When playing boardgames solo, you do not have an opponent to surprise you. So it can be fun once in a while, to play games where the game system can surprise you and stress you. Solo boardgames are designed to do this, but there are other game systems that do it very well too. Some boardgames like Hannibal from Avalon Hill, uses a card-driven system, where your options keep changing, depending on your 'luck of the draw'. And as in poker 'it is not what cards you get, but what you do with them' that counts. This means that you will be reacting not only to your 'opponent', but also to the new cards you get. In these games each player is dealt a hand of cards, which is kept hidden from the opponent. The cards then get played, one or more at a time. In some games like Up Front (from Avalon Hill), you draw a new card every turn. In other games you get a new hand, when all the cards in your hand have been played. In some of the games it is only the flow of the game that is regulated by the cards. In other games the combat is resolved using cards too. And in some games even the map is based on cards These games often have a low solitaire rating. There have even been reviews that said it was not possible to play some of them solo. But I do not agree. You won't get the full effect of a real life opponent. But the unpredictability of the cards will keep you on your toes. You have to react to the changing situation. You will of course have an overall plan, but you will have to adjust it, to respond to events beyond your control (the cards). The main problem with playing card-driven boardgames solo is that you know both your and your opponents cards. In the following I will look at this in more detail. First of all this is not such a problem as it might sound. All that it really means is that you know your opponent's immediate options. You would know that in a normal boardgame too. But you do not know what your or your opponent's next hands will be. Secondly, you do not need to know all of your opponent's cards, all of the time. In Banzai, Avalon Hill's first expansion module for Up Front, they came up with a very simple way of adding suspense to the game, when you play it solo. In Up Front you end your turn by drawing a new card to your hand. What they suggest is, that you just add this card to the hand, without looking at it. Then when you pick up the other hand, there is one card in your opponent's hand that you do not know! Could this be the Fire card he has been waiting for? Do I dare to continue my move across the open country? This way you have to factor an unknown card into your calculations, which is often more than you have to do in a normal boardgame. In games like Hannibal you get a completely new hand when all the cards in the old hand have been played. Here the side that goes first only looks at its own hand, until it has made its plan and played the first card. This way each turn starts just like a two-player game. In Hannibal the side that normally goes second, can take the initiative if it wants to, by playing a Minor or Major Campaign card, if the new hand has one. This can be handled by having the second side start each new turn by deciding if it wants to launch a campaign. If yes, then you very quickly check to see if the new hand contains a campaign card. If it does, the second side goes first, without knowing the first side's cards. If there is no campaign card, the first side starts with the advantage of having glimpsed the other side's hand. This could be minimized by marking the border of the campaign cards. In some of the games, the combat is also card-driven. You get dealt a number of combat cards, depending on the situation. The cards are split between several attack types, for example Left Flank or Frontal Attack. The attacker then plays a card and the defender has to match the card with one of a specific type or lose the combat. The attacker keeps playing cards, but after each attack, the defender has a chance of taking the initiative and becoming the new attacker. The solution to the problem of knowing both side's cards is to settle on a strategy for each side before seeing the hands. You will always try to get the initiative. A strategy could be to attack with the card you had most of first. Or to attack with any rare cards first. An article about one of these games on www.grognard.com demonstrated that each of the basic strategies had the same chance of winning. You could also dice for a strategy for one side, and then choose one for the other yourself. So if you are looking for some, often fast flowing, boardgames to play solo, I suggest that you give card-driven games a try. The experience of having your plan challenged not by you, but by the system can be quite fun. Examples of card-driven games are 'Up Front' (and its two expansion modules 'Banzai' and 'Desert War'), 'We the People', 'Hannibal', 'Successors' and 'For the People' all from Avalon Hill, 'Path of Glory' from GMT and 'Blue vs. Grey' from QED Games. In the first and the last game, the cards also define the board. 'We the People' and 'Hannibal' both have card-driven combat systems. Back to Table of Contents -- Lone Warrior #131 Back to Lone Warrior List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2000 by Solo Wargamers Association. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com