I remember a thread where @Curlycross said he played a game against himself and I've been thinking about doing this too since it's hard to get an opponent due to schedules and family. For those that have done it, does it help? I think at the very least it would help getting to know dials and objectives.

You also get to work on how the templates move your units. If you can get out of your own head, as far as what you plan on each side, it can be a pretty good exercise.

You can see how scenarios play out, I think it helps. It falls under the category of more you play the better you get, so against yourself it's double good haha

From time to time, I play chess against myself. I set up the pieces in a fairly random way and play from there, it helps me avoid any initial strategies and also presents an element of contrast. It’s somewhat comparable to what you’d find in chess challenge books, like “find the checkmate in x moves”.

I could see something similar being fun with RW. Set up the armies in different patterns or positions, maybe give some units tokens or wounds and play from there. Sometimes it’s a learning piece to play a game even if you can’t win, because you’re at least practicing the best way to handle the situation.

Yes, to a point. As others have pointed out you get more accustomed to move dials and get a better idea of how tough a unit is, or how much damage it can deal. And if you don't have other players to practice with, then definitely. It can give you great ideas for dealing with units you are struggling against. Plus, it gives you something to do with your new minis that you're excited about on a night when no one else is free.

... But ... There is a real risk of projecting what you think should happen onto another player when you get into a real game. This is the same problem with too much theory crafting. You expect someone to do a certain thing because you've worked out that's how it goes and then they throw you a loop. I even see this in the meta game right now where people are just saying that X unit can deal so much more damage than Y unit and so X unit or upgrade doesn't make sense, or X unit doesn't make sense because even though it's good, "I have a counter for it." And then you get into a real game and discover that while X unit really isn't that good, it had this one feature that allowed your opponent to outmaneuver you with it especially because they placed terrain in a way that you didn't expect and while you have your brilliant counter ready to go, it's too far away from the action or has to deal with this other, unexpected, threat and, "holy crap, I didn't realize that unit could move so fast! How much damage did you say they do? They can do that damage to me and don't even have to roll for it? That crap is broken!"

But it's not broken. You just haven't figured out how to deal with it yet and if your ideas about how the game "should be played" get too rigid, then you end up like all the guys who left the game within two months of release because, "OMG, Daqan is so over powered, this game isn't even balanced! No, we haven't been using terrain or objectives yet. Why do you ask?" And by the way, Daqan was never overpowered. Not even when just the core box was out :-)

I play against myself from time to time. It definitely helps in aspects others mentioned above, but I wouldn't call it fun. Even getting tabled by @Parakitor was more fun than playing by myself - even if the Uthuk win!

4 hours ago, Elliphino said:

... But ... There is a real risk of projecting what you think should happen onto another player when you get into a real game.

This.

Beware the dark side. Always make the optimum move, even if it gets "your army" in deep do do.

I like the idea of setting up scenarios with random tokens and such deployed. Stick a unit in a super bad situation and see what you can do with it.

42 minutes ago, Aetheriac said:

I like the idea of setting up scenarios with random tokens and such deployed. Stick a unit in a super bad situation and see what you can do with it.

Yeah puzzles can be useful. Hmm...

I play most of my games by myself similarly due to family, job, and location. It takes a little getting used to, but as long as you set each sides dials all at once, and just fully get your head into each army and play it to the best of its abilities, I think it’s a perfectly viable way to get games in when 1v1 just isn’t possible.

Yeah, you miss out on a lot of the feints or “gotcha” plays, but I’ve still had plenty of moments where exploitable openings appear mid round or unforeseen interactions that make it an exciting and challenging game, and not just lining up two armies and bashing them together and seeing who has the better dice.

i play Star Wars armada campaign the same way, with similar results. X-Wing is a little more difficult.

On 12/16/2017 at 2:47 AM, Elliphino said:

There is a real risk of projecting what you think should happen onto another player when you get into a real game.

And the flip side of this is that you sometimes catch yourself unawares with a move that just rocks. Then you get to apply that in your next game.

Look, it's OK to play once and awhile against yourself but it really inst a substitute for playing lots of games against real humans.

Doing it to learn how movement out of certain setups is a good idea. Probably just go a couple of turns to figure out a good basic plan for the scenario. I probably wouldn't want to go much further along than that. I would do this in Warmachine to figure out how to move units in what order to prevent something getting tied up in a bad position. It also let's you get used to deploying in such a way that you don't screw yourself over in some way.