Getting the Most Out of Your Collection

    It's very easy to acquire titles of varying quality and genre, but it's not always easy to get them to the table.  Case in point, I recently dove headfirst back into my hobby of board gaming in all forms, with an emphasis on exploring what I originally liked about the world of tabletop games, and an even larger emphasis on branching out and learning more about titles that are more alien to me.  I'm trying to hit several marks with my current involvement, as listed below:
         A) Explore genres and subgenera's that you've never touched. My goal is to explore popular euro games (common themes and mechanics) and open up to things that may only "seem" less interesting on the surface.  I'm very interested in games that adopt western themes and apply heavy euro inspired mechanics.
         B) Invite more social opportunities into the hobby.  While boardgames have and always will be social in form, the point of this note is to invite even more interaction into the experience of the hobby.  I want to go out of the way for my collection to spread enjoyment to others, this includes going to meet ups and local FLGS game nights.  I will be attending a Frostgrave game shortly, and have it marked on my calendar.
         C) Do more solo gaming.  While this entry kind of goes against point B, it includes painting miniatures and learning rules which is essential.  Playing solo is a far cry from playing with friends, as the interaction is with the game and not the good company, but as someone who is interested in design and game theory, there's no better time to focus on how mechanics, components and theme interact than when you can really take your time to involve yourself in those things.  Games like Comancheria ask you to fully commit to its intricasies simply by being designed as a solo game.  It's fun to explore solo variants for multiplayer games, as there is a community who will often offer thoughts on how fan made mechanics will interact with the game engine itself.
         D) Don't purchase so many games.  My collection recently hit a point where I can consider who is attending the game night and tailer what I take off the shelf before they arrive.  Once a collection encompasses that criteria, where you can accommodate guest tastes and your own, then I don't see the point in scaling up the collection for the collection's sake.  I recently had played a medium to heavy game (Salt Lands) with my cousin who was visiting for a few days, and as it was getting late he said he would like to play something light, but still engaging, playtime no longer than 30m - 1hr.  As I looked in the closet I ran down the options to myself - several good choices in FF silver line games, and even lighter fare like Machi Koro, but in the end my eye landed on One Deck Dungeon, perfect match.  So perfect, in fact, we played for 2 full hours, and another 4 the next day.  Past that collection criteria, which is different for people as it's based on personal taste, then culling and replacing is necessary.

These are 4 quick thoughts.
     

Collection: April 2016

April collection update. New adds include The Castles of Burgundy, Comancheria and Portal of Morth.  I'm trying to branch out with my collection to include more euro inspired titles, and Portal of Morth has just been on my radar for far too long.  I was able to sell off three titles, bringing my collection back down to 60, but this acquisition doesn't help the space issue.  I'm going to continue to cull some of the stuff that does not make it to the table.

