
The Board Gamesbook
Abstract Games Rules
Games that challenge...
- All the King's Horses: a game of movement with knights on a chess board
- Combat Chess II: a Chess variant with a bite
- Gess (Generalized Chess): a game, played on a Go board, where stones in any 3x3 region of the board, constitute a 'piece' whose configuration determine
its movement
- Open-Go (http://www.rpi.edu/~vanpag/Opengo.html): a variant of Go, played on a board that is simply a circular boundary
(designed by Gregory Van Patten)
- Bagha Chal (Tigers Moving Game) (http://home.istar.ca/~smerek/bagha-chal/index.htm): is an all out head-to-head battle for life and death between the spectacular Tigers and the devious and conniving Goats (National
Game of Nepal)
(described by Paul Smerek)
- Baou: a Mancala-type game
(described by Mike Smith)
- Jungle: a traditional Chinese board game
(described by David Bush)
- Mancala: the traditional African game (or game system)
- Trysse: a mancala variant
- Aboyne (http://www.huygens.org/~sijben/Aboyne.html): a game of tactics
(designed by Paul Sijben)
- Ascent (http://www.rpi.edu/~vanpag/abrvprty.html): a two player game, is played with a group of numbered cards arranged in an array,
where the aim is to arrange cards in increasing sequence
(designed by Gregory K. van Patten)
- Blox: a building block strategy game
(designed by Daniel LaLiberte)
- Bones: an abstract two player game. Be the first to get 5 spaces of your color in a row - with an intriguing twist!
(designed by Bruce Biskup and Joshua Howard)
- Cannon: a two player game of move and capture on a 10x10 grid
(designed by David E. Whitcher)
- Caravansérail: a previously unpublished trading game
(designed by Bruno Faidutti)
- Chessling: a new game using an old board
- ChessWar!: a strategic game for two players on standard chessboard (or any kind of battlefield made of squares) with standard chess pieces
(designed by Kalle Marjola)
- Currents: a cross between air hockey and the Parker Brothers game 'Bonkers!', using a relatively cramped playfield with extra levels
of antagonism and randomness
- Diffusion (http://www.rpi.edu/~vanpag/Diffusion2.html): a game for two people played on certain lattices consisting of points joined by line segments
(designed by Gregory K. Van Patten)
- Domination: dominoes dominate this game of strategy for two players
- Dozo: a game for 2 to 3 players, played on a triangular board, where you aim to ace a stone which forms the third point of an equilateral
triangle
(designed by Alexander Randolph)
- Epaminondas(aka Crossings): an abstract game where you advance columns of game pieces to the opponents back row
(designed by Robert Abbott)
- Fencing: an abstract strategy game from John Brunner's The Shockwave Rider
(described by Steve Linton)
- Fibonacci: a game for two of move and capture played on a hexagonal board
(designed by Thomas
Naylor)
- Flower of the Lotus: a previously unpublished strategy game
(designed by Bruno Faidutti)
- Footsteps: a tabletop tug of war
(rendered by Neil Bowers)
- Hanga-Tanga: a positional game using dice and a small checker board
(designed by Michael Petty)
- Hex: a connectivity game, played on a rhombus of hexagons, where each player tries to complete an unbroken chain between opposite
sides of the board
(designed by Piet Hein)
- HexGo (http://www.rpi.edu/~vanpag/TriHex.html): a two player game, inspired by the classic games Hex, Go, Tanbo, and Star,
played on a convex plane figure with six faces, tiled by equilateral
triangles
(designed by Gregory K. Van Patten)
- Hi Rollin': a Stack variant
(designed by Michael Petty)
- IceHouse: a really cool game with pyramids and no board - in a class of its own, really!
(designed by Andrew Looney and John Cooper)
- Kechi: a game of capture
(designed by Michael Marcus)
- Landseer Tic-tac-Toe: a more complex version of the classic game
(designed by Landseer Games)
- Linear Progression: two player abstract strategy game played on a regular chess or checkers board
(designed by Lloyd Krassner)
- Lines of Action: move your pieces and connect them all up
(designed by Claude Soucie)
- Neutron: elementary particle physics (originally published in the British magazine Games & Puzzles
(designed by Robert A. Kraus)
- Number Chess (http://www.rensselaer.edu/~vanpag/Numberchess.html): a mathematical game with perfect information
(designed by Greg Van Patten)
- Op·position: a two player game of move and capture on a chessboard
(designed by David E. Whitcher)
- Orbs: an original board game you can play with only a Chinese Checkers board and some extra marbles. Simple to learn, hard to master...
(designed by Santiago)
- Pilade: a very light abstract strategy game, that you can play with pawns from any other game
(designed by Bruno Faidutti)
- Seminar Power Play: each player takes the part of a decision maker and must work within a team to win the game while fulfilling his or her own
motives (aggrandizement of personal power, reduction of the military's influence, etc.
- Slimetrail: a slithering slug strategy game
(designed by Bill Taylor)
- Sophia: a two player game with "pennies and dimes"
(designed by Richard Hutnik)
- Stratagem: an abstract simulation of international conflict, designed for large, introductory history courses at the college level
- Susan: a quick and subtle board game for two players
(designed by Stephen Linhart)
- Ta-Se: a memory game that will have you in your cups in no time
- Tanbo: a game, played on a Go board, which models a system of plant roots struggling for survival
(designed by Mark Steere)
- Teeko: an abstract alignment game
(designed by John Scarne)
- Temple: a version of the card game that the Great Dalmuti was based on. Uses a normal deck of cards but is more of a role-playing
game than a card game
(designed by Andrew Looney)
- The Two Pipers: why did the piper cross the swamp?
(designed by Michael Petty)
- The Way: by rotating and replacing cards on the board, players try to be the first to find The Way
(designed by Bruce Biskup and Joshua Howard)
- Three Squared: an unusual multiplayer card game that makes use of a standard Uno deck in an entirely new way
(designed by Glastyn Games)
- Tiles: a 2 or 3 player game in which players place tiles in an attempt to
form closed areas of their color
(designed by Bruce Biskup and Joshua Howard)
- Trax (http://www.daimi.aau.dk/~tusk/pbmserv/trax/trax.index.html): a game of connections
(designed by David Smith)
- Trimok: a board game for two, developed from the old Japanese game jan-ken-pon (scissors-paper-rock)
- Turnio: a tactical board-game for two players
- TwixT: two players - or teams - try to connect opposite sides of the board
(designed by Alex Randolph)