Popular Stategy Games

Popular Board Games and War Games

There’s a whole list of popular strategy games on the market today, including games that recreate historical wars or battles, classic strategy game scenarios like Diplomacy and Risk, and games that place the action in a fictional setting, like Twilight Imperium and Settlers of Catan.

Some popular strategy games are more unit-based and tactical in nature, while others avoid combat and are more about resource allocation, while others involve player interaction and diplomatic skill. If you have a specific sort of war scenario or test of your skills at warmaking or civilzation building, the chances are there’s a game out there that already caters to your needs.

Many games can be considered strategy games, because you employ one sort of strategy or another to win them: Monopoly, Scrabble, Dungeon & Dragons, Mah Jong, Chess, Checkers, Go, Dominoes, Backgammon. Pretty much you name it and a game requires some strategy to win. I’m going to narrow our terms here and say that strategy games involve war, conquest, diplomacy or the building of nations.

Settlers of Catan

Considered by many to be the best strategy game of the last generation, Settlers of Catan is a German-designed civilization building and resource allocation game. You pretend to be settlers to the island of Catan, where you cultivate gain, wood, brick and other trading interests.

To succeed at Catan, you have to cooperate with your fellow players through commerce and trade. The board can be rearranged each new game to add spice, while there’s a sequel called Starfarers of Catan.

Sid Meier’s Civilization

Released in 1991 as a turn-based strategy game for the PC, Civilization was improved upon all the way down to Civilization IV. Since then, Activision lost right to Civilization and called a later edition Call to Power II, while Sid Meier has gone on to create Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, Sid Meier’s Railroads! and Master of Magic.

In Civilization, you take one of Earth’s civilizations back in 4000 B.C., start with building cities and armies and roads to get around, and eventually end up in a technological race somewhere else in the world. Sample civilizations included China, Egypt, Azteca, England, Greece, India, Mongolia, Rome and Zululand.

Carcassone

Another German board game, this one the 2001 Game of the Year. Once again, you cultivate fields and build roads and cities. No one is eliminated, while the winner is based on points accumulated.

Illuminati

This 1982 card game by Steve Jackson Games is still one of my favorites to play. Illuminati is the game of world conspiracy, where you take the role of a famous world conspiracy: The UFOs, the Bermuda Triangle, the Gnomes of Zurich, the Discordian Society, the Servants of Cthulhu and the Bavarian Illuminati.

You use the unique powers of each to take over various other organizations, represented by playing cards, ranging from the Pentagon, the CIA, Orbital Mind Control Lasers, the Trekkies, the Porn Industry, the Televangelists, the Republicans, the Democrats, California, New York City, the Boy Scouts and so on.

Each conspiracy must meet a different requirement to win the game, while players are encouraged to game up on one another to keep one side from winning. Illuminati is awesome. Later editions included Illuminati: New World Order and expansions like Brainwash, Y2K and Bavarian Fire Drill.

Risk Board Game

Risk was designed in the middle of the 20th Century and was the original game of world domination. Most of us played Risk at least once as a kid. Risk continues to put out new versions, with a retro version of the old game coming out in 2009. Other editions of Risk included Castle Risk, Edition Napoleon, Risk 2210 A.D., Godstorm (where pantheons get involved), Black Ops (I think later called Reinvention or Risk Factor).

There were also versions of Risk played out in fictional universes, such as Middle Earth (The Lord of the Rings), Star Wars: Clone Wars Edition, Star Wars: Original Trilogy Edition, Narnia, The Transformers Edition and Halo Wars Collector’s Edition.

Each game had its own set of rules, but the original game is still a lot of fun to play, as is.

Axis & Allies

Axis & Allies is a more elaborate version of Risk, with players taking on the role of powers during World War II. Created in 1981 by Avalon Hill and reissued by Milton Bradley in 1984, this game, which was actually older than either of those release dates, was a staple of my childhood.

Later additions to the A&A canon included Axis & Allies: Europe, Axis & Allies: Pacific Theater, Axis & Allies: 1942 and Axis & Allies: 50th Anniversary Edition (50th anniversary of Avalon Hill, I believe). I think there may have been other board games based on D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge and Guadalcanal, too.

Where the units in Risk were all the same, the big difference in Axis & Allies was you had infrantry, tanks, fighters, bombers, navies and the like. You got money for the territories you overran and could choose to use them to buy more units or research secret weapons. Unfortunately, no atom bomb was available. You would have to play Supremacy, another great strategy game of my childhood, to get that option. After nearly 30 years of gameplay, Axis & Allies is still popular and you’ll find it in stores even oday.

Diplomacy

Diplomacy is based more on diplomatic skill and social interaction than army building or strategy. You’ll definitely need to employ a strategy, but how you execute that strategy and your skills at alliance building overshadow the armies.

Backstabbing and conniving are a big part and when you betray your ally often determines who wins, so the game does a great job of making each round and each decision seem to be about the life and death of your nation-state, which are the great powers of Europe in 1900: France, Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Turkey and Great Britain.

The twist is that you spend 15 minutes between each round trying to convince the other players to work with you and not against you, then all write down orders for your armies in secret, to be revealed all at the same time. Brilliant.

Warhammer

Warhammer is a wargame set in a fictional world with elves, dwarves, orcs, undead and armies of Chaos. You decide to build armies based on one of those concepts, along with human armies of the Imperium. Warhammer has been around decades, inspiring a first rate RPG and a sequel called Warhammer 40,000, set in deep space.

Warhammer 40,000 is a great wargame, too, because the elves, dwarves and orcs become space marines and so on. Warhammer is an expensive game, because of all the cool miniatures, but it’s great fun.

Puerto Rico

Imagine yourself to be a developer on the island of Puerto Rico, just the same as all the other players in the game. Then imagine your are trying to build mercantile interests, produce goods, trade them on the open market. Puerto Rico is one of the highest rated board games on one or two of the biggest online game sites. There is a card game version named San Juan which is also pretty good, too, though not as good as the board game.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 at 9:41 pm and is filed under Board Games, Video Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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