Tag: Abstract Strategy

Abstract strategy games are games that typically have a very limited theme. These types of games are known for providing players with perfect information and having no randomness.

Stratego

| T3d-1978
Stratego

Stratego

The gameboard is your battlefield. You have an army of men at your disposal and six bombs. Your mission–protect your flag and capture your opponent’s flag.

Secretly place your men, bombs, and flag on the gameboard with these objectives in mind. But remember your opponent is doing the same thing, so you must plan a defense as well as an offense.

Once the armies are in place, advance your men. When you’re one space away from an enemy, attack. You and your opponent declare ranks. The lower-ranking man is captured and out of play.

You control your pieces and risk your men in battles where the strength of your enemy is unknown. The suspense builds as your men move deeper into enemy territory. Move with caution and courage. The next piece you attack could be a bomb. And when attacked, it could “blast” your man off the board and out of play.

The first to capture an enemy flag is the winner!

Game Mechanics:

  • Abstract Strategy
  • Bluffing
  • Deduction
  • Grid Movement
  • Memory

Game Specifications:

  • 2 Players
  • ~45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00

Shobu

| T3d-1978
Shobu

Shobu

SHOBU is a beautifully crafted abstract strategy game for 2 players. The game features 4 square wood boards (2 of each color) and 16 natural river stones for each player, in two colors, with a rope dividing the play area in half.

Your turn is in two parts. First, a player may move one of their stones up to two spaces in any direction, including diagonally, in what is called a passive (or set up) move. Second, they take a more aggressive move, which must be the same direction and number of spaces as the first move. It is this second move that allows you to push stones across the board – or off the board’s edge. Remove all four of your opponent’s stones from just one of the four boards to win.

SHOBU evokes the feeling of GO or CHESS but provides its own unique challenge. It feels immediately familiar and yet is wholly distinct and engaging.

Game Mechanics:

  • Abstract Strategy
  • Grid Movement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 Players
  • 15 – 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.81

Photosynthesis

| T3d-1978
Photosynthesis

Photosynthesis

The sun shines brightly on the canopy of the forest, and the trees use this wonderful energy to grow and develop their beautiful foliage. Sow your crops wisely and the shadows of your growing trees could slow your opponents down, but don’t forget that the sun revolves around the forest. Welcome to the world of Photosynthesis, the green strategy board game!

Game Mechanics:

  • Abstract Strategy
  • Action Points
  • Area Control
  • Economic

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.07

Papillon

| T3d-1978
Papillon

Papillon

A butterfly garden requires vision and a caring hand. Spring has arrived, and the world is in bloom. As your garden grows, caterpillars will congregate and morph into beautiful butterflies eager for nectar.

Papillon is a tile-drafting, tableau-building, and area majority game for 2-4 players. Over 8 rounds, you will bid for flower tiles to build your garden, attract butterflies to flowers with valuable nectar, and of course, every garden looks better with a gnome. Collect the most nectar at the end of the game and you’ll win!

Game Mechanics:

  • Abstract Strategy
  • Area Control
  • Auction/Bidding
  • Open Drafting
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.06

Overboss

| T3d-1978
Overboss

Overboss

In Overboss, rival Boss Monsters emerge from their dungeons to conquer the Overworld. Each turn, players draft and place terrain tiles and monster tokens. Their goal: to craft the map with the greatest Power and become the ultimate Overboss!

Designed by Aaron Mesburne and Kevin Russ (Calico), this fast-paced game combines drafting, set collection, and puzzly tile laying. It’s set in the retro-inspired pixel art world of Brotherwise Games’ best-selling Boss Monster, but this is an entirely new experience.

Build your map by drafting Forests, Swamps, Caves, Camps, Graveyards, Dungeon Entrances and other landscapes. Each terrain type has a different point value, and some increase in Power as you acquire larger sets. Players must balance optimal placement, set values, and disrupt their opponents’ sets. You’ll also need to manage monsters, which award points when grouped together or placed on matching terrain.

The game includes everything needed for up to 5 players: over 120 terrain tiles, over 100 monster tokens, 5 double-sided player boards, a scorepad, and more.

Game Mechanics:

  • Abstract Strategy
  • Open Drafting
  • Pattern Building
  • Puzzle
  • Set Collection
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 20 – 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.03

New York Zoo

| T3d-1978
New York Zoo

New York Zoo

Puzzling and animal breeding: Designer Uwe Rosenberg is at his best! In New York Zoo, you are constructing an animal park. Build animal enclosures, introduce new animals and raise their offspring. The game play is straight forward as you have only two turn options: Puzzle a new enclosure tile into your zoo area or gain new animals to populate your animal encounters. But be sure to time your actions well since you want your zoo to participate in as many animal breedings as possible.

