It's that time of year again!  It's time to make your Top 20 solo games list for the annual Top 100 (Top 200) list managed by Kevin Erskine!  Listen along with Julius as I prepare my list for Kevin

• 2022 Top 20 announcement & discussion thread (BGG)

1. Lord of the Rings: The Card Game

This week Julius teaches me about the game Project L. L stands for that shape of piece in games like Tetris (or Project L), for example.  This is a polyomino game in which you are collecting and upgrading pieces to fit onto boards in order to complete the boards and get points.  It's a rather interesting sounding game and, by the way, the components look really good.

This week we have one of our Popular Mechancis episodes; but, this week we cheat!  We don't talk about a game mechanic per se.  Instead, we talk about big games.  What the heck does that mean though?  Julius and I talk about good games we each think are big.  What are your favorite big games?

• 06:00 Pandemic Legacy: Season 0 (BGG)

We brought in our in-house real-time game expert, Julius to discuss Paramedics: Clear. As hinted above, it is a real-time game in which you play a paramedic rushing to save lives at time runs out.

This week Julius and I finally get around to talking about the 3rd Fantasy Flight co-operative LCG, Marvel Champions.  In this game you play as a super-hero trying to stop a villain from their evil scheme.  The game can be played with the pre-built hero-decks or you can do some pre-game deck construction to build some really powerful heroes.

• Marvel Champions (BGG, FFG)

We took another 1 week break but we come back with a two game discussion!  Okay, they are both small games and this episode ended up being a bit shorter than most but that's okay.  This week's games are similar in that in both you are lining up cards in numerical order.  Each supports 1 to 5 players and each seems fun.  Mind you, Julius and I each have only played one of the two games so we can't really compare if one is more fun than other but we can both say the game we played is definitely fun!

This week Julius tells me all about the game Kingdom Rush: Monsters, based on the tower defense for mobile devices.  The game's art and theme comes straight out of the video game and does a good job of copying the setting, but is it a tower defense game?  Julius doesn't think so.  Listen and get the scoop!

This week is one of our "long running" Popular Mechanics episodes.  This time around we look at deck building in solo games and talk a bit about some we like.

• 04:11 Friday (BGG)

Games I wrote down but didn't talk about

• Lost Ruins of Arnak (BGG)

This week, we look at a board game based on the classic Choose Your Own Adventure series originally published by Bantam.  In these classic game books, you are the hero of the story and as you read through, you get to make choices that very much affect how the story continues.  This was managed with a branching story in which you would read the book out of order.

This game tries to recreate that experience using one of the classic books, number 15 in the series.  It does a great job of making you feel like you are reading an old CYOA book but using cards instead of a book.

• The House of Danger game (BGG)

If you want to explore the House of Danger, listen to episode 264.

If you would rather avoid the House of Danger, go back to episode 263.

This week Julius and I, after taking a 1 week break from the podcast, take a 1 week break from talking about games. That's because this week we talk about puzzles in their various forms.  This is just a friendly chat about the types of puzzles we enjoy.  There are sooooo many types of puzzles it's not hard to find one that will suit you.

Here are some things we mentioned

• Math logic puzzles

• Sudoku

• Wordle

• Rush Hour

• Pinochio "green hats" puzzle

• Heye Black or White