European board games before Catan

Game designer Rob Newton asked on Twitter what people would consider "classic literature of the board game world." Fellow designer Jonathan Weaver responded in three categories - citing Chess and Go as "ancient literature," Monopoly as "classic American literature," and then added, "whatever the predecessor of Catan is would be classic European literature." Some time ago, I was inspired to go back and look at what board games Americans had available to them when Monopoly arrived.  Now I was faced with a similar question for Europe before Catan. I already knew that Clue was originally English and Risk came from a French design, but Weaver's response made me realize that I really couldn't identify other European games released prior to 1995. Surely Catan couldn't have been the first popular European board game, so I felt that some self-education was in order.

Notes on games with mixed strategies

In an earlier post regarding theory of simultaneous move games, I concluded with an example of a game between two tennis players that did not demonstrate a Nash equilibrium between its two pure strategies. Sam Hillier: Consulting Philosopher more recently elaborated on the topic with an excellent post on mixed strategies. Whereas I had approached the question of an equilibrium for a single tennis shot and concluded that none existed, a tennis match of course includes many shots, so players have an opportunity to invoke a weighted mix of shots and defenses between the two options.