The big difference: In Shogi, captured opponent pieces can be put back into play as your own. However, Shogi has a greater feeling of crescendo: it starts slow, but then because lots of pieces stay on the board throughout, the action gets hairier and hairier, and wild endings abound. How it works: Capture opponent pieces by surrounding them with your own, in a race to capture a certain number of pieces first. How it works : You build shapes on a hexagonal board, which then eat each other.
The shapes that survive grow into different, larger shapes until one player runs out of space to grow, and thus wins. How it feels : Like a roller coaster. The advantage seesaws back and forth until one player finds a way to make one of those temporary advantages permanent. Also, when the game is over and board is full, it can feel like the players have created an abstract work of art. A diagram around the board shows which species eat which.
Be first to fully colonize the ecosystem or eat 20 opponent pieces. It also has a seesaw dynamic similar to Bug above. Abstract Game Collection at Board Game Geek — By far the biggest and most complete collection of abstract strategy games online more than , though it includes many mislabeled games too. It focuses on commercially published games. Newcomers often find the site hard to use. The List at AbstractStrategy. This site is the first and last word on the subject.
Traditional Mancala Variants and Modern Mancala Variants — Mancala variants are a second major sub-genre of abstract games. This site describes more than two hundred variants. The first three items listed are the ones that have proven most valuable to me.
Board Game Arena — this may be the most popular online play site for board games in general. It has an abstract section with a few dozen abstract games, many with lots of players. You can play both turn-based and real-time games there plug: this is the place to play my games Circle of Life and Blooms.
AiAi — A free downloadable game-playing engine that allows you to play many abstract strategy games against AI, as well as do analyses, and play against others online. A must-have. Good game graphics and about 70 carefully curated games to choose from. Many have AI to play against.
Features more than games , a clean, simple interface, and lots of nice play options time controls, etc. It can be hard to find an opponent, however. Mindsports — A real-time play site owned by one of the pillars of abstract game design: Christian Freeling. Until recently you needed Java to play there, but the site is being updated to eliminate that requirement. Ludoteka — Active Spanish site with an English interface option which is where the link goes.
Has more than 60 games. Super Duper Games — Another popular spot for turn-based games. The developer of the site is in the process of creating a new site, called AbstractPlay. You can follow the development here. Brain King — Has a large, active membership and games. Especially good for chess variants.
Skill Games Board — Offers a small number of classic abstract games for turn-based play. Gamerz — This site launched in and it looks like it. But it has an active membership and plenty of games.
Public Abstract Games Google Doc — I created this a few years ago, and at first not much happened, but then Clark Rodeffer stepped in and made it useful. Please treat it with care. The Garden Gate — This site is a little embryonic, as there are only 8 games there, all of them played on a board inspired by The Last Airbender. Contains about 50 games, both classic and modern. Many of them allow you to play online. There are many companies that publish abstract games, but usually just one or two, either as sideline or as the only games they publish.
You can buy games directly from each of these publishers. Gerhards Spiel und Design — German publisher which makes a bunch of beautiful wooden abstract games. The link is to an English language version of their site. If you live in the U. Steffen Spiele — Another English link to another German publisher focused on beautiful wooden abstracts.
See their list of games here. Gooooo Germany! Nestorgames — A small company offering a big bunch of excellent abstract strategy games. They offer two kinds of games 1 inexpensive, portable games, mostly made of plastic, foam, and acrylic; and 2 a line of pricey, beautiful, deluxe games. Kadon — Another little indie company. Quality varies from game to game.
Most are made of either laser-cut acrylic or wood. Gigamic — French company known for making attractive wooden game sets. They generally have simple, intuitive rules, even by abstract game standards, which I love.
Abstract Game Forum at Board Game Geek — The most active forum for abstract games, though newbies can find the site intimidating.
There are more experts here than in any other forum, and the discussions tend to be more informed. The guy who runs it is skilled at getting people involved, and the group has grown quickly.
Discussion Page at Chessvariants. The forum here is fairly lively. You can see all my posts about abstract games here. Abstract Games Magazine — A former print magazine that relaunched recently as an online magazine with a print option. An incredible resource, not in the least because previous issues have been digitized and made available as free PDFs. You can play games there both his and others , and he hosts a great deal of his own writing there.
Not to be missed. Spielstein — The site of Deiter Stein, a German designer who concocts elegant abstract games and then gets them published in classy editions. I love these guys.
However, they seem to have stopped making new posts a couple of years ago. Mark Steere Games — I hesitate to put this here because, in addition to being a well-known game designer, Mark is a notorious internet troll. Combinatorial Game Theory — This blog is maintained by a professor in combinatorial game theory. There are hundreds of books dedicated to single games, like Chess for example. It only includes books about abstract games in general or those covering many games.
Warning: the last 5 books on this list require significant mathematical knowledge. Email Address. View all posts by Nick Bentley. This is a topic that is near to my heart… Take care! Where are your contact details though?
Great list of online games! Thanks for the great article on abstract board game resources on the web. May we kindly contribute to this essay and request an update? We tend to think that our skillgamesboard.
See Blokus. Great compendium. Not all abstract games, but many such games; live and turn-based, and large, active player community. Good point about BGA. These thing interfere with the core pleasures of this sort of game for the people who love them. A great list, Nick. My suggestion is instead to include a link to the rules to Oware aka Awari or Warri which is much, much older and, at a global level, is much more widely played than Kalah.
