More from Joe
The rest of Joe’s designs, most popular first, then his free shrinks of the big games.
Best With 1 Games
Rome: Fate of an Empire
Pick a leader, choose your strategy, and decide the fate of an empire!
Develop and refine your engine with deck building, tableau building, and resource management to fulfill your edicts and bring glory to Rome. A thinky, middle-weight Euro game with the engine building of Res Arcana and the card play of Mage Knight.
- Players
- 1
- Play time
- 60–90 min
- Format
- Print and play, from Best With 1 Games
Best With 1 Games
Radiance
Take the role of a Luminary on an epic quest to defeat the Shade and protect the last of the Bright Cities.
A solo, puzzly adventure card game designed to create the feeling of an epic and sprawling overland adventure, with the convenience of a small box. Upgrade your deck, learn new skills, master the elements, and discover explosive combos as you explore and fight your way through.
- Players
- 1
- Components
- Includes a deck of 36 location cards
- Format
- Print and play, from Best With 1 Games
Best With 1 Games
Behold: Rome
Coming to crowdfunding in 2026
Hold Rome’s fate in your hands in this thinky, no-table-needed civilization builder.
Behold: Rome is a solo civilization-building card game played without a table. Store and spend resources to develop your civ and build your engine. Conquer wealthy regions, or abandon them to level up your nation. Outsmart and outscore your chosen rival civ to solidify your place in history!
Joe first self-published it. A Best With 1 Games edition is coming to crowdfunding in 2026.
- Players
- 1
- Play time
- 30–60 min
- Components
- 18 cards, no table needed
Best With 1 Games
The Hand of Destiny
Defeat waves of monsters and challenging bosses in this unique no-table-needed dungeon crawler.
Waves of minions accompany an evil monster ravaging the land in the Realm of Shadows. Fight off each wave and defeat the menacing final boss to bring light to the darkness!
A solo game played completely in your hands. Manage your health, upgrade your hero, and play cards as efficiently as possible to win the day. It began as Griphold Tower, Joe’s self-published entry in BoardGameGeek’s 2020 Solitaire Print and Play contest, and that original version is still free.
- Players
- 1
- Play time
- 20–30 min
- Components
- 18 cards, no table needed
Best With 1 Games
Nightbreaker
Coming to crowdfunding in 2026
An epic solo overland adventure, coming to crowdfunding in 2026 from Best With 1 Games.
Nightbreaker is Joe’s new edition of his solo overland adventure for Best With 1 Games. The pieces he has shared so far include illustrated hero boards, hex map tiles of towns, towers and lakes, and a cast of enemy tokens.
It grew from Pocket Paladin, the version Joe self-published, which packs the same kind of journey into a single card sleeve. Pocket Paladin is still available today while Nightbreaker heads to crowdfunding.
- Players
- 1
- Publisher
- Best With 1 Games
- Grew from
- Pocket Paladin, Joe’s self-published original
Mythfield Games
Pocket Paladin
A heavy overland adventure game that fits in a card sleeve!
Pocket Paladin is an epic solo overland adventure designed to be stored in a single card sleeve. Work your way across the landscape, interacting with map sites like storms, wandering enemies, Mage and Monster towers, secret tunnels, towns and caravans. Unlock new abilities, recruit allies and learn new skills to take on more challenging enemies and, ultimately, the enemy’s Castle.
In Joe’s words, he wanted “to make a game that gave players their Mage Knight fix, but that fit comfortably in their wallets and purses.” Mage Lite shrank Mage Knight to about 18 cards, Dragons of Etchinstone put it in your hands, and Pocket Paladin puts it in a card sleeve.
Joe self-published Pocket Paladin, and it is the game Nightbreaker grew from. Nightbreaker is the new edition coming to crowdfunding in 2026 from Best With 1 Games.
- Players
- 1
- Play time
- 30–60 min
- Ages
- 14+
- Components
- Map cards, tracking cards and 16 enemy tokens, stored in one card sleeve (bring your own sleeve)
Best With 1 Games
Farhome
Coming to crowdfunding in 2026
A reimplementation of The Hand of Destiny, coming to crowdfunding in 2026 from Best With 1 Games.
Farhome builds on The Hand of Destiny, Joe’s no-table-needed dungeon crawler played completely in your hands.
Best With 1 Games
Boomtown Builder
A Joe Klipfel design, published by Best With 1 Games.
Button Shy Games
The Rise of a Jarl
Build up your Viking civilization through resource management, balancing expansion with defense to protect your gains.
The Viking Age is at hand and with prosperity comes power. As an ambitious ruling jarl, chart a new future for your people through careful development and expansion. Across 4 rounds of play, you use the cards in your hand to take a variety of actions: Trade to gain wealth, Raid for resources, Develop new technologies, and more.
The boxed edition comes with the expansion, The Rivals of a Jarl.
- Players
- 1
- Play time
- 20 min
- Expansion
- The Rivals of a Jarl
- Art
- Dan Gartman
Rock Manor Games
Pocket Watch
Pocket Watch: Set a Watch in 18 Cards, published by Rock Manor Games.
Joe’s micro version of Rock Manor’s Set a Watch: 18 cards, and you provide your own dice and a few cubes. It was his first released shrink, first as a free print and play, then included as a stretch goal in a Set a Watch Kickstarter.
- Components
- 18 cards, your own dice and cubes
- Publisher
- Rock Manor Games
Mythfield Games
Denizens: The Hero-War
Dynamic battles between asymmetric factions with just 18 cards.
