WEEK 12: ANTIKE

Originality is as hard to come by in boardgames as it is in any other realm. Antike was the first game to feature a “rondel”:

WEEK 11: AMBUSH! (+ MOVE OUT!)

I was introduced to wargaming at summer (day) camp, in the late 1970’s. My counsellor was in charge of one of the “Hobby Hub” activities which made up the schedule of our week. The game was PanzerLeader. I was hooked. Almost immediately I started buying games, in the hope I would find someone to play them with. But I soon found out: wargaming is a solitairy pursuit. The rulebooks are long—and playing times are even longer. By default, then, I often ended up playing alone: first playing as the Germans (say) and then clamping down my amnesia-hat and switching over to the British. This was somewhat satisfying but definitely easier to do for some games than others. I spent countless hours in “multiple-personality mode”.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, some games had already been published which were specifically for the solitaire wargamer—I found out about them later. Fortunately, for me, Victory Games was founded a few years after I started wargaming, and in their short but brief existence they released two of the most innovative and enjoyable solitaire wargames ever (in my opinion). One was Ambush (and its sequels); the other was Mosby’s Raiders—but the discussion of that game will have to wait quite a while.

WEEK 10: THE A-MAZE-ING LABYRINTH

This game is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. It remains in the top 50 of Children's games on BoardGameGeek; it is also the oldest game on the list to that point. The game's continuing success can also be measured by its many spinoffs, including: several "Master" Versions; a card-based version; a 3-D set.

All of these exploit humankind's fascination with mazes and labyrinths.

WEEK 9: ALHAMBRA (+ ALHAMBRA: THE DICE GAME)

Nine weeks in and I falter for the first time. I could neither find time to play Alexandros with anyone, nor could I muster the enthusiasm to cram the rules into my increasingly-limited memory buffer for one play. Luckily having left myself a back-door solution to keep me moving forward (see Week 1), I pressed forward to an easier game to bring to table: Alhambra.