Craig — yes! Early in the new year, hopefully. Thank you for thinking of me. I recommend you share it in one or more of the forums I list in the article above.
Nice article! Have you tried Hex Oust and Polar? Thank you for this resource! So many wonderful games — some I own or have at least played and many that are new to discover.
On another note I was happy to see you depict the beautiful Mancala board I happen to own. Great paper. You mention chess and shogi. Maybe xiangqi was worth to mention too.
Nice work anyhow. Thank you. I considered it, but I felt that was one too many versions of Chess. Hello all, I hope the following is of interest to those who like Hex and related games. I wrote Mathematica code for a game which is a version of Hex played on a sphere, which is in some sense a generalization of Hex. Brief description from there: The game Tri is played on a sphere with a centrally symmetric triangulation where every vertex and every edge of the triangulation is initially uncolored.
To move, a player black or white clicks an uncolored vertex to color it and its antipode. Only pairs of antipodes on the equator show as two different points. If the endpoints of an edge have the same color, the edge inherits that color. A player wins when a path of their color connects an antipodal pair of vertices. Apologies for delay. At the end of the game the player with the highest score wins.
Score is determined by the total territory a player has surrounded less the stones captured by the opponent. Another game I included in my best date night board game article. The game can be very deep and require a lot of strategy, but is also easy to pick up for beginner gamers. The aim of the game is to surround your opponents queen tile piece without them doing the same to you. Tiles that surround the queen can be made up of a mix of your tiles and your opponents.
Select a player to start — that player places one of their tiles on the table. The next player then places on of their tiles on one of the adjoining edges of the first players tile. Games of hive are always fun and the board is always different! The movement of the different bugs tiles makes strategy in the game hugely important. Blocking key insects or pulling off a blind side move is always a great feeling. This is an incredibly simple but strangely addictive abstract board game.
The game sits on my coffee table at home and my wife and I will sporadically play it between tv shows or after dinner. Each player starts the game with a collection of 21 tetris shaped tiles. On your turn you place one of your tiles on the 14X14 grid board the first tile cannot be placed in a corner.
Classic abstract game simplicity, but it is a hard game — you need to be able to out wit your opponent and place tiles that block their shapes — yet allow yours. They will be doing the exact same thing! It can be played super fast and is a great time filler at game nights or when you have a few minutes spare!
Abstract games are an incredibly popular board game genre and they are one of the oldest forms of board games. The reason why is pretty obvious — the games are easy to learn and rely on skill and strategy alone. They are games that you can master with practice and best your opponent. Each game has a unique mechanic and has its own appeal to different gamers — from the classic games to the modern hits. When your child learns how to play and gets interested they can participate in the local chess club, go to tournaments and even travel to chess conventions.
A great way to get started is by checking out chess courses online. For example, Chessable has great beginners, intermediate and advanced courses that teach strategy and tactics. The longer time it takes to focus, the more difficult it is for the child and the results are worse. Your email address will not be published. Learn More Accept X. Byron September 14, 3 Comments. Table of Contents. These games all meet the following criteria: Easy to learn — but incredibly high skill ceiling; Lack a theme — or if there is one it is minimal; Rely purely on skill and strategy — not luck; and Are fun to play!
I have also tried to make each of my selections unique. Onitama is my favorite modern day abstract board game. The game has a very light theme that is purely window dressing — but it is cool none the less. The game is played in turns and each turn a player gets to move one of their pieces. Like chess — moving onto an opponent piece removes that piece from the game.
Check Price on Amazon. There are two types of pieces that can be played in the game: Stones — flat pieces which can be played vertically like a wall or horizontally like a floor ; and Capstones — Which look like chess pawns.
A game starts with each player placing a piece from their opponent on the board. When a player plays a stone vertically — no other stones may be placed on top of it.
The game is purely based on skill and being able to use your opponents moves against them. Turns alternate between each player and a player has two choices of action each turn: Move your pawn 1 square in any direction; OR Place a wall on the side of any square. There are a few special rules such as: Walls have to be placed so they line up with two intersections on the board i.
Chess game play is played on a gridded 8X8 board called a chessboard. Each player takes control of a set of 16 pieces. There is a black side and a white side. The players start at opposite ends of the board to each other. The pieces of each player at the start of a game of chess consist of: one king one queen two rooks two knights two bishops eight pawns. GO can be played on a large variety of boards, but traditionally is played on a 19X19 grid.
Smaller boards can be used for beginner players or to shorten game length. Players take all the tile pieces of the color they are going to play black or white. During a player turn there are two actions they can take: Place a tile; or Move a tile. Movements: Beetles can crawl in any direction even on top of other bugs ; Grasshoppers can leap over tiles; Spiders Scuttle one space around the hive; and Ants shuffle to any position around the hive.
Tiles can not be eliminated or removed from the board and not all tiles need to be played. Blockus Duo. The object of the game: Simply place more tiles on the board than your opponent.
Final Thoughts. Share on facebook. Share on pinterest. Share on twitter. Share on email. Share on print. Byron is a board game enthusiast. He loves trying out all sorts of new games and has a gaming room that is filled to the brim with collectibles, and awesome nerd stuff!
An Abstract Board Game. Have you tried Rock Paper Switch from Mindware yet? Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published.
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