Game Mechanics:

  • Abstract Strategy
  • Grid Coverage
  • Puzzle
  • Racing
  • Rondel
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.99

Miyabi

| T3d-1978
Miyabi

Miyabi

Elegant, graceful, and refined – that’s how you should design your Japanese garden! Careful planning and watchful eyes are needed as you tend your garden. Only by skillfully placing stones, bushes, trees, ponds and pagodas on multiple levels can a player become the best garden designer of the season. Think you’ve got it figured out? Try one of the five included expansions!

Game Mechanics:

  • Abstract Strategy
  • Open Drafting
  • Pattern Building
  • Puzzle
  • Set Collection
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.06

Mercado de Lisboa

| T3d-1978
Mercado de Lisboa

Mercado de Lisboa

Modern day markets offers to their visitors various kind of stands, restaurants, and services.

In Mercado de Lisboa, players buy stands in the market, open new businesses that influence those stands, and bring customers to them.

Mercado de Lisboa is a thinky filler title, a tile-placement game based upon the Lisboa city-building system in which players pay money to own stands in the market, open restaurants next to them to improve their profit and bring in customers that earn money for players with matching stands. Mercado de Lisboa is a fast-paced game, very straightforward and easy to learn rules with deep tactical choices.

Game Mechanics:

  • Abstract Strategy
  • Area Control
  • Economic
  • Open Drafting
  • Tile Placement
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.07

Make Make

| T3d-1978
Make Make

Make Make

In the strategy game Make Make, each person represents the chief of one of the clans that inhabit Rapa Nui. Each clan seeks control of the island’s territories, which will allow them to perform the ceremonial rites dedicated to the god Make Make, who will then make the chief of the clan the new Ariki of the island that will govern and give prosperity to the Rapanui people.

Each player starts the game with one chief token, five Tangata Manu tokens, and eleven dominance tokens. Twelve Moai tokens are placed to the side, and the Make Make figure is placed in the center of the game board, which has a trapezoidal-shaped hex grid on it, with the intersection of any three hexes (called “territories”) being marked as a ceremonial ground. The six territories surrounding Make Make are “sacred territories”.

A turn consists of a dominance phase, then a ceremonial phase. In the dominance phase, each player takes one of three actions:

  • Take control of a neutral territory by placing one or more of your dominance tokens on this hex, whether with or without your chief; a chief is worth three dominance tokens.
  • Take control of a territory owned by another player by placing more dominance tokens in this hex than they have; the other player returns all of their tokens to their reserve.
  • Withdraw from a territory by returning all but one dominance token to your reserve.

If you ever control at least three sacred territories and more sacred territories than each other player, then you gain control of Make Make (possibly from another player), placing the figure in front of you. No player can place tokens in the central space, even after Make Make has been claimed.

During the ceremonial phase, if you control a territory and control all of its surrounding territories and have your chief token and at least Tangata Manu on these territories, then you return tokens on this surrounded territory to your reserve and place a Moai on this territory instead. A territory with a Moai on it is considered to be controlled by all clans, and a Moai cannot be removed from the game board.

Next in the ceremonial phase, if you have control of three territories surrounding a ceremonial ground, you place one of your Tangata Manu tokens on this ceremonial ground. If you lose control of one of these territories, remove the Tangata Manu from the board and return it to your reserve.

If you have all five of your Tangata Manu tokens on the board and you have the Make Make token in front of you, you win instantly.

Game Mechanics:

  • Abstract Strategy
  • Area Control

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 4 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00

Mahjong

| T3d-1978
Mahjong

Mahjong

Mah-Jongg (Chinese 麻將/麻将 Májiàng [game of the] sparrow) is a traditional Chinese game using illustrated tiles, with game play similarities to rummy. It is a popular gambling game, but wagering real stakes is by no means necessary to have fun playing.

The tiles consist of three suits numbering 1-9 (Dots, Numbers or Characters, and Bamboo, the “Ace” of which almost always looks like a bird), three different dragons (Red, Green, and White [white is unusual in that it may look like a silvery dragon, or like a picture frame, or blank – think “White dragon in a snowstorm”), and the four winds (east, south, west, and north). There are four copies of each tile. This totals to 136 tiles. In addition, special Flower, Season, and Joker (American version) tiles may also be used.

Four players take turns drawing from a stock (the wall), or from the other players’ discards, in an attempt to form sets of numeric sequences (e.g., 5-6-7 of the same suit, which can only be drawn from the player at one’s left, by calling “Chow”), triplets and quadruplets (which can be drawn from the discards out-of-turn by calling “Pung”), pairs, and other patterns. “Pung” takes precedence over “Chow”, and “Mah Jongg” takes precedence over all (and is the only situation one may draw “Chow” out-of-turn.) What happens if a single discard would give two (or more!) players “Mah Jongg”? Precedence goes to the player who would play next in normal sequence.

Game Mechanics:

  • Abstract Strategy
  • Hand Management
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 4 Players
  • 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.57