Navajo Wars for me. Every time I have played it I have got something badly wrong. Its completely not intuitive to me.

Anyway to change the theme/color scheme? Too much white....

I'm firmly in this camp as well. I'll play anything if its got a good rule system.

I have found wargames to have the most creative and engaging rules systems and the historical aspects just really push them over the top for me.

I think the constraints of making a game system 'feel right' for a certain period and a certain battle/war pushes designers to create these amazing game systems that we all enjoy. Getting across a connection to the subject through rather abstract gaming mechanisms, while still making it realistically playable, is an impressive feat indeed.

I've always wanted to play Diplomacy.

For this sub? It works I think. Chess and Go are what immediately come to mind when I think abstract games, and I am sure most everyone else is along the same line.

For another sub that is more directed at Poker and the like, just leave that in Other Games.

I wouldn't overthink it. I think one of the big benefits of having a small forum like this is that things don't have to be shoehorned unorganically into specific categories for easier access. BGG needs to do it because its so **** big. It would be extremely annoying to navigate that website without some kind of categorization.

On a smaller scale, things can develop naturally.

I find this interesting considering you are a big proponent of defining a "wargame" by what it means within the hobby of wargaming.

Within the hobby of boardgaming, chess is considered an abstract game.

Games without Subject, for games like poker, might be a good idea but nobody would post there.

Never played Mah Jong, but I wouldn't call poker an abstract game. Its in another category as far as I am concerned. Betting game? Gambling game? Not an abstract though because its not abstracting anything.

We could get all philosophical about why we even need/want these categorizations at all. I'll save that for another time, but I think that would be a good discussion to have.

No no you guys are wrong. Its in preferences.

Go to: Profile > Look and Layout Preferences (under Modify Profile) > Check "Leave words uncensored."

****ing works, bro.

Ah **** it doesnt work. God dammit


**** this place with its goddamn oppression! Lets go back to BGG where they dont censor us! 

Well, first off (from wikipedia): "Created in India perhaps as early as 500 AD, Pachisi is subtitled Royal Game of India because royalty played by using servants of the royal household adorned in colored-costumes as game pieces on large outdoor boards." Which is just freakin awesome.

Secondly, if Monopoly were released today, it would be classified as a euro.

Something that often goes overlooked in this discussions is aesthetic. Eurogames have a certain aesthetic as do abstract games. So do wargames for that matter. Which is actually part of the reason I don't mind answers to "What is a wargame?" to be "I know one when I see one." I'll take that quite literally.

I do think chess is the original eurogame. So I agree that it has about as much connection to the subject as your average euro.

Again, I don't think these categorizations are exclusive. An "All euros are abstracts, but not all abstracts are euros" kinda thing.

To get to the chinese checkers thing, I bet chinese checkers and parchisi were the family games of their time, and I bet at some point they did have a theme.

I think euros need to have theme to engage people, to encourage table talk and social interactions, and to give players a sense of direction and objective. If I can say 'You are a Duke/Duchess in the Lorraine Valley in the 15th century and your goal is to use your wealth to develop your land into a thriving and prestigious holding by attracting merchants, farmers, scientists, traders, workers and all the rest,' and even if the mechanisms have zero connection to the subject (rolling dice, picking up and placing tiles), just having that theme and being able to give the players some kind of direction, a seed to let their imaginations take over, is better for a lot of players than not.

In conclusion, I have no idea what I'm talking about.

Yep. It exists. I actually looked it up because this forum gave me the idea to play Go on vassal, and there it was!

I'll check out that dragon go site. Thanks!

Nope. I've only ever played ASL with men.

Ambush! is the pinnacle of two categories.

Its the pinnacle of paragraph-driven games (though the competition is thin).

Its also the pinnacle of solitaire by design games, IMO. Its got everything I could want in a solitaire game. The RPG-like elements and the narrative-driven focus make it the most exciting solitaire game ever made.

As far as its replayablity issues, I don't really see it as being much of a problem. While the "ambush"/surprise story elements might be removed after the initial playthrough or two, how the story unfolds can change drastically. You could lose 3 men in one game and none in another. The replayability is very much driven by a "I can do better this time" attitude, which isnt much different than most solitaire by design games.

Best game ever.

Anybody want to play some games of Go on VASSAL sometime?

I'm a super noob and I want to learn how to play. The scoring rules still confuse the **** outta me in many situations and the endgame scoring also confuses me.

I've been meaning to go to the local Go Club meetup but its on Sundays and Sundays are my errand/chore/hang out with the girlfriend day, so I figured this might be a way to get a few games in sometime.

I just wanna be cool.

I think euros are abstract games but deserve a separate classification due to their emphasis on family or group play. This is apparent because most 2 player focused euros are more on the abstract side.

Because of this focus, a theme is needed because it is easier and more fun to get involved socially with a theme. Its more fun to table talk over your buddies farmer taking all the wood than it is over your buddies black stone being placed on c16.