Collection, 63 titles in no particular order:
Aeon's End (2016)
The Undercity (2015)
Tiny Epic Galaxies (2015)
Mistfall (2015)
Shadowrun: Crossfire (2014)
Xenoshyft: Onslaught (2015)
One Deck Dungeon (2016)
Sentinels of the Multiverse (2011)
Millennium Blades (2016)
Warhammer Quest: The Adventure Card Game (2015)
The Networks (2016)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Board Game (2016)
Star Realms, Base Set (2014)
Flash Point: Fire Rescue (2011)
Escape: Curse of the Temple (2012)
Saltlands (2016)
Pandemic (2008)
Grimslingers (2015)
Portal of Morth (2015)
The Castles of Burgundy (2011)
Comancheria: The Rise and Fall of the Comanche Empire (2016)
Battletech Introductory Box (2002)
Apocalypse Chaos (2015)
Galaxy Defenders (2014)
Machi Koro (2012)
Machi Koro: Bright Lights, Big City (2016)
Sushi Go Party (2016)
Tsuro (2004)
Castle Panic (2009)
The Adventurers: The Temple of Chac (2009)
Last Night on Earth: The Zombie Game (2007)
Dungeoneer: Tomb of the Lich Lord (2003)
Dungeoneer: Realm of the Ice Witch (2005)
Munchkin + Unnatural Axe Expansion (2001)
Zombie Fluxx (2007)
Through the Desert (1998)
Colossal Arena (1997)
Red November (2008)
Space Hulk: Death Angel (2010)
Mag Blast (2006)
Dork Tower (2003)
Arkham Horror (2005)
Order of the Stick: Adventure Game (2006)
Monsters Menace America (2005)
Roborally (1994)
Nexus Ops (2005)
Vegas Showdown (2005)
Aye, Dark Overlord (2005)
Betrayal at House on the Hill (2004)
Battlestations (2004)
Killer Bunnies & The Quest for the Magic Carrot, Blue - Green (2002)
Codenames (2015)
Schmovie  (2013)
Chez Geek & Chez Geek Slack Attack (1999)
The Oregon Trail Card Game (2016)
Zombies!!! (2001)
Diamonsters (2013)
Timeline: Music & Cinema (2013)
Doom (2004)
Chaos Isle: Zombi Deck with Expansions (2008)
Wreckage (2003)
Memoir '44 (2004)
Pocket Battles: Celts vs. Romans (2009)

Analysis Paralysis: What's Next for this Collector

     I consider myself to have become "something of a serious board game collector" thanks to the intense availability of interesting, engaging and fun games on the market right now that support cooperative play, but there are many areas of the hobby I have yet to really crest in any meaningful way.

     Wargaming has always been interesting to me, but was in the past visually unattractive.  I never liked the cardboard chits with clipart insignias, but now that I'm wiser and care less and less about miniatures and more about engaging mechanics and the puzzling part of gaming, I now know that if I gave a good one a worthwhile shot, I would probably enjoy it immensely.
      Possible adds: For war games, I have my eye on adding Comancheria and Advanced Squad 
      Leader to my collection.

     I have a very similar relationship with Eurogames, to the surprise of some.  For the longest time, a box cover with a German farmer looking longingly past a field of grain or the image of a 14th century lord would have me clicking away faster than you could say point salad.  If I wasn't going to escape into a masculine power fantasy with upgradable weapons and dramatic, final turn dice rolls that determine the win or the lose, then I simply was not interested.  That's changed in recent years.  I really enjoyed the heck out of Pandemic most recently, but prior to that I played a bit of Primordial Soup, but simply couldn't get into Agricola.  The gist is, I know the interest is there and I'm ready to explore this massive archive.
      Possible adds: Alhambra, Carcossone

    Finally, lets quickly hit on my bread and butter genres: accessible light games and thematic, combat fueled games with miniatures.   I've already picked up Sushi Go this year, as well as The Undercity respectivley.
      Possible adds: I've got my eye on Dream Home and Dungeon Alliance, which I did not back
                               but was just funded on KS.  Also Wrathborne Champions looks stellar.  I'm
                               going to keep my eye out for these titles, but sideline them in the interest of
                               increasing exposure to the other two categories in this post.  I also really want to
                               grab Legends of Andor (which exists in a cross section of these categories I
                               believe.)

New Adds, Mid March & Backlog

I've been in the mood for acquisitions lately.  I took a lot of time away from this hobby and I'm rediscovering a lot of the things I love (and don't love) about it.  Within the last 13 months I've doubled my collection, bringing it into the now while still hanging on to the parts of the old collection I have great memories of.  That being said, I have a lot of work to do to cull the herd. There are boxes I haven't opened in ten years (Doom 2004, Betrayal at House on the Hill first edition, Order of the Stick, Last Night on Earth) and there are games that will probably never, ever hit the table again (Cthulhu Dice, are you even a game? Diamonsters, why are you in such a monster of a box?).  With this task being part of the hobby, I am joyful when something like a successful trade goes through and pieces like these are passed to people who will play them.  I rarely get sentimental about letting things go because I only part with the parts of my collection that I do not want to see again.

