2 SOLO Games I'm Loving
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Transcript
Earlier this year, I selected Hercules and the 12 labors as my American Ninja Warrior game of the year. Now, if you want to watch my video and learn all about what makes this game so good, but also my Ninja Warrior game of the year, go and watch it. The season is over, but my season of playing solo games is not. So, what I've got here are two games that I really am digging into, much like Hercules and the 12 labors. And I'll tell you right now, I'm so I'm so sore. I'm going to pull it up because I wanted I want to tell you I am actually incredibly interested in Jason and the Argonauts, which is a follow-up game to Hercules by the same NV Born Games, and has the same gold foil with these big tarot cards and dice with a solo experience, but it is so expensive. I can't tell you right now, folks, I'm so mad. So, even at the base level of getting in is 40. After shipping, it was 60. And I thought for a card game? For a solo card game to pay $60? I thought that was way too pricey.
So, if you're listening, you can send me a game. I would take it for free and get it on my channel, but that's probably not going to happen, so let's play some other solo games. I want to tell you right now, this first one is light and abstract and really addictive. So, it is Ravel, rare artifact vertiginous enigmatic logical. I've got the game set up right now. There are 16 cards in the game. You are going to shuffle them up and deal four to each side of this cardboard cutout that, yes, has those little inserts for dice. You'll flip over the top card face up.
You'll gain eight of these little cog tiles. And you will roll the dice and randomly place them into the display. You're all set up. You're ready to go. The cool thing about this game is that there is a second set of cards. This is a B set. This is an A set. And so you will play with one set until you feel like, "Okay, I think I've figured that out." Play with the second set. So there's essentially like a little mini expansion as part of the game. You also have four more of these guys left out which you can add more to make it a little easier on yourself. You can take these away to make it a little harder on yourself. But the game play couldn't be simpler. You are either going to unlock or tinker. And when you unlock, you have simply met the criteria at the top of the board. So if I take a look at this one right here, this says I have two orange dice on that side of my square.
And they are two, four, or six. That's it. That's all I need to do. Well, guess what? I got one orange die and it's on a six. The other orange die is all the way over here. So I'm going to have to It's going to have to make its way to one of these spaces so it's on that particular side and be a two or a four or a six for that to be possible. This one says any dice color and they need to be two, four, and six. I have a four. I don't have anything else. So that one's not necessarily closed just yet. This one says they can be any colors that aren't the same. So I have a black, a white, and a blue. So that meets the criteria because they are different colors and they have to be of different values which I actually have right now.
And on crazily enough, I've got the same thing over here. It can be any color dice. And they need to be ones and twos. So while these I'm not too close to, I can choose to unlock by completing one of my cards. And the whole goal of this game is to complete all 16 cards. Um and I have these to use as with the other action is is tinker. Tinker says I can swap. And what I do is I pay my token and then I choose to swap two orthogonally adjacent dice. I can swap these two, I can swap those two, I can swap these two. Those are orthogonally adjacent. Or I can pay two of these markers and I can choose to tune and I will set one die on the side of my choice. That's it. That's all I can do.
I can fulfill or I can tinker. And victory happens when I do all 16. Defeat happens if at the beginning of my turn I am unable to unlock or I'm unable to tinker because I've run out of my tinkers. So, what happens is once you are able to do an unlock, you will look at the benefits. I think it doesn't hurt me at this point to play this. If I do this one, I will gain three of those uh tinker uh tinker tokens. So, I'll take this and I'll essentially set that outside of the table and I'll add those three tinker tokens. And then I will flip over this card and that becomes my new card. So, now I'm looking for 513 of any color. Wow! If I just pay one um I can not swap dice. I If I paid two, I can make that four into a three by just essentially putting it on whatever side I want. Then I could complete that.
But I might want to do this one. And anytime you don't know what it does, all you need to do is just look in the rulebook. And I look up A5. And then A5 says, all three dice uh oh the reward, move one stack um face-up cog cards from one stack to another. So, yeah, it says I can do this. Um, and yes, it says here, uh, the card on the top of this stack, it moves to remains face-up where it is. If there's a card underneath it, reveal it having resolved all movements. So, that's going to be the benefit that I get when I do that one. But, this little rulebook just tells you exactly what to do. And if you want to adjust the difficulty, you can do wild, controlled, easier game, harder game. And here's your player aid. I mean, it just couldn't be simpler, right? Ooh, you get to pay one or two to do exactly what I just said so that you can tinker.
It's such an easy game to learn, but it's a difficult game to execute and so win with because you're going to have different dice rolled at the beginning of every time every game you play. You never roll them again unless it says so. Your cards are going to be distributed in a variety of stacks and order. And then, of course, you've got the deck B, which has totally different, uh, cards, totally different requirements. Um, and the benefits are going to be or the rewards are going to be just slightly different. So, this guy is a 10-minute game. I see it more like a 20-minute game. I mean, for me, thinking, it's all about like how fast you are as a thinker. So, um, Ravel or the rare artifact vertiginous enigmatic logical, uh, very abstract game in a nice small package, definitely akin to my love for Hercules and the 12 labors.
