Recently I’ve run in to the issue with work and life getting in the way of my normal boardgame times and have started going in to withdraws. It was at this point when I started looking through Amazon for more boardgames I don’t have time to play and I found Friday.
Friday is a deckbuilding game where you try to help Robinson Crusoe get off your island. You do this by teaching him survival skills that will help him against the island and finally in defeating pirates. If the pirates are defeated you win the game.
Friday contains 22 life tokens and 5 different decks, hazards, aging, pirates, fighting, and phase. The main portion of the game comes from flipping over the hazard cards and trying to beat or equal the number on the phase level of the card. If you beat the hazard it is moved over to your discard and eventually shuffled into the fighting deck. Once you exhaust the hazard deck three times (each time increasing the phase level) you move on to fighting the pirates. The pirates act similar to the hazard cards, but have a much higher number to beat.
It took me a couple tries to get the rules and strategy down for Friday, but once I did I was able to move through the game at a very quick pace. Due to the randomness of the cards even after a few playthroughs I still found myself enjoying myself and debating which cards I should use. I was initially afraid that this was going to feel like a tarted up version of Solitaire, but there is enough choice and strategy that Friday keeps you engaged.
If you are the type of person that enjoys any of the various forms of solitaire or deckbuilding games Friday is a worthwhile purchase even if you only use it has a time waster while waiting for your gaming group to show up, if your power is out, or if you’re forever alone.
Sometimes I like to flip to random pages in the monster manual, set up minis, and duke out a two-side battle all by my lonesome in nothing but boxers.
I used to love rolling fights between monsters. Maybe try to see if 30 Goblins could take down a Storm Giant, or a Troll vs. a Gelatinous Cube.
Thuderstone Advance is also a good card based game for Solo play.
…Or so I’ve been told, certainly don’t need to play games solo… you know… with all them friends around………………………………
I’ve tried the original version of Thunderstone solo, but I found it a little boring. Maybe Advance flows a little better with solo play.