This is a regularly updated guide to abstract strategy games: what they are, which are the best, and where to learn, play, buy, and discuss them. I have a lifelong passion for these games and want to help others see their beauty.

Contents

What are abstract strategy games?

The textbook abstract strategy game (or abstract game for short) is a board game that:

lacks a theme

is for 2 players

has short, elegant rules

has geometric gameplay

has emergent, deep gameplay

has no luck or hidden information

They tend to be more contemplative than other kinds of games. A classic example is Go:

Why do people like them?

In good abstract games, elaborate strategies and tactics emerge from simple rules. Fans find that emergence fascinating, and even beautiful.

Fans enjoy learning strategy and tactics, and good abstract games offer lots of them, without burdensome rules.

It’s easy to improve at abstract games, because they lack luck, which complicates gameplay analysis. Progress towards mastery feels great.

I love them because they’re meditative and they’ve taught me how to think better.

Which are the best?

There are thousands of abstract games, I haven’t played them all and my opinions are subjective. That said, here are 19 games I cite as exemplars, in four categories:

Category #1: The best unpublished modern abstract games

Many of the best abstract games are never published, for three reasons:

They have generic components. Their designers aren’t interested in publishing. It’s hard to sell emergence, since by definition, you can’t see it at first.

As a result, fantastic innovations in the genre have flown under the radar. Good unpublished abstracts tend to be more strategic and emergent than their published counterparts. For that reason, it pays to play them a while before judging them. Most of my favorites are in this category, including:

How it works: The players’ pieces are initially spread across a square board (see image above), and you try to be first to move yours into one connected clump.

How it feels: Like a strategic traffic jam. There’s a delicious satisfaction in getting to a choke-point first and making your opponent go the long way.

Rules: here

How it works: Like Checkers (see International Draughts below), you try to eliminate all your opponent pieces, by chains of jump captures.

How it feels: At the heart of the game are sometimes breathtaking, sometimes board-spanning capture sequences. They have a cinematic drama, like the magic tricks of a great illusionist.

Rules: here

How it works: Eliminate your opponent’s pieces by surrounding them with impassable obstacles so they can’t move.

How it feels: Like Japanese monsters lumbering through a city, trying to entomb each other in rubble.

Rules: here

How it works: Make a chain of your pieces connecting two opposite sides of a square board, while your opponent tries to do the same for the other two sides. The trick: pieces can move short distances after placement, creating shifting patterns of connection and disconnection.

How it feels: Slithery. Your opponent seems always about to squirm from your clutches. Sometimes she does, creating dramatic reversals of fortune. But when you turn the tables, you’re like Houdini bursting from his shackles, moments before drowning.

Rules: here

Category #2: The best published modern abstract games

Though many of the best abstract games haven’t been published, some have. Published abstracts tend to be more tactical than strategic, and most take 30 minutes or less. Here are my favorites:

How it works: Make your opponent run out of options on her turn, by creating unassailable stacks of your pieces.

How it feels: Like a strategic battle royale game. You’re hunting and being hunted as you run out of space to operate. It has the same claustrophobic tension, and the same cathartic resolve when all is revealed in the endgame.

FYI: This is my favorite in the landmark series of abstract games called the GIPF project, and one of the two most popular games from that project (the other is YINSH, which I could have put here instead of TZAAR). It’s also likely the most strategic game in this category.

Rules: here | Buy: here

How it works: Place as many of your tetris-like pieces on the board as you can, and prevent your opponent from placing hers. The trick: pieces of the same color must touch, but only at their corners, which creates spatial traps.

How it feels: Like navigating through narrow underground passages, barely squeezing through. It feels great to make it through a tight spot into a big open space, or to trap your opponent in her own narrow passage.

Rules: here | Buy: here

How it works: A game with no board. Move hexagonal pieces around in a connected clump made of your and your opponent’s pieces, to surround the opponent’s “Queen Bee”.

How it feels: Similar to Chess (see below), but faster and less intimidating. Also, because your pieces must stay attached and can’t run away, it’s like wrestling someone inside a body bag.

Rules: here | Buy: here

How it works: Be first to move your main piece from your end of the board to your opponent’s, while you collectively build a maze around your pieces to stymie each other’s progress.

How it feels: Like Judo. You’re finding ways to use your opponent’s choices against them. To commit to a course of action is to commit to a potential trap. But you must commit to something, so hold your breath and go.

Rules: here | Buy: here

How it works: Capture the opponent king or move yours to their starting spot. The trick: the way your pieces can move changes each turn.

How it feels: Like a fast, tiny Chess, but due to the changing move options, it’s hard to predict what might happen. It feels like the players take turns kicking each others’ legs out from under them by surprise. All tactics, but great tactics.

Rules: here | Buy: here

How it works: Be first to create a chain of your pieces spanning the board.

How it feels: Because the rules are a bit baroque and the board can change a lot each turn, pitfalls abound. Like being in an earthquake as the ground opens up all around you. For the same reason, there are dramatic turns of fortune, and they make the game