Monday, April 30, 2012

Top 5 Greatest Strategy Games


5. Bridge


19th century developed from earlier games. This is the king of trick taking card games. Teams work together to try and make books after bidding on how many they expect to take and the suit to be considered trump. Not as popular as it once was, there are still a number of fans and newspaper columns devoted to the strategy of the game appear in many newspapers on a regular basis.

4. Civilization


The opposite of the conquer the world type games this is about developing societies through trade and cooperation with other players. You need to help your fellow players in order to advance your own societies and the game has a good moral lesson as well as being highly fun to play. An online version of the game has been remarkably successful as well.

3. Dungeons and Dragons


While this one barely qualifies on the physical pieces requirement it has to make the list based on originality and long lasting appeal. In 1974 Tactical Studies Rules (TSR) a small company that produced wargames produced this based on their chainmail game of wargame rules. The longest lasting and most popular of the RPG (Role playing game) genre has each player create a fantasy (typically middle ages style) character while a DM (Dungeon Master) creates a story scenario. The players then work as a team to solve the created problems such as battling monsters, negotiating with NPCs(Non player characters run by the DM), disarming traps, and rescuing damsels in distress. The role playing part can range from minor bad acting out of fantasies to seriously talented (I’ve seen a few people who could be on the stage with their skill) but the strategic part is what interests many players. There have been several editions over the years with different rules so be sure your group uses the same set that you do. The game suffered a bad reputation in 1982 when an exploitive TV movie was made about a teenage player using the game as a way to plan the murder of his stepfather.

2. Settlers of Catan


The game that established Germany as the most innovative game nation of the last decade has had tremendous worldwide popularity with many different versions (Seafarers of Catan/Starfarers of Catan). One of the cooperation/resource trading games genre it features gathering of the resources you have access to such as wood, grain, wool, and brick and trading extras to other players so that you can each build your areas. Played on a board of interconnecting hexagons, it can be rearranged for each new game creating different strategies each time.

1. Carcassonne


This German game won the 2001 game of the year award and has been extremely popular worldwide with a number of optional expansion sets. Square tiles are drawn and feature a puzzle like design. Placed together in different ways the game board is built as you play as you try to build cities, roads, fields, and cloisters scoring points both along the way and at the end. One of the fun aspects in multiplayer is that no one gets eliminated along the way and has to sit and watch the surviving players.

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