Home Alone? Try Some Solo Wargaming

Over the past year most of us, including members of NWA have been stuck at home without much outlet for their hobby. Wargaming is very much a collaborative hobby and, as such, clubs like NWA enjoy a very social element. Club members don't always attend meetings to play a game. Sometimes they'll turn up for a chat as they sit and prepare armies for future battles.

However, this recent lack of sociability doesn't have to but a halt to your wargaming enterprises. There is always the lesser trodden route of Solo Wargaming!

Most folks think that solo wargaming is difficult to achieve because there is a perception that you will have to try and out think yourself or that you need to try and dupe yourself. However, that needn't be the case. Over the past year I've played a few dozen solo games ranging from small skirmish level to massed battles. 

Skirmish Games

In the arena of skirmish level games we are lucky that there are several set of rules that are specifically designed for solo or collaborative play. These games will have an in built AI that controls the enemy. As the player you will operate your own group of characters and you'll also operate the opposition but your foes will act along certain strictures enforced by the rules. The main factor is to remain honest to the game. After all, you'll only cheat yourself if you don't.

Over the past year the skirmish games I've played are Rangers of Shadow Deep, my own home made zombie apocalypse game Infection Z and Frostgrave. Frostgrave is a popular game at NWA and, at it's heart, is a game to be played against an opponent or two, but there is a supplement (and various free downloads online) for playing the game solo. 

Rangers of Shadowdeep. A scene from one of the 

introductory scenarios in the main rule book.

Frostgrave ~ A solo effort of one of the basic scenarios.

Infection Z ~ The Zombie Apocalypse according to me.

Intermediate Sized Games

By intermediate I mean large skirmish or small battle with 60 to 80 odd figures. I tried a few sets of rules to see what could be used for solo games. The first challenge was to find a game that provided a level of fog-of-war or uncertainty. The second challenge was to not take sides. I found this pretty easy. All the troops belonged to me and I'd like to see all my troops win, so whichever side won didn't matter. The best thing, I decided, was to play each side to the best of their capacity.

Lion Rampant and Dragon Rampant worked well due to the activation system. In these games the best laid plans can be thwarted by poor activation dice rolls. Looking for something with a bit more meat on the bones I tried Saga Age of Magic. This set of rules also depend on a good hand of dice rolls but not to the extend of LR/DR. Saga AoM worked really well and made for some interesting games. 

I also tried a free set of War of the Roses rules that came with a copy of Wargames Illustrated called Never Mind the Billhooks. (sorry no pics). Billhooks provided an interesting game due to the card-draw activation system. It created uncertainty because I never knew what would activate next. Using the philosophy of using both sides to their best ability was crucial here. It also helped that the WoTR was a pretty brutal affair so using everything possible to destroy your enemy made sense.

Big Battles

I considered many and tried a few big battle games: Sword and Spear, Mortem et Gloriam (MEG) and To The Strongest (TTS). I found this size of game to be the most difficult for solo play. Finding a set of rules that gave a good game without the need to try and outsmart myself was difficult. I tried Sword and Spear but they didn't work out, despite the random activation system. MEG was probably the least successful for solo play. It worked to a certain extent but then it just went wrong. The card activation system just didn't work for a solo game. It requires a level of resource management and degree of deception which didn't work well after contact (how do you fool yourself?)

Below: Rome v's Italiotes deployed for MEG.

The game fell apart as a solo effort after the troops made contact. 

To The Strongest: TTS works off a grid system (no measurement you just move from box to box). I was initially sceptical. However, the author's basic premise that ancient tactics pretty much involved advancing toward the enemy until you troops met and started fighting proved to work well. With basic plans like that and another card draw (I used chits) activation system it worked well for solo play. 

The same troops deployed for TTS. The grid system is almost undetectable.

I pretty much used the basic of tactics that the average armies of the day used and the game worked well enough to try a much larger affair. So I played a bigger game and it worked really well. Even better than the smaller game.

Keeping Interested

One thing I've found helpful to keep myself interested is that I run a blog where I put up battle reports and suchlike. For the smaller games this helped because I tend to build up an ongoing narrative and try to make the characters interesting to for myself and the reader. I do a similar thing for the intermediate games but I discard the "ongoing" aspect in favor of a more heroic flavour. With the larger games I just try to emphasize the scale of the battle and the triumphs and failures of the commanders.

Conclusion:

Solo wargaming will never be the same as playing against an opponent but it does have its attractions (no rules arguments for one!). It may work for you or it may not but it's worth a try. Look through the armies that you have available and see what rules might work. Most of the rules I mentioned above worked to one degree or another whether they were specifically designed for solo play or not. So give solo wargaming a try it and you might like it.