Hey everyone,
trying to find some new board games. Love sentinels but need some games that can be played solo. Also any other stuff that could be fun that could be played with multiple people. Was looking at Guardian Chronicles since it looked interesting but felt too much like a sentinel tactics knock off.
Hi Jacob, I guess it depends on what you are looking for in solo play. Any straight co-op game will work well whilst affording an option to play with others, although many end up feeling like they are still a solo game. I really like Flash Point although I find it more fitting for co-op than solitaire and play it with family rather than on club nights; likewise Forbidden Desert. I also got very deeply into Imperial Settlers recently; solo is a points-climbing game where you try to figure your way around the best way to use your cards to better your highscore, it's much more competitive multiplayer but a massive drag with people who like to over-analyse their turns.
Robinson Crusoe is a great co-op game which mixes strategy with a little puzzle work and a high random factor, but can a bit overwhelming solo on the more intricate scenarios that require multiple characters in play; Ghost Stories is a great solo puzzle game but really susceptible to leading players. Both games will repeatedly kick you in the nuts if what you want is a tough challenge. Less taxing is Space Hulk Death Angel, great if you dig the theme and like a puzzle hampered by a high random factor.
I would also recommend Friday for just solo play. It's a really good challenge for the first few plays until you figure out how to start beating it, then lifespan is limited as it gets a bit repetitive. But I had a lot of fun with it for a while before handing it on to a friend.
Jacob, if you could give us a list of other games you like and what you like about them it would help narrow things down. There are soooo many good board games out there that it's hard to recommendd blindly.
lately its been mainly sentinels, legendary, or boss monsters. Been tempted to check out mice and mystics or Super dungeon explorers. Idk I really am up for anything at this point. Sentinels is just nice because I can play that solo and on the lesser end Tactics I can do solo, except it makes my brain hurt from keep track of everything.
Mice & Mystics might fit your desires, especially with its campaign mode.
M&M is a good light dungeon crawler that certainly can be solo. If you like thematic games (it appears you do from your list) it certainly fits that bill. I also love Ghost Stories as a great (read:very hard) thematic co-op that can be easily solo'd
Mice and Mystics does work fine solo, though I find it mechanically weak/repetitive. The bulk of the fun (of which there is a ton!) therefore comes from the storytelling elements which I personally prefer with a group, though YMMV depending on personal taste.
Robinson Crusoe is a solid adventure survival game for solo play and just gets more interesting with more players (up to four).
Urbion and Onirim are nice cheap semi-abstract card games with a small footprint .They are both solo by design but also play quite well with two (I actually prefer Urbion with a partner). Both are set in the same universe and have been reprinted so I believe they are (finally) available to buy now.
Yggdrasil is a gorgeous co-op action selection game where you play out a battle between ancient Norse gods. It plays from one to six players quite comfortably.
Mage Knight is a spectacular solo puzzle, but it has extensive setup and is a bit of a brain-burner with all the different components to keep track of. A personal favorite, but you may not like it given your solo Tactics experience. Plays up to four.
There's a whole host of games in the cooperative beat-the-ticking-clock area-control genre that play great solo. Theme differentiates them more than mechanics: Pandemic, Forbidden Desert, Forbidden Island, and Defenders of the Realm are top examples here.
And, finally, there are competitve games that are basically multiplayer solitaire and thus don't really need a second player for you to compete against your own high scores: Race for the Galaxy and Dungeon Roll, for example.
I'll get /u/r2d8 to get some info for you in a second.
In addition to Defenders of the Realm, Flashpoint, and Mice & Mystics, I would also suggest Elder Sign. All of them work well solo or with 2 players. Sentinels seems to give me the best solo experience and you can avoid keeping track of everything by playing the video game version.
Was just about to reccommend this one.
Smash-Up is a good game as well. It's a multiplayer compeitive card game, where you summon monsters and use different spells to your advantage to capture bases for points.
I'll throw my weight behind Pandemic/Forbidden Island/Forbidden Desert. My personal favorite is Forbidden Island, although I think it's largely a matter of personal taste. Island and Desert in particular are extremely beautiful and strongly thematic. They don't have as much replay value as Sentinels does, though.
wow so many too chose from. yay several of the ones listed like pandemic and elder signs i have had my eyes on for a while. elder signs worries me about the time issues... unless I am thinking arkham horror. mage knight seems interesting also but I think i looked at it before and something worried me about it. dont remember what though.
I haven't played Elder Sign, but my impression was that it is signficantly shorter than Arkham Horror.
Elder Sign is definitely tremendously faster than Arkham Horror. I've only played it a couple times but I found it a little too scaled down, actually. I liked the different options that Arkham gave compared to Elder sign.
I was given Eldritch Horror as a gift recently which is supposed to be somewhere in the middle of the three games in terms of play time, and I've liked it the little that I've been able to see it so far. Faster than Arkham (though setup and cleanup are probably about the same) but more complex options than Elder Sign. Base game handles 1-8 players.
that key thing being 1 player right now. hard to get the wife to play and hard to get any gaming going on usually except about once a month
It sounds like you are angling for something highly thematic but low on overhead in the actual activity of playing then Morph? WIth that in mind I would give a stronger personal recommendation to both Death Angel and Flash Point; they are both ideally suited to solo play, are very good and getting across their theme in the gameplay, and are simple and straightforward to play with very little bookeeping. I find Matt Leacock's designs to be a bit more like puzzle games, I do like them though. Arcanist Lupus is right in that everyone has a personal favourite, mine being Forbidden Desert as I find the setting a bit more evocative than the others. On a side note I am super stoked for the Thunderbirds Kickstarter that's currently underway.
Some thoughts on other games mentioned:
Elder Sign is fairly short and straightforward but I would recommend you get the app rather than the physical game as you spend more time fiddling about with the game than actually playing it, which would also drop it into straight solo territory. Personally, I feel that it lacks a heart and is a very dry exercise in chucking dice but it is very popular so what do I know 
plus if you're going to get an app then, you know, there's a better one to get first 
Arkham is great for sprawling theme with the emphasis on sprawling, but I fear it requires too much set up and micromanagement for your taste - with a group it's easier as one person can manager the GOO, another the terror track and monsters, another acts as a partial GM keeping the rules as straight as possible, and so on. As a solo experience you will end up spending most of your time bookeeping which drains a lot of tension and engagement out of the game.
These days I would suggest Mage Knight as a stronger recommendation than Arkham. Although it has different setups in the box for solo, co-op, and competitive play, it is fundamentally a solo game which you can happen to play with other people at the same time. Fair warning, it is very complex and strategy is heavily opaque with a steep learning curve, so it's a bit brain-hurty but not through excessive amounts of upkeep.
I liked Mice & Mystics for a bit, it got quite repetitive after the first few chapters though. It's basically a light skirmish/dungeon crawl game with some story chapters that you read inbetween missions. The Pathfinder card game does a similar thing with less emphasis on the story and more on levelling up your characters. It can also get old very quickly, the plus side is that you can generally pick that one up very cheaply.