Abstract Strategy

My brother sits not two inches away from me, our elbows brushing and occasionally jabbing each other. With my laptop appropriately nestled in my lap we lean forward and stare at an abstraction of two grizzled swordsmen locking blades, hunting for an opening. After a quick exchange of blows, all blocked, we retreat to our respective corners. For a moment we wait. Rushing towards the center, I blast an attack his way. With my sword about to connect my brother raises his weapon in defense, only to realize (too late) that I threw a feint. I seize this opportunity and deal the killing blow, splattering copious red stuff across the screen. And my score count just went up one.

If you use "4X" and "simple downloadable game" in the same sentence, my immediate thought is "Risk variant," and there are many such. Constellation is indeed a simple, downloable 4X game, but features novel and nicely conceived gameplay. No dice here.

Blokus is an abstract strategy game in the same general family of games as Hex or Twixt, but with more strategic depth than either of those games.

Each of four players has a set of 21 pieces that are all possible polyominoes containing one to five squares. (The Tetris shapes are the five possible polyominoes with four squares; Blokus shapes run from 1 square to 5 squares in size, one of each possible configuration.)

Possibly the most daunting challenge any game designer could set himself is this: to design a new game with the rules simplicity but strategic depth of classic abstract strategy games like Chess and Go. Those games have been refined over hundreds of years and pondered by millions of people; for an individual to create anything remotely as deep is -- well, not impossible, but clearly astonishingly hard.

And yet, with Arimaa, the Syeds seem to have succeeded.

The theme of The Great Divide is a notably bizarre one: one player is the "West" and the other the "East," and they are competing to have as much as possible of the Rocky Mountain region drain to one side of the continental divide or the other. But of course, the themes of Euro-style games are basically irrelevant to gameplay, and so it is here: what The Great Divide actually is, is a highly original game of abstract strategy.

Reiner Knizia is by far the most prolific board game designer alive, with over 400 published titles so far (let's see any video game designer match that). Most of his games are abstract strategy games with an appropriate, unique theme layered on. Apparently, he has published so many games that he's now starting to repeat his themes; today we present two very different games based on the flea circus, by the same designer.

Reiner Knizia's Ingenious has one of the simplest rule sets of any game I have ever played. Five minutes out of the box, and you're playing a game with 1, 2, 3 or 4 players. For someone used to sitting down with a good rule set like others sit down with a novel, this was a pleasant (if reluctantly accepted) surprise.

Though its rules might be simple -- place your pieces on the board, and score points for similar symbols in any straight line out from the symbol -- the simplicity masks a depth of play that reveals a little more of itself each time your opponent screws you over or you screw him over without actually realizing you were doing it. The slow, but steady emergence of subtle strategies is the hallmark of a good abstract strategy game and the constant player feels rewarded.

Torres, winner of the 2000 Spiel des Jahres award, is essentially a game of competitive collaboration in tower-building. Played on an eight-by-eight grid, players place plastic "tower blocks", building both outward and upward.

Acquire is the best-known game by the immortal Sid Sackson, the preeminent American boardgame designer of the mid-20th century. First published in 1962 as part of the 3M line of games, it remained in print when 3M got out of the game business and sold their line to Avalon Hill. Unfortunately, as with most Avalon Hill games, it went out of print when Hasbro took over the company, though they republished a version in 1999, in a huge box with expensive plastic pieces (and changing the hotel theme of the original for an Internet corporation theme, which was somewhat irritating).

The new version reverts to the hotel theme, and also appears to use cardboard counters rather than plastic pieces, which may not be elegant, but means the new version is $24, a very reasonable price these days.

Campaign is ostensibly a game of the 2008 US presidential elections; at start, you're given a choice of three Republican and three Democratic candidates (sorry, George). However, your "candidate" is like your king in Chess; they're all the same. 120 hit points, the same list of potential attacks, and so on. It's one of the pieces you move across the board.

The game is played on a square-gridded version of the continental US (guess Alaska and Hawaii don't count), divided into seven regions. In addition to your candidate, you start with three other units -- the possibilities include Hatchetmen, Spinmeisters, Fundraisers, and Operatives; you get to choose what combination you want.