Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I love wargaming, and would love to continue it. Unfortunately due to work and life I can't keep a reliable gaming group together. I am looking into a small scale (6-15mm) desktop solo skirmish gaming. Anyone have suggestions? Any advice to share from your years of gaming alone? Rules?

While not a skirmish game in terms of scale but one could argue in terms of figures "De Bellis Antiquitatis" (commonly DBA) is a great game. It is quick and fun, moves are easy but it has loads of strategy. It's main quality is the interaction of troop types. It is an ancient and medieval miniatures wargame. I have a Byzantine, Medieval German and Scythian army. Version 2.2 is played on a 24" square area, the new 3.0 I don't know.

Might I suggest looking at some of the solitaire board wargames that are out there? Sure they're not miniature games but there's a huge variety out there and many of them can easily cope with having their components (usually blocks or counters) replaced with miniatures. There's an excellent list on Board Game Geek that is definitely worth having a look through to see if anything catches your eye. link

Chain Reaction and Star Army 5150 could be for you. They are "hard" sci Fi, but can easily be used for moderns/WWII/Wierd War II with a bit of tweaking.

Force on For e and Tomorrow's War could also fit the bill due to their reaction system, but it is not designed for it.

looks like 5 Parsecs from home would be perfect. Tiny Solitary Soldiers blog had a short series on the game that sold me on it and describes it better than I could

http://tinysolitarysoldiers.blogspot.com/search/label/FiveCore

small skirmish game, author has a few different settings including modern and sci-fi

 Easy E wrote:
Chain Reaction and Star Army 5150 could be for you. They are "hard" sci Fi, but can easily be used for moderns/WWII/Wierd War II with a bit of tweaking.

Force on For e and Tomorrow's War could also fit the bill due to their reaction system, but it is not designed for it.

Yep, look at Two Hour War-games:

http://twohourwargames.com

Ed (the owner) has free rule sets that allow you to try out the mechanisms.

http://twohourwargames.com/free.html

The 'for sale' sets expand on those mechanisms for the most part and add period flavor. All are solo friendly. He has rules for Sci Fi, fantasy, moderns, WW2, pulp, colonial and more.

+1 for THW stuff. Check Red Sand Black Sky or whatever its called out. Gladiator game with a board split into zones. At 15mm you could have a singleplayer game just mounted on a A4 magnetic whiteboard.

Thank you for the response everyone! I am not particularly interested in historical or fantasy, but DBA really looks cool and am investigating. Tinysolitarysoldiers.com was mentioned and he has been an inspiration of mine, leading me to post this question here. 5150 is on the top of my list, but I can't see if he really loves the system or not.

Much like him I'm prone to make gaming guides and skip pen and paper all together. it's the reason 5 parsecs worried me, reviews out there mentioned charts to refer to charts. Anyone have personal expirance with it?

Tomorrow's war is of great interest to me, especially because I love force on force. I assume that can be played solitaire, anyone have experience with this? Any rule mods?

 Twoshoesvans wrote:
Thank you for the response everyone! I am not particularly interested in historical or fantasy, but DBA really looks cool and am investigating. Tinysolitarysoldiers.com was mentioned and he has been an inspiration of mine, leading me to post this question here. 5150 is on the top of my list, but I can't see if he really loves the system or not.

Much like him I'm prone to make gaming guides and skip pen and paper all together. it's the reason 5 parsecs worried me, reviews out there mentioned charts to refer to charts. Anyone have personal expirance with it?

Tomorrow's war is of great interest to me, especially because I love force on force. I assume that can be played solitaire, anyone have experience with this? Any rule mods?

If you are even moderately interested in 5150, download the free Chain Reaction and give it a shot. Some folks hate Ed's mechanisms, some love them. He is VERY good at answering any questions you may have, and I suspect looking at his Yahoo group and the new forums will give you plenty of play examples.

DBA is a good game, but previous versions were difficult to teach yourself as the writing style was 'interesting'. I'm not sure how the newest version reads. I never really saw it as a solo game though.

Tomorrow's War is a good game (note, I am biased, I play tested it and helped write some of the grid rules, I also wrote the tactics section in Force on Force). If you like Force on Force, you'll probably like Tomorrow's War. Again, some folks like the mechanisms, some can't wrap their heads around the reaction system. If you 'get' FoF, you'll 'get' Tomorrow's War. If you can play FoF solo, you'll figure out how to do it with Tomorrow's War.

Thank you Jake! The game system is marvelous and you helped make an awesome thing. I've never played FoF solo, how well does that work? I have ambush Z but never got into it. I know zombie movement is brainless (There's a bad joke in here somewhere), facilitating solo play.

Just to add that THW has "Reaction" games for a wide variety of genres and nearly every THW game has specific accommodations for solo play. It's kind of their niche.

If you like post apoc, check out All Things Zombie. And there is a version of 5150 called "New Beginnings" that is more of an RPG experience.

I've officially read through the free crossfire rules. My main concern now is the charts! How is the game flow once you get into it? Much like tinysolitarysoldier I like the game to flow as quickly as it can with little page turning.

Any suggestions for a rule set that would accommodate a District 9 15mm setting solo?