants to can submit their list of up to 20 solo games to Kevin and he'll rank them all based on how many votes they get. There's usually some minor controversy, but Kevin makes it clear that this is for fun! Well, it's not always so fun for my wallet because I want to buy ALL of the games on the list.

As I did last year for my list, I used Pub Meeple's ranking system to help me get started. Basically you upload the list of your solo games (it easily links to your BGG account so this is easy-peasy) and then it puts two games in front of you and you choose which one you like best. You do this a bunch of times depending on how many games you have and voila! You have a list! This becomes my starting point and I tweak and move a bit after I have this last, but it's usually pretty darn close!

When I look at the list I ask myself the following questions: Do I love this game? Do I love to set this game up? I try not to overthink it too much and just have fun with it. So, without further ado, here is my Top Ten Solo Games of 2020!

Master Mapsmith (Review of Cartographers)

I've really been enjoying the roll 'n' write and flip 'n' fill kick that the board game world has been on lately. What I feel like I've been missing, however, is a fantasy-themed one. Well, voila! Cartographers is here! It's not really the battle that I was hoping for - you're actually a cartographer, a mapmaker, scouting and mapping out the lands for your king. You work through summer, spring, autumn and winter, each season bringing with it different objectives and scoring conditions (indicated by random cards each game). You need to be sure to plan for the current season as well as future ones or you'll miss out on some points.

Each season you flip cards from the deck which will give you a terrain type (farmland, water, village, or forests) and a tetris-style geometric shape for you to draw onto your map sheet (the game comes with a pack of 100 of these and they are double sided with an easy side and more difficult side). The objective cards will direct you to place certain terrain types in certain arrangements to score the most points. There are also ruins that you may need to play on sometimes and also mountains. If you surround a mountain completely, you receive some gold. Watch out though - some cards involve a monster ambush! In competitive play, the person next to you will draw this ambush on your sheet and in solo play there is a pattern they follow for placement. Either way, any spaces adjacent to them left unfilled will lose you points at the end of the season.

It's Euro-Tastic! (Review of Terraforming Mars)

If there were a Euro game that I was going to play and review, it was going to be this one. Not because I love the theme (growing bacteria on Mars? When do I get to stab someone with a sword?), not because I love the artwork (so many neutral colours...), and not because I love moving cubes around (soooooo many cubes). It's because it's the number four ranked game on BGG and EVERYONE in the solo guild says it's amazing! Well, EVERYONE can't be wrong, can they? Even though I'm an Ameritrasher through and through, I can still enjoy cube pushing, right?

Only one way to find out.

First of all, though, let's make sure you know what Terraforming Mars IS. I think that I would summarize it as a hand- and resource- management game with some area control mixed in there. You're trying to make Mars habitable by changing it, increasing the planet's oxygen, temperature, and amount of water. Raising these three also raises your Terraforming Rating (TR) which also increases your income. That's good, because you'll need money to play cards and perform the standard actions that will allow you to increase the big three. The cards include a variety of things from strip mining, crashing meteors into the planet, launching nuclear bombs, and growing bacteria. Different actions will also allow you to increase your income and production of plants, energy, heat, steel, and something else.

That's the gist of how you play. But did I like it?