Solo Boardgaming

The Summer of the Boxers is a solo wargame published in issue 136 of the French wargaming magazine Vae Victis . The game is in French (with almost no language-dependent text on the counters), and the rules can be downloaded for free from Vae Victis' web-site ( here ) so I thought I might as well start this blog with an English-language review of the game. Also, it is a game specifically designed to be played as a solo game, rather than the adaptation of a multi-player game to the solo format, which also makes it quite interesting as the very first game to be featured on this blog. (My current plan is to review a new game each week, with a mix of specific solo games and adaptations of standard games to the solo format. I also want to cover all kinds of boardgames and not only wargames.) The game components are as follows: a 15-page rulebook a zone-based A3 map of the Peking Legation Quarter at the time of the Boxer Rebellion, with a morale track and a supply track at the si...

There has been an explosion in both the amount of boardgames published each year and the number of people who play them for quite a few years now. For instance, there were approximately 1,000 boardgames published yearly before the year 2000, whereas there are about 3,000 at the moment — and this figure doesn't even take expansions into account! And yet, despite the growing popularity of boardgames, there are still many times when you cannot gather the required amount of people to play that cool game lying on your shelf... and so you get back playing Catan or Ticket to Ride for the umpteenth time. As implied by its name, this blog will explore solo boardgaming, but also how to use multi-player boardgames as solo boardgames , by suggesting solo mechanics, alternative rules, random tables, etc. Watch this space!