A lot of today’s classic board games fit into this category including checkers, chess, go and mancala.
An Abstract strategy game aims to minimize luck and without a theme, nearly all Strategy games will abide to the form of a Board or Card game. In which there are few random elements such as shuffled cards or rolling of a dice.
As J. Mark Thompson wrote in his article, "Defining the Abstract": "There is an intimate relationship between such games and puzzles: every board position presents the player with the puzzle, what is the best move?
Which in theory could be solved by logic alone? A good abstract game can therefore be thought of as a "family" of potentially interesting logic puzzles, and the play consists of each player posing such a puzzle to the other. Good players are the ones who find the most difficult puzzles to present to their opponents." [1] Meaning that each player is tackling a puzzle that both players are presenting to each other, each turn between them changing the tide of the game.
Personally, I do enjoy these games. The core mechanics on how they play are really revolutionary to other board games after these. A game like Chess for example really has no flaws and leaving the game completely to the player and his skill in strategy.
One thing that I feel I disagree with on Abstract Strategy Games is the lack of a theme, using plain coloured pieces and simple boards. Although that these may help to the game in getting rid of any distractions through the game personally I think it’s why some people find games like Chess and Checkers so boring with them being in two solid basic colours.
Race Games:
Race Games consists of being a rather large portion of more modern board games, this is also one of the earliest forms of board games developed with implements and ideas dating back to at least the 3rd Millennium BC in Egypt, Iraq and Iran and also the most widely used across the world. Race games usually use dice rolls for the players to traverse across the board.
There’s been several types of Race games developed over generations, one of the earliest being Simple Race games clearly revolving around pure luck and next to no skill, The player having one piece to move around the board trying to reach the end of the path first, The most popular game known in this category being Snakes and Ladders which had descended from games of India.
Complex race games combine luck and skill, Players are sometimes given more than one piece to move are once. Allowing the player to strategically place his pieces in advantageous positions, giving the game a sense of strategy to the element. These types of games usually have stylised boards or consist of art work accompanying the track or course of the “race”. Roll and Move Games:
Similar to Race games but incorporate another separate game into the basic play style of a Race game, Like in Monopoly’s case the course of the board go around in a loop but has a different objective than just reaching the end in order to win. Like a card system beside the course of the board or gathering of items. Sometimes including the ability to interact with the other players of the game through your actions, giving a more personal feel to the people you are playing with.
Word Games:
Word games are based and designed on the premise to explore and language and its general properties. These games were primarily created for the purpose of entertainment but had a second sight of being educational in teaching the given language it was based in, developing skills in spelling and sometimes grammar with certain games.
Games like Boggle and Scrabble are based on word gameplay, revolving around arranging on word structure and spelling.
There are many more variations of Board games, Over the decades the different forms and changes to certain games have developed into who new categories of games. Such as Trivia games like Trivial Pursuit that have the premise of a Board game but has the side game of answering Trivia questions, Family games that focus on having the whole family together with a slightly looser rule set to large Multiplayer games to be played in large numbers like Take it Easy and War games that usually have several models and a larger board to incorporate the equipment needed to play, the time to finish a game is significantly increased as well like games such as Risk.
Overall, my personal preference in games are the simplistic games such as Race games or Roll and Move with the odd little side games to coincide with the main objective of the game, Games that have random questions being fired at you or a lot of set-up time, complicated rules or too much equipment like masses of counters and miniatures (Such as Risk and other War games) just don’t appeal to me and I think that a board game should be played quickly and swiftly and most importantly, fun. So that when people have finished playing they would want to play again to settle the score to the just previously won said game.
