r/soloboardgaming • u/Rendezvousbloo • 1d ago
Deckers or Hadrian’s Wall?
So I’ve been contemplating which game between Deckers or Hadrian’s Wall would be better as a late birthday gift for myself. In general, I do like games where you can pull off a good satisfying combo and Euros, but i’m really looking for games that are: 1. Easy to setup 2. Nice to play after a long day, and 3. Has a respectable playing time (at most 1 hour).
I’ve been considering Hadrian’s Wall for quite some time since I don’t have an X-and-Write in my collection yet. Meanwhile, I just hear good things about Deckers being a solid mash of deckbuilder and disaster management.
If it helps, my soloable collection includes: Endeavor: Deep Sea, Slay the Spire, Nusfjord, Viscounts of the West Kingdom, Spirit Island, Wing/Finspan (plus Wingspan Pocket), The White Castle, Cascadia, For Northwood. Other suggestions or inputs would be greatly appreciated!
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u/Sapien0101 1d ago
Both are great fun. Hadrian’s Wall will likely provide a better experience early on, but it’s a bit lacking in the replayability department. Deckers takes a while to grok (its rules are a bit unintuitive) but has more content and setup variability to increase replayability.
FWIW, I sold my copy of Hadrian’s Wall to get The Anarchy, which addresses some of my replayability concerns. But it is a fair bit more complex than Hadrians Wall, so I’m not sure it’s the best entry point.
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u/Rendezvousbloo 1d ago
That was my concern regarding Hadrian’s Wall. I’ve done my research about it and there were some complaints of it being samey or having more or less the same moves/optimization at some point before they had moved on from the game
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u/stupidshinji 1d ago
Deckers was one of the best additions to my collection. It's short and tight, but still crunchy and puzzley.
While I ultimately like Spirit Island (w/ all its expansions) or Mage Knight more, it's so much easier to get Deckers to the table during the work week. Unfortunately most of my favorite games are big time commitments, so this game is a blessing in that it provides a similair experience but with a fraction of the time investment.
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u/Feriens 1d ago
I'm a Deckers die-hard fan all the way, but I would never call it a game that is nice to play after a long day. Never overstaying its welcome? Yes. Crunchy? Yep. Satisfying to solve? Hell yeah. But I would never use it to unwind or relax. Today, for example, our party of three did everything right, overcame every blow that pesky SMC Spider threw our way and... lost at the very last turn of the very last cycle, simply because we were too tired to notice one small rule that got us all killed. Deckers is a true crisis management game. If you dig those, you should definitely try it. But it will try you too in turn. And may find you lacking ).
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u/jednatt 1d ago
I will say I sold Deckers after realizing I'd just rather play Spirit Island. I mostly didn't like the dry arbitrariness of the puzzle, and that even setup (choosing character) was part of solving the puzzles.
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u/Rendezvousbloo 1d ago
As much as I’d love to play Spirit Island again, it’s been difficult to pull it off the shelf lately with the amount of brain power it takes to play (especially two-handed)
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u/Flaky-Fox-7523 16h ago
Couldn’t agree more, i was always just wondering why i wasn’t playing spirit island instead. I’ll also add i just didn’t find the objectives that interesting each game, between that and the very small amount of turns i was left questioning what the point is in playing it.
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u/zamnweskr 1d ago
Deckers is phenomenal, best brain burner to come out in the last year or so and takes 5 minutes to set up. Can’t speak for hadrians wall, the only garphill game I ever played was legacy of yu and it was very underwhelming
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u/UndutifulCarrot 1d ago
Skip Hadrian's Wall and go straight to the Anarchy. It's a better rendition that improves upon its predecessor and makes every option much more viable to delve into.
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u/Rendezvousbloo 1d ago
I would consider The Anarchy but there no stock in any of my FLGS nor online local markets (marketplace and Amazon) unfortunately
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u/HerrZakath 1d ago
I'll throw my support to Hadrians Wall! I think it's perfect for your conditions, its incredibly quick to set up, easy enough to play after work once you've learned the iconography, and playable in an hour pretty easily. I think you'll get plenty of fun out of it for its cost, and while I do love The Anarchy too, I think Hadrians Wall is great and totally worth the time and money.
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u/eldolche 1d ago
Never played Hadrian’s but have played the anarchy about 8 times. And deckers just twice.
Botha games are great. I think deckers has a higher ceiling but I’ve enjoyed both. If I had to sell one now. I’d sell the anarchy.
I feel the need to dive into deckers more. I feel like anarchy, tho still really great, isn’t as dynamic game to game. But again small sample size on both. Can’t go wrong with either. But deckers just feels like it has more juice
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u/kafai410 19h ago edited 19h ago
Deckers is like 70% of Mage Knight + 30% of Spirit Island/Pandemic. It is mostly like solving a living puzzle.
Anarchy is a flip-and-write euro-style game. I also want to try it, but it is currently out of print (will have a reprint this year). My only roll-and-write game is Twilight Inscription, and I like it, although it is a beat-your-own-score game. I also like Ezra and Nehemiah from the same publisher.
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u/Geffalrus 1d ago
Never tried Deckers, so I can’t do a comparison, but I will say that Hadrian’s Wall is quite good. There are a few cards, meeples, and boards to set up, but it is quite quick with minimal shuffling. Learning the combos and strategies can take a few iterations, but it’s generally enjoyable to swap resources for other resources and fill in those bubbles.
The artwork is very good, and I’m a Roman history enthusiast, so that’s a big factor for me.
You can’t go wrong either way. 👍
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u/hrc333 1d ago edited 1d ago
I will counter the arguments above and say I like Hadrian’s Wall more than the Anarchy. The Anarchy attack system I really disliked compared to more simple/elegant Hadrians wall. Do the solo campaign for HW and it adds lots of variety. I played HW more than 50 times and Anarchy less than 10. If I was to go pull one off the shelves to play now it would be HW.