I had a few trades lately that went very well over BGG, but I was unable to move much in the way of physical games.  I had a small amount of Star Wars Destiny cards, and having not been able to play the game because of lack of stock, and having not been able to participate in any organized events because of lack of stock, I put them up for trade and received both Escape: Curse of the Temple and Flash Point: Fire Rescue.  Excited to have both in the collection as I love daring adventure as a theme, and there is a pretty good chance my lady will give them a shot.  I also made a new release purchase thanks to rewards points.

So my new adds are:

Flash Point: Fire Rescue
Escape: Curse of the Temple
SaltLands, and the Lost in the Desert Expansion.

So I actually didn't cull the heard, I lost 1 sort-of game and gained 2, then bought a new release and its expansion.  As I said above, I've got a long way to go to get these games into my bookshelf in my new apartment.

Here's the backlog of yet to be played:

Shadowrun: Crossfire
Aeon's End
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Star Realms
Tiny Epic Galaxies
The Networks
Killer Bunnies: Heroes vs. Villains
Flash Point: Fire Rescue
Escape: Curse of the Temple
SaltLands

I recently crossed off Pandemic and Sentinels, time to get crackin'!

New Add: Pandemic (I'm Late To The Party)

     I was recently able to acquire a new copy of Pandemic.  I felt like my collection had a lot of dicey games full of random outcomes and laughs (which I love) and I wanted something that was a bit more refined, but still had high stakes.  Pandemic is a game anyone can get into, and since it's carried in big box stores (so I'm told but I've never seen it) its sales do very well.  I enjoy a lot of deterministic games, but I've never hooked on to them as well as I have to things that generate replayability though the game of excessive chance, and I admit I haven't played enough of them enough times to even be part of the jury.  That's just me.  I'm excited to try Pandemic, though my backlog is hurting at the moment.  I just knocked out my first few solo games of Sentinels of the Multiverse and had the great opportunity to play Mag Blast 3rd ed. with some perfect strangers, which was a hoot, but adding this just makes the "get through the backlog" goal that much farther out of reach.  It's okay though, because there's always something to play.
   

Memoir '44: Looking Back On a Classic

        Memoir '44 doesn't hold a special place in my heart, but I do have great memories.  It's a fun game about a particularly destructive part of history that serves to make accessible the common wargamer's affinity for relative historical accuracy.  It also acts as a tribute, presented in a respectful way as to preserve the integrity of both the game and those who play it.  I don't leave it out of my top considerations for any good reason; it is at all times well designed, excellently produced and easy to understand.  My problem is that I didn't play it enough.
       All gamers travel peaks and valleys during their time spent at the table.  There are chapters of your life where you may have a particularly common game night with a steady group, playing some games you like and some you love, and others you don't want to see again.  Some of these people you play games with may move or stop playing, or you might move or stop playing.  Work may get busy, you may travel, get hired somewhere else and have to commit to other facets of this modern life because you do or do not want to.  It is both normal and necessary, and it makes us who we are, defines our history and the stories we tell about games we played during that time when we played for hours. Memoir '44 is a part of that for a lot of people because it was popular a long time ago. Since then, times have changed for everybody, new games have been released, innovations in design have been made and game groups have formed and deformed.  Memoir '44 lands during one of those times when I was winding down on the hobby.
      It's a game where you should play every scenario to fully understand the story it is telling, and that's something I didn't do.  A couple of plays of Bridge Too Far (or the like named equivalent), the Omaha Beach scenario, one or two of the town raids (if I'm remembering correctly, this is almost a decade ago) and I think I probably executed about half of the book's scenarios, but there are a couple I think I shyed away from that I would like to get into now, and they include the more complex scenarios with many tank formations and encampments.  Of course, some of these are naturally unbalanced.  For historical accuracy the designers made sure to replicate, using their system, the balance of power at the start of the engagement.  I remember that being a particularly satisfying aspect of the game, and at times frustrating.
      Another aspect of that system was the board's segmentation, and the cards that commanded the units.  Hand management along with miniatures tactics is something we may see a lot of today, but at the time I had just gotten my hands on it, and everything about the game beamed of great things to come for the hobby.  So when I took a break for the sake of my education, wallet and future, I remember Memoir '44 being the thing that kind of pulled me back in years later.  Not because we got back in to playing it, but because it represented the way I felt about the hobby when I took a break in 2009 - that there was unfinished business.   There are so many unplayed scenarios still waiting in those books for me to come back and share with people, and the promising boom the hobby saw during my absence only sold me harder on the worth of those scenarios.  Memoir is a constant light on the horizon because it represents, for me, the unplayed chapters, formats and characters in our collections.  In that closet of yours is a box with a special power you've never activated or a card you've never played, and an "Oh look at this!" moment waiting to happen.  I'd like to pull it off the shelf soon.
   