The dice are part of it. The challenge is there. The puzzly feature of it is there. And totally scratches that itch as I wait for, um, Jason and the Argonauts, which is not coming, but boy, do I want it to be coming. Okay, so now I'm going to magically get my next game out here so I can share with you my second recommendation for a dynamite solo play that totally reminds me of Hercules and the 12 labors. Okay, like magic, I've got my table set up for Ace of Spades. Uh this was put out by Devir, designed by uh Benja Morin, and is that solo battle through boss after boss after boss, which is totally like the 12 labors. In this case, I've got uh 11 rounds to get through before I can win the game. And I'm going to be dueling these enemies, and the enemies are selected from this particular deck. So, right now, these are going to be like the starting enemies, and the starting enemies are pretty similar. And it's just that they give a different benefit whenever you uh have them in your play area. But, they each have five health. There's a vulture, a mule, a scorpion, and the coyote. I've already queued up the coyote. So, you're going to put in their health right here. And then you're going to look down at the top card of this deck that you have curated from these.
So, you essentially have four ones. You're going to just going to shuffle these up, pick one of them. Then you're going to have your twos, which it looks like my threes are out of place. There we go. Put my threes in place. Uh then your threes, then your fours, then your fives, then your sixes, and so forth. You'll just have all these choices all the way down. So, you're going to stack these cards up, but I wanted you to see that that's how you're going to stack up your enemy deck, and we're going to put this back up there. So, we're ready to go. You shuffle up your 52-card deck that has one joker in it, but you don't have the joker at the beginning. You shuffle it in after you deal yourself eight cards. Now, I'm ready to go. I have two duels to fights to kill this guy, which is five health points. That's what this is, the gun. You have essentially two bullets. And then you also have two of these discard and draw or renew the deck and shuffle. And so that's going to give me a chance to maybe if I don't get dealt the cards I need, then I'm going to put them over here when I've played them. So I'm going to look at my cards and it looks like I've got a full house.
I wonder if a full house is going to be able to kill this guy. Now do I want to spend my full house on this guy? Maybe. I didn't realize I was going to have these cards. That's pretty good. So if I take a look at this and I say I've got my full house, you look at this right here and it says six bullets. All right. Six bullets is great. Now the cool thing about this is if you play jack, queen, or king, it gives you a plus one, but only if it's part of your hand and your hand has to be five cards. You get a plus three if you play an ace. So in addition to the hand that you make, you also get to add those. So I'm going to say I went boom boom. Just one shot is all it takes. If I don't do that, I'm going to have to draw and discard and I don't know if I want to discard a queen. Now I'm not fond of the three and the nine that I'm left with, but this is pretty good. So I'm going to take this coyote. I'm going to set him to the side over here and now it says I get to change the suit of one of the cards in the hand you play this turn one time only. It's a lightning so I get to use it in the future anytime I choose, which is really really nice.
So that's going to be one round. I will take this guy. Now when you use your bullets, you make your marker, your wheel goes down, and then this goes down, and so you'll keep track of that cuz it's probably going to take you more than one turn to do it. I got pretty lucky here. So now I'm going to flip this guy over. I got the buffalo soldier. Yikes. He has seven and then this is what he's going to give me whenever I defeat him. So all we need to care about is that seven right now. I'm going to put him in there. Change my wheel up to seven. And then I will essentially get started for the next round and do exactly what it says. I got two bullets still. I got two of those redraws. I'm going to be shuffling this deck through, but only if the last enemy you defeated happens to be a villain and they're going to be marked with that kind of sheriff star.
That means that a whole new like scene is going to start. It's kind of like you've got like these couple tools in a row and it's like a whole moments and then like a new thing starts and so you'll be able to shuffle and then you will essentially start a brand new scene. Then you're going to draw back up to your eight cards. So these are going to be in my discard pile still unless I do this wheel thing and then I draw my cards and I've got five No, that's seven. Okay, so I got seven and then eight. Not the best hand, but I'm also looking at a possible two, three, four. I have two kings and a queen. I have an eight, nine. Yeah, I don't even think I've got I I don't think I have any kind of yeah, flush. I don't think I have any of that.
I don't have any pairs. So now is going to be the time where to get to my seven, I'm probably going to need to do that and I know I don't have these cards in my hand. So maybe having the eight is one that I want to discard so that I can draw back up again. So you just continue to fight gaining these characters, putting them over here, having one-time abilities that you get to use. So every time you play, you're going to be picking new characters or new enemies to fight against and you just keep going down the the shoot until you cannot defeat one of those villains. And if you can't defeat someone, that's going to end your entire game much like in Hercules and the 12 labors. If you fail get to the little skull face on your dice when you move it, your game's over. You don't get to fight any more labors. You essentially lost what in the game itself in like the challenge or in your own health bar.
So this has so many crossover features, but has a really really fun like Wild West. I love a Wild West theme. I do. I do. And I love poker. I love Texas Hold'em. Give me a table, I'll play anytime. So this has a delightful solo play with your puzzle of hedging your bets, knowing what you have, knowing what you've discarded, coming up, and then using your one-time use abilities at exactly the right time to keep your game going so that you can go as far down that enemy train as you can. Totally replayable, super super duper fun, high high theme. I think this is just a delightful game. So for me, Ravel and Ace of Spades are now my two obsessions for solo play. And yeah, I'm still going to play Hercules and the 12 labors. You better believe it. So that is going to be it for me. I hope you enjoy these solo games. Let me know in the comments if you've played them or if they sound really really interesting and right up your alley. I know I don't always get solo games on my channel, but when I do, they are real real delights.
All right everybody, I will see you later. Bye.