A card game for 1–2 players in which you play out the most prominent battles in the Hero-War, the most impactful conflict in the Age of the Living. Each player takes control of a faction: the disciplined and tyrannical Nul-Gador, and the gifted but disparate peoples of the Riverwide Alliance.
Players compete over two active theaters at a time, claiming some for victory and others to build up their position. At the end of every conflict, cards change hands, rotating to reveal their new allegiance as the other player recruits them.
- Players
- 1–2
- Play time
- 30–60 min
- Components
- 18 cards
Mythfield Games
Adventure Cats
Collect gems, rescue animals and fill your castles to get the most points!
You play as heroic cats trying to rescue animals and bring them safely back to one of your castles, gathering valuable gems along the way that help you on your journeys and give you even more points at the end of the game. But watch out! A dangerous dragon is out there, trying to steal your gems and prevent you from rescuing animals.
Joe designed it with his daughter, Verna Klipfel.
- Players
- 2–4
- Ages
- 5 and up
- Play time
- Under 30 min
Mythfield Games
Pork
Senators work together to pass enough pork spending by election day.
A cooperative word-association party game. Each round, one player is the president and the rest are senators. Senators give one-word clues that together get the president to guess the Bill Word. If the Bill passes, the president then guesses each senator’s own Pork Word, using the same clue that senator already gave.
Pass enough pork in 6 rounds, and you and your fellow senators are re-elected and win the game!
- Players
- 2–6
- Play time
- 30–60 min
- Ages
- 14+
Mythfield Games
Zero-Sum
The trivia party game where your answers must add up to exactly 100.
An easy-to-learn, fast-playing trivia party game designed to reward clever strategy as much as knowing all the answers. Every round, three question cards are revealed and everyone secretly writes a guess for each. Your three guesses must add up to exactly 100. Closest on each question takes the card, and the most cards wins.
That’s the only rule, and it’s where the strategy is: which question do you spend your budget on?
- Players
- 2–6
- Play time
- Under 30 min
Free shrinks of popular games
Micro versions of games you already know and love, each in about 18 cards, released free. For every one, Joe received permission from the game’s publisher to use its print-and-play assets and to post his version to BoardGameGeek.
Free shrink of Pax Pamir 2e
Pax Pamini
Pax Pamir Second Edition in 18 cards, with no board.
Pax Pamini is an 18-card version of Pax Pamir Second Edition, free to download. It is a two-player game, with a solo mode in which you play against a crafty bot named Mikhran.
In Joe’s words, it is “a fairly complex tableau builder.” The big twist is there is no physical board. Your court is laid out in four columns, one for each region, so every card is in two places at once. A card in your Kabul column is in your court, and its roads, armies and tribes are in Kabul, where they can clash with your opponent’s.
Joe made it with permission from Wehrlegig Games.
- Players
- 1–2, solo against the bot Mikhran
- Components
- 18 cards, plus optional bonus cards
- Permission
- Wehrlegig Games
Free shrink of Mistfall
Mistsmall
Mistfall in 18 cards and a few tokens.
Mistsmall reduces Mistfall to 18 cards and a few tokens, and uses the game’s original art to keep the feeling of playing the big box. Play as Crow, using your feats, gear and resolve to cross dangerous regions and defeat The Abomination.
Joe wanted “a version I could play on a coffee table after the kids were in bed.” It is fairly complex and takes a time investment to learn. For Joe at least, it was well worth the effort.
Posted with permission from NSKN Games.
- Components
- 18 cards and a few tokens, plus a few cubes of your own
- Permission
- NSKN Games
Free shrink of Mage Knight
Mage Lite
Mage Knight in about 18 cards. You provide a penny.
Mage Lite shrinks Mage Knight to about 18 cards. In the base game you also provide a penny, so, as Joe puts it, “instead of free you could say this game costs 1 cent.”
Two expansions build it back up: Main adds map tiles and more monsters, and Crystal adds the mana crystals back in. A full rulebook, put together by Patrick Caron, teaches the game with no Mage Knight experience needed.
It was the first step in Joe’s run of shrinking Mage Knight. Dragons of Etchinstone then put it in your hands, and Pocket Paladin put it in a card sleeve.
- Components
- About 18 cards and a penny
- Expansions
- Main and Crystal
Free shrink of Ark Nova
Ark Minima
Ark Nova in 18 cards, for one or two players.
Ark Minima is an 18-card version of Ark Nova for 1–2 players, and it plays in under 40 minutes.
It is posted as a free print and play with permission from Capstone Games and Feuerland Spiele, for personal use only. All copyright to the game stays with Feuerland Spiele.
- Players
- 1–2
- Play time
- Under 40 min
- Components
- 18 cards
- Permission
- Capstone Games and Feuerland Spiele
Free shrink of Mini Rogue
Mitty Rogue
Mini Rogue in your mitts.
Mitty Rogue is a table-less version of Mini Rogue. No cubes, dice or playing surface required: you only need its 19 cards and your mitts.
Joe also posted a left-handed set of the stat cards, so they stick out the left side rather than the right.
Posted with permission from Nuts Publishing and Mountain Gold Games. Joe credits Mini Rogue’s designers, Paolo Di Stefano and Gabriel Gendron.
- Components
- 19 cards, no table needed
- Permission
- Nuts Publishing and Mountain Gold Games
Hey, I’m Joe!
I’m the game and graphic designer at Mythfield Games. I love seeing busy parents, or folks with travel-heavy careers, using my games to keep their hobby alive in spite of their demanding schedules.
Feel free to reach out with any questions or feedback. I love connecting with people in the community and would welcome hearing from you!