Just Follow the Card: A "Sentinels" Dual Session Report

     I was recently able to log my first two Sentinels of the Multiverse plays, and it blew me away.  I had been on the fence for a long time, shying away due to the unfamiliar superhero characters in a world where "Superhero" is synonymous with Batman and Spidey,  I thought that if the game was that good, it surely would have been adapted by now, possibly utilizing a more recognizable property.  I got in my own way for the better part of a year, and since I recently dove back into the hobby, I thought I needed to really get off some fences with my purchases and not simply go with what's new and linen textured.

     In a strange turn of events, and contrary to some opinionated views I had read during my time on the dividing line, I found Sentinels to be a smooth, logical and deep game.  The ease of which you can track effects with the banner tokens and the roundabout turn sequence is so fundamental and intuitive in contrast to the majority of cooperatives that have hit my table.  It's a game where every mechanic makes sense, team composition and seat placement is as important as the cards you draw, and it's difficult to lose your place.  It's often in solo games that there's so much going on that I need to write down important actions just to keep everything straight.  In a multiplayer game you can often rely on a friend to correct you if you really mess up, but solitaire play requires you to be sharp at all times and it's not always easy.  I enjoy Sentinels' rules for being aggressively straightforward and telling me to "just follow the card." Play, Power, Draw.

     

     The Report:

     Match 1:

     Team Composition: 

              Left: Tempest         Center: Legacy        Right:   Wraith

      Villain:   Baron Blade (First play recommendation)

      Environment:   Megaopolis   (First play recommendation)

On Team Comp:

      I think I really lucked out with my first team composition.  While I picked them for looking cool, I definitely expected Legacy to be a damage dealer due to his front and center role.  Tempest was my pick for "my guy" but I was a little disappointed in his performance by the end of the game.  While Legacy was integral to success, The Wraith most definitely takes the MVP.   I picked 3 heroes because I did not want to manage 4 hands. 

On Villain and Environment:

      These picks were based on the rulebook's "level 1" recommendation and I was satisfied.  I'll be interested in trying this configuration on Advanced difficulty after I've defeated all the villians once though.  I'm happy to see that even after a full play I've only seen a few of the cards in the deck, and this goes for the heroes too.  

The Match:

      I owe this game's win to Wraith and Legacy's first hands. Wraith had a ton of essential equipment that boosted her attacks, so she was consistently dealing 8+ damage each round with the help from Legacy and his inspiring presence.  In order to keep that buff alive, cards were played by Legacy almost exclusively for that purpose.  I think Legacy only dealt 4 damage the whole game, but he was the target of many attacks due to his HP being higher than anyone else's (particularly by environment cards.) which would then be negated.  Tempest ended up being a "specials" character, discarding ongoing cards now and then but never really doing much damage or boosting Wraith's.  I was slightly dissapointed in this, but as I said above, I feel like I saw a fraction of his cards. Tempest was taken out in the last Villain turn, with Wraith killing Blade the turn after.  At the end of the match, The Wraith was able to nuke all her equipment and turn it into damage  to defeat the Vengeful Mad Scientist for the win.  It was a great first match.

