Everything is in your own hands when it comes to playing with yourself. In this case, smut aside, literally. The deck builder is a genre of gaming that lends itself nicely to solo play because in a handful of ways, it’s an improvement on playing games with others. Most deck builders offer cooperation at their heart – players versus a deck of cards. And in solo you don’t have to wait for anyone else’s turn, watch them ruin your plans, or the worst option of the bunch: discuss what everyone is going to do before doing it, ruining any immersion and leaving everyone feeling like they might as well hand their cards over to the play who ‘gets it’ the most. So then, let’s explore the world of solo deck building games.
THREE GREAT SOLO DECKBUILDING GAMES
The core loop of deck building is always going to be similar. You’re going to start with some rubbish cards in your hand, then, through mechanics like ‘defeating you enemies’ (buying), ‘researching new technology’ (buying), or ‘exploring’ (buying), you’ll add cards to you discard pile to later get shuffled back into your deck to crop up later. At some point you’ll realise your deck is full of weak starter cards and you’ll want to expunge them somehow from your collection to speed up your access to the more powerful cards.