Reddit reviews Donald Featherstone's Solo Wargaming

There's a lot of ways to do it. The most basic way is to actively play both sides, exactly as if you were playing a two-player game. The main problem there is that without additional effort, you always know what the other guy intends to do. Using things like numbered blinds can help with obscuring the placement of units on the table, and allow you to suspend disbelief a bit. I play IABSM this way a fair bit and it's pretty fun. I think it's best if there's a defined scenario like "hasty defense of a village" since even in a two-player game both sides would have a pretty good expectation of what the other side would do, and so having that "inside knowledge" isn't as helpful.

The other approach to solo wargaming involves you actively playing one side, while the other side's actions are determined by any number of randomization mechanisms, so that you really can't predict what "the enemy" is going to do. One approach that I've been working on is basically an incursion scenario where my force is infiltrating a known hostile area with intent to capture some objective, but without an understanding of the exact forces I'll encounter. When each unit advances, I roll some dice to determine whether I encounter enemy unit(s), how far away they are, and what they are (all enemies are unseen until they attack, and then they stay on the board). There are modifiers to that roll based on how stealthy I'm being, how close I am to major objectives, and how vigilant the enemy force is. Once an enemy unit is encountered, a single round of combat is fought between that unit, any units it has in support, and the enemy. I use IABSM as my base rules, so my units are activated randomly, and there are variable turn lengths. I can also modify this mechanism to incorporate reconnaissance by having a unit do a recon check which basically means, roll for an encounter but don't force a round of combat.

This seems like a reasonably elegant way to justify using a more or less random dice roll to determine whether I get in a fight, otherwise it just feels like I'm fighting waves of zombies. I think I can adapt it to other scenarios like fixed defense as well, again using my proximity to the objective as a modifier.

Sorry for going on and on. I really love solo wargaming, although my wife says it makes me the loneliest nerd in a hobby known for lonely nerds. Donald Featherstone has a really good book about solo wargaming, I'd recommend checking that out as well.

EDIT: [Donald Featherstone's Solo Wargaming] (http://www.amazon.com/Donald-Featherstones-Solo-Wargaming-Curry/dp/1409260119)