Solo or solitaire war gaming continues to, well, shrink. While everyone loves a good monster, you’re probably not lugging In a Dark Wood to your relatives for the holidays. Instead, the games here will let you battle for Ethiopia while sipping sangria at the beach resort, or exorcise irritation at a flight delay by commanding a giant tank. The games below cover a broad range, emphasizing the creativity on display in these small, mighty games.
And don’t confuse size for depth – many of these titles will push even the grittiest grognard to play with smart tactics and strategy to win. Or, as in my case, to lose less badly.
White Dog Games is a Publisher to Love
We begin with publisher White Dog Games, whose designers have crafted quite a few excellent and intriguing solitaire war games. Take Empire of Grass, which 
puts you in Ghengis Khan’s, er, horse shoes? Anyway, you’re laying out cards to build the map as your horde rampages, but you’ll need to be strategic about terrain, which rivals you take on and when, and how to execute pesky rebels. Your goal is simple: conquer as much as you can before your Khan dies. With its small form factor, light and tight rules, Empire of Grass is a perfect example of how to make a fast solo war game work.
We’ve talked about the States of Siege series before, and there’s a fresh entry here too, with Black Skin Black Shirt: Ethiopia vs. Fascist Italy 1935-37. Surviving onslaughts is what the States of Siege system is all about, and here you’re thrust into a little-explored, desperate conflict. What makes these games so compelling is everything going on around the counters marching towards your heart. It’s the diplomacy track, the random events, the struggle to convince the world to come to your aid. All of this is modeled in a quick-playing, brain-burning adventure of a game. If you’re a solo gamer that hasn’t tried this series, well, this is yet another excellent reason to start.
Flipping that script is The MOG: Mogadishu 1993, which tasks you with escorting a group of US Marines and their captives from a raid out of a hostile city. Effectively Black Hawk Down: The Game, MOG gives you dynamic urban warfare with more considerations than just gunning down targets, like making sure casualties get out alive. Enemies appear in large numbers, but are simple to control, giving you the dread of impossible odds without the drudgery of admin (a solo player’s bane). Playing in an hour or so, with loads of scenarios and options, MOG is taut, dangerous, and worth bringing anywhere.
Beyond those three, I’d have a hard time not recommending a game in White Dog Games’ catalog. Many lay outside the norms (check The Mission) and offer solitaire design work that isn’t a patched-together two player experience or an exercise in flowcharts (nor requiring a hefty gaming table to support). If you’re just getting started in solo war gaming, this is the place to begin.
A Fresh, Stylish Solitaire War Game Series
Slimming down the size and boosting the creativity is Worthington Publishing’s new Solitaire Wargame series. These are specifically designed to be travel friendly while packing a punch, a promise largely delivered. Take War in Virginia 1862 – you’re provided with a 14” paper map with point-to-point spaces and a Confederate force to lead against AI-driven Union armies. Event cards tend to give choices rather than forcing you onto rails, offering attack options, commander
bonuses (where will you deploy Lee?), and sending the Union forces towards Richmond. Clashes use a single d6 on an easy-to-use table. What keeps Virginia worth keeping in your bag is the multiple routes to take, the decisions on holding fortified territory or gathering for a thrust north. Every play’s different, and you can run it on a hotel coffee table or, heck, in bed.
If the Civil War isn’t your thing, Operation Dragoon, Shogun, French & Indian, and Europe 1940 tweak both the gameplay and the scenery. If you’re taking a long trip, stuff a few of these into your suitcase and you’ll never be bored. Oh, and recent crowdfunding campaigns promise new games in Midway and Tarawa too, so you can be sure this series has legs.
A reminder, here, to use that Want List, as these titles come and go fast!
Black Orchestra Gets A Sneaky Expansion
The many plots to end Hitler have been the subject of movies, games, and books since, well, since they started. One of the more well-known game adaptations is 2016’s Black Orchestra, is often pitched as a cooperative game that, thanks to its perfect information (like Pandemic and numerous hex-and-counter titles), plays great as a solitaire title. The footprint here is a little larger than the other games on this list, but, when played solo, the sprawl is easier to manage, and is still on the smaller side.
Anyway, you already know what we’re doing here. How you go about it is, again in Pandemic style, by doing various actions with your supporting cast. After those actions are done, you’ll draw an event card from decks that represent stages of the war. You’ll try to collect items, maneuver yourself and/or Hitler to get into the right spot, and chuck a dice in hopes of ending the madness. The random elements here make Black Orchestra more of a narrative adventure than an efficiency puzzle, a replayable factor enhanced with 2025’s Resistance expansion (new characters, new modules). While this toes closer to euro games in some ways than a traditional war game, Black Orchestra also gives your solo play some flexibility: if your kids, parents, or random neighbor want to join in, it’s easy to offer them a spot.
Big Tank Goes Boom
If you want upward mobility in the board games industry, look no further than a print and play design given a full production. Pocket Landship, a card-based, dice-
driven war game delivers on its namesake by putting you into a hefty tank and telling you to blast’em. You’ll start a game by customizing your force, whether that’s by sinking every point into creating a hulking behemoth or spreading it out to build a more diverse squad. Then, shuffle the enemy cards and lay them out.
And commence battle.
Dice rolled for both you and your enemies determine actions and attack effectiveness, a breezy play system that keeps the action moving. There’s no tactical grid or hex map to navigate. This is more about planning where your weapons will be most effective, which enemies are the most dangerous to your loadout, and dealing with Lady Luck’s fickle attitudes. This isn’t a heavy game, but it’s fun, easy to take with you anywhere, and plays start to finish before your boarding row gets called.
All in all, if you’re a fan of things like Battle Line, Undaunted, or other dice-driven battlers, Pocket Landship belongs in your solo library.
A Little Great War
Two sister titles, Habsburg Eclipse and Ottoman Sunset, first published a little more than a decade ago but since refreshed, take the States of Siege setup and put you into the poor souls getting crushed at the onset of World War One. It’s almost like zooming in on part of the Paths of Glory map and zooming out on the options
you have to keep your little zone from falling apart.
Both games offer dice, cards, and a bevy of tricky situations, from advancing armies to political destabilization (revolts aren’t great when fighting a war, folks). Played in around thirty minutes, you’re dealing with rapid-fire decisions, a reasonably light rules load, and plenty of different ways things can play out. Should you acquire both, moreover, you get that loveliest of options: a big, two-front solitaire experience, or a co-op mode to put your partner into play.
Like the other solo games on this list, what you’re getting here is something fast but not stupid, packed with fun but not so impossible or crunchy as to be daunting to pull out when you’re delayed five hours at the airport. Or, at home, needing something to keep you sane while the kids hoover up another Paw Patrol marathon.
War gaming is a broad range – don’t miss out on great experiences by siloing your expectations. The monsters, the squad leader campaigns, and the grand party games are all awesome. So, too, are the little guys.
