Hiatus

Since the signing of "Magnificent Marvels" in August, I had resumed posting weekly here about our design progress, about first impressions of various new and upcoming games, and especially about notes on game theory. At this point, more pressing opportunities demand my attention, so rather than continue to assemble an essay every Monday, I intend to shift my focus to other avenues of board game hobby exploration and creativity. I am grateful this Thanksgiving for my readers and their feedback. I will remain active on Twitter at @PaulOwenGames. Until another time when I have more to share, I wish everybody the best.

Notes on combining sequential and simultaneous moves

As part of a series of discussions on Games of Strategy, I've written here about games with sequential moves - those in which players "take turns" and each decision is made with full knowledge of the opponent's last decision - as well as games with simultaneous moves - those in which players make decisions not knowing which option an opponent has selected. Continuing our exploration of game theory, Dr. Wictz and I further discussed games that combine sequential and simultaneous moves.

Top ten games with my wife - 2018 edition

Four years ago I was inspired to identify the top ten games that my wife and I liked to play together. We've played a lot of games since then, and added a lot of games to our collection. So I thought I'd revisit this question. We found it very difficult to narrow the list down to ten; there are a dozen not listed here that we could easily have included instead.

Highest-rated out-of-print games - 2018 edition

Four years ago I identified the top five out-of-print games on boardgamegeek. Since then, a number of games have found new life as reprints, so I thought the topic worth revisiting to see what's "hot but hard to find."

Notes on simultaneous-move games with continuous strategies

My recent posts on game theory have focused on games with discrete strategies, which is to say that players are faced with a finite number of choices for each decision. Some time ago, in our colloquium on games of strategy, Aaron Honsowetz, Austin Smokowicz, and I discussed games with continuous strategies (also on video) - those games in which players choose a value on a spectrum, such as a price to set on a commodity. 

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.

Spies vs spies: First impression of Cold Warrior

I have long felt that the Cold War represents a rich thematic opportunity for board games. Yet I can identify only a handful of games set in that NATO-Soviet contest of diplomacy, espionage, and brinkmanship that rank in the top 1000 of boardgamegeek.* Into this cloak-and-dagger arena the new designer Wes Crawford introduces Cold Warrior (artist Jimmy Malone, published on Game Crafter).