      Career Status:   WINS: 1   LOSSES: 0
      Hero Status: 2/3

++++++++++++++++++++++++

     Match 2:

     Team Composition: 

              Left: Tachyon         Center: Maka        Right:   Legacy

      Villain:   Omnitcron

      Environment:   Primalis

On Team Comp:

      As before, I think I have a strange talent for team composition, as it seemed like these three gelled - maybe not as well as the first play, but they still had chemistry.  It felt like everyone had their shining moment, and the mix of two specialized characters and a consistent damage dealer really helped cut down ongoing villain cards, drone and chip away at Omnicron.

On Villain and Environment:

      These picks were based on the rulebook's "level 1" recommendation and I was satisfied.  I'll be interested in trying this configuration on Advanced difficulty after I've defeated all the villians once though.  I'm happy to see that even after a full play I've only seen a few of the cards in the deck, and this goes for the heroes too.

The Match:

      Haka dealt at least 5 damage every round with One Shots and his base power, (any time I tried to
invest in some ongoing effect that would increase damage later, it was always better to do it now.)  I quickly picked up Tachyon's deck strategy of playing and discarding as many cards as possible so as to do as much damage as possible (picking up speed!) and Legacy mostly helped Haka on damage up until the very end, where she was able to hold two particularly nasty Villain cards (the laser beam that does 15 damage and his skeleton drones) from dealing damage.  Closing it out was a matter of almost decking Tachyon to get the second burst powered attack card (I had foolishly used the first one way to early) to do 16 damage to Omnicron, bringing him to 98 wounds.  With one of her ongoing cards allowing two card plays during the play phase all that was left was to Sucker Punch Omnicron (destroy a villian card with 2 HP) and he is down.  From there it was a matter of cleaning up the drones for the win.

      Career Status:   WINS: 2   LOSSES: 0
      Hero Status: 3/3

If you spot any rule inconsistencies, I'd love to hear it! Thanks for reading my session report.

-MS

Tabletop Games Collection, March 2017

       Here's a breakdown of my collection as of March 2017.  I've been collecting since 2005, but have taken long breaks in between stints of playing and collecting.  Everything I have gets to the table unless I have a larger than normal backup like right now.  Shadowrun and Sentinels have yet to get any play.
      I'm looking to acquire copies of of Legends of Andor, Dungeon Run, Space Cadets: Away Missions and Dead of Winter in the near future.  Releases I'm looking forward to include Wrathborne Champions and Dungeon Alliance, just recently funded on Kickstarter.  I've also got my eye on Hero Realms for the promised cooperative deck coming in the near future.


Collection, 63 titles in no particular order:
Aeon's End (2016)
The Undercity (2015)
Tiny Epic Galaxies (2015)
Mistfall (2015)
Shadowrun: Crossfire (2014)
Xenoshyft: Onslaught (2015)
One Deck Dungeon (2016)
Sentinels of the Multiverse (2011)
Millennium Blades (2016)
Warhammer Quest: The Adventure Card Game (2015)
The Networks (2016)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Board Game (2016)
Star Realms, Base Set (2014)
Flash Point: Fire Rescue (2011)
Escape: Curse of the Temple (2012)
Saltlands (2016)
Pandemic (2008)
Grimslingers (2015)
Battletech Introductory Box (2002)
Apocalypse Chaos (2015)
Galaxy Defenders (2014)
Machi Koro (2012)
Machi Koro: Bright Lights, Big City (2016)
Sushi Go Party (2016)
Tsuro (2004)
Castle Panic (2009)
The Adventurers: The Temple of Chac (2009)
Last Night on Earth: The Zombie Game (2007)
Dungeoneer: Tomb of the Lich Lord (2003)
Dungeoneer: Realm of the Ice Witch (2005)
Munchkin + Unnatural Axe Expansion (2001)
Zombie Fluxx (2007)
Through the Desert (1998)
Colossal Arena (1997)
Red November (2008)
Space Hulk: Death Angel (2010)
Mag Blast (2006)
Dork Tower (2003)
Arkham Horror (2005)
Order of the Stick: Adventure Game (2006)
Monsters Menace America (2005)
Roborally (1994)
Nexus Ops (2005)
Vegas Showdown (2005)
Aye, Dark Overlord (2005)
Betrayal at House on the Hill (2004)
Battlestations (2004)
Killer Bunnies & The Quest for the Magic Carrot, Blue - Green (2002)
Killer Bunnies & The Journey to Jupiter (2008)
Killer Bunnies Heroes and Villains (2010)
Codenames (2015)
Schmovie  (2013)
Chez Geek & Chez Geek Slack Attack (1999)
The Oregon Trail Card Game (2016)
Zombies!!! (2001)
Diamonsters (2013)
Timeline: Music & Cinema (2013)
Doom (2004)
Chaos Isle: Zombi Deck with Expansions (2008)
Wreckage (2003)
Memoir '44 (2004)
Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small (2012)
Pocket Battles: Celts vs. Romans (2009)

