Our backyard of our house currently is bare dirt for the first 20 feet from the house, then the last 10 feet before the garage are these big retro 2' by 2' patio stones that look like bricks stuck together in a pattern. The plan was to build an elevated deck coming off the rear of the house and then to lay grass in the remainder (pulling out the existing patio stones). However for financial reasons that may be on hold for 1-2 years.

I was thinking that in the interim that I would just move the patio stones that are in decent shape up next to the house so we would have a little hardscaped space for a BBQ and chairs. And then I could put down some top soil and sod for the remainder which seems fairly affordable to do, and something I would need to do later anyways.

Looking under the patio stones, I see there is no existing paver base. These things have been sitting on compacted dirt for probably decades and don't seem to have heaved a lot. Definitely the compacted dirt was part of the reason water is pooling here though (its a low spot in the yard).

Given this is temporary is it really the end of the world to just place the patio stones on top of the current soil. The fill there is pretty solid and I could tamp it some more. It looks to be about $200 in aggregate materials for a base and a lot of labour to do it properly and I wonder if I'm just wasting my time and money.