The Games at Boardspace

You must take these categories as arbitrary - the more categories the more fuzzy boundaries.

The Gipf Games

There are six games in the Gipf set: Gipf, Zèrtz, Yinsh, Dvonn, Pünct and Tzaar.  The gipf games have a special place here because Zertz was the legendary final straw that led to establishing the site.  It still took almost five years to get all six of them online, just because there were so many other great games competing for developer time.  All of the Gipf games are pure abstracts with unusual mechanics.

Tile Pattern Games

This is a category of games where these is no board, just a bag of tiles which can be played on any flat surface.  There are currently six such games here, Cookie Disco, Che,  Micropul, Trax, Palago, Spangles and Hive.   These games represent the ultimate in portability.  They're very easy to explain or learn.  They're also devilishly difficult to master.  More games in this group are definitely coming.

Traditional Abstract Games

For most people, Chess and Checkers are the only abstract strategy games they have every heard of.  Their loss - there are a lot more games from ancient to relatively modern that are "traditional" somewhere.   Boardspace hosts a few of them.   Fanorona and Tablut are definitely traditional.  Hex, while only about 50 years old, is definitely in the traditional mould.  Lines of Action, a youngster at 40, uses traditional equipment and is destined to be a classic.

Checkerboard games

Games you can play with a checkerboard and checkers are especially attractive, because almost everyone "owns" them without any extra purchases; Lines of Action, is one of these, but also Dipole and Tumblingdown.  There are literally hundreds of great games you can play with just a boring old checkerboard.

Capturing Games

Chess is the canonical capturing game - you won't find that here - but Xiangqi (Chinese chess) is.  There are many other games where the primary activity is removing your opponents pieces. Traboulet  is a marble pushing game with a clever board mechanic.  Khet is a definitely-modern game played with real lasers   Entrapment is a pawn-and-barrier game with a capuring objective.  Cannon forms lines of soldiers into "cannons" that shoot at the opposing forces. Knockabout  uses dice as pieces to knock either other out of the arena.  Triad is an unusual capturing game for 3 players. Traditional games such as Fanorona and Tablut are also found here.

Racing Games

In racing games, the players race to move pieces to some goal, with many variations on the pieces and board involved..  Breaking Away is a luck free game based on bicycle racing.  Warp-6 and Octiles are unusual representatives of the pure racing variety.  Truchet is an interesting crossover that combines elements of racing, stacking and capturing.  Arimaa is a race game with a strong capturing component.  Gyges Gounki and Kamisado are fast race-across-the-board games with unusual move styles.

Connection Games

There are a lot of games in this category, with and without boards, and on various types of grids.  The granddaddy of all modern connection games is Hex, where you try to connect opposite sides of a board,   followed closely by Lines of Action, where you try to connect all your pieces.  A more recent example of connection games is Army of Frogs, where you try to connect all your pieces on a boardless hex grid.   Volo is a connection game inspired by the behavior of flocks of birds..

Euro Games

Just what are Euro Games?  Dunno, but I know 'em when I see 'em.  These are generally multi-player stratgy games with a limited amount of luck.  Variety and uncertainty in the game arises out of the chaos of players' decisions.  Boardspace hosts Container, an economic game with a shipping theme, and Medina, a city-building game, and Yspahan, a "victory points" economic game.  Raj is an abstract bidding game which uses cards as bidding tokens.  Mogul tense auction game with some poker-like elements.

Stacking Games

Another fuzzy category is games where manipulating stacks of pieces is the principal mechanic.  Crossfire, Dipole, Dvonn, Exxit and Tumblingdown are clearly in this category.  If you're a little bit liberal, Santorini and Volcano would fit too.

N-in-a-row Games

The Tic-Tac-Toe family tree is full of more interesging siblings.   Gobblet is 4 in a row with nested pieces.  Quinamid is 4 in a row with sliding stacked boards.  Syzygy is 3 in a row on a sliding matrix.

Polyomino Games

There are a bunch of really simple, pure abstract games that use polyominos as their pieces.  Pan-Kai was the first of these, followed by Universe and Phlip (which combines Pan-Kai with Reversi) and Diagonal-Blocks, which uses a diagonal connection rule.


The Rest of the Games

Definitely not the also-rans.  These are the games that are so unusual that they're in a category by themselves.
Mutton A farmer-vs-wolves game of slaughter and deduction. Qyshinsu A simple yet mind-twisting game.  Your move determines your opponents next move!
Plateau A capturing and stacking game, played with some concealed information. Carnac An area control game with an unusual move mechanic.
Tako Judo
An abstract positional game with a slight Octopus theme.





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