Please don't ask me to rate them.  I'm actually looking to thin the heard in order to make room for some new titles.  I am in the process of getting rid of some.

Right now they are stacked in 2 separate closets, with the excess sitting on the floor outside the closet.  I'll soon have a much better storage solution with an Ikea Billy bookcase for which to keep them at easy reach.

I'll post a picture when I get it organized.
Updated, end of March 2017

The Tabletop Co-Op Renaissance

       There's a thread in tabletop gaming now that seems to have recently surfaced and taken over the popular forefront of the hobby.  This is truly impressive, because as a niche interest that includes sub-niche sectors classified by various influences reaching as far as the geographical, its relatively difficult to find anything that unifies these genres into a common lane - that is aside from the physical use of the physical; cards, boards - dice to the chagrin of many.  Tabletop gaming has aways been an enormous web of crossing sections that divide and endear audiences in equal measure, but the surge of cooperative titles in the past three years has revealed more about the hobby than I have ever come to learn by playing.
         My impression is that this trend comes almost exclusivly from the wave of cooperative adventure games that were released during the last generation of video game consoles.  It seems in recent years that a lot of the simulations presented digitally are breaking their way back into the physical world.  Doom, the popular first person shooter, has had two board games based on two separate video game releases.  Mechanics in the board games directly echo that of the virtual ones, going so far as to translate both the pace and the flow of an experience existing in a similarly interactive medium that nonetheless exists as figures and dice on a board as opposed to a split second, first person experience. What's more, lines are being blurred every day by adoptive developers to design board games that mirror modern open world questing.  It's come to the point that, similar to video games, many physical board game releases require a stream of content support and updates by developers to stay relevant, not simply dynamic and engaging strategic systems.  In actuality, Gygax and Arnerson pushed a monster out with D&D in the 1970's, and computer games took that monster in and helped it grow.  It only makes sense that it would eventually want to break free and explore the physical world once more.
         I'll share my experience in realizing the existence of the modern co-op renaissance.  When I first started collecting and playing board games I was in high school and had purchased a copy of Monsters Menace America (I'm not much of a Eurogamer - as I'd rather trade blows than crops). Prior to that, I played Magic (incorrectly) and prior to that, Pokémon (also incorrectly).  Before Monsters Menace I had a couple of years playing the Wizkids clix game Mechwarrior with my brother (much more on that in another post) but that's the long of short of it.  After Monster's Menace, I did a bit of research, got into the hobby, and soon followed an acquisition of some entertaining, competitive and semi-cooperative titles like Doom, Vegas Showdown, Order of the Stick, Through the Desert, Colossal Arena and more.  I wasn't aware of a good cooperative experience until Arkham Horror, and didn't know much about the unanswered plight of the soloist until, oddly enough, Chaos Isle: Zombi Deck a few years later.  Back then, a lot of user created Solo/Co-op variants existed on the forums at Boardgamegeek because there was a demand for them, but it was relatively untapped on the market.
       After a couple years of collecting I went off to school, dropped the hobby and started both a career and a relationship.  Years would pass before I'd learn about Galaxy Defenders, a 1-5 player game where the entire opposition was controlled by a set of conditional orders based on position in respect to the players, and I flipped.  The reason I was so interested in Galaxy Defenders was that it changed the entire experience of the hobby from an effort to use established mechanics to best a friend into a collective effort to twist established mechanics in order to solve a puzzle.  That got me jazzed for more of the coming innovations in popular games.
       Since then, the hobby has seen an explosion of cooperative and solo compatible titles come from developers from all backgrounds.  Where there once was only semi-cooperative games like Descent that employ one player to control the opposition (One Vs. All is also the term) there are games like Galaxy Defenders, The Undercity and Gloomhaven.  It's satisfying because the puzzles are difficult, and collaboration not only allows everyone to share victory, but general gameplay always has a productive tint.  Speaking in terms of the previously mentioned genre, whether cornered or knocking out enemies at every turn, the connection between the players at a strategic level is something that's fairly new to the hobby. All players haven't really had the chance to fight a pure design without someone to referee the proceeding, and that's not specifically for games that were born out of the slipstream of RPGs such as the dungeon crawler genre - it also goes for deck building games like Aeon's End, Star Realms + Gambit Expansion, Shadowrun: Crossfire, Xenoshyft: Onslaught and defense games like Portal of Morth, Apocalypse Chaos and Castle Panic.  The stage is set, and random elements such as Xenoshyft's market items exist heavily to encourage subsequent plays and keep the game from getting predictable.  While you generally work toward the same goal, the variables involved change the puzzle every time.  The ability for these products to spread the brain burn around is inspiring.  It encourages a group to agree in order to accomplish goals and beat a machine with human wit, reasoning and foresight.  You have to solve the puzzle to win, or else we all lose.
       One of the main attractions to these designs is the absence of a referee or game master.  In traditional RPG gaming and titles that draw heavily from them such as Descent or When Darkness Calls, the mechanic of one player sitting in as the GM can be fun, but it is considered less playing and more running the machine that is the game for the players.  This is because of hidden information inherent in story driven games.  You can't have a character sneak up on the heroes if no one knows he or she is there.  It's fundamental.  This idea is getting broken down with new games that use cards and tile draws to generate encounters and sow a story relying on the interpretation of events that unfold, and that's a very nice development, because in the many circles of gamers I've sat with during my rainy days on this planet, they've all had one thing important in common: no one wants to be dungeon master.
       This is proven time and again by the support these kinds of titles get on Kickstarter, especially  releases that advertise as solo compatible.  The demand for solo variants in games that should involve at least two human people, minimum, is huge.  At times it can seem like some fans don't want other people at their table at all, but the fact of the matter is that board game fans want to play board games, and they want to try and beat the system in different ways. Solo variants and solo compatible games simply allow a different way to approach the challenge.  Some game states are vastly different when presented to a single brain.  There's even a satisfaction in handling multiple player roles with the mind of just one.  It helps that these configurations can be executed in your own time, separate from the ties of the proverbial game night.  That being said, I myself have always believed board gaming to be best and primarily a social hobby, but as someone who admires and respects a game's thematic and mechanical design, being given the chance to tinker on my own time has been fun as well.
       With games constantly evolving and building on each new design as the years go on, I'm actually quite satisfied with the recent saturation of 1-4 player co-operative deck builders, 1-4 player squad-level tactics games and 1-4 player dungeon crawling campaigns that pop up every other week.  It lets me know that, since the cannon of influence that is Kickstarter bucked up in the late 00's, people are making and releasing their dreams of deep, replayable games they really want.  Its evident from the last few years that a lot of those dreams are cooperative.  And it makes sense, right?  We don't always have access to the perfect adversary.  We might have friends who enjoy the mechanics but don't like the theme.  We might have competitors that vastly surpass us in skill level.  I myself spent 1991 - 2009 losing every game I played to my brother.  It makes me happy to have him on my side for once, against a system designed to make us put our heads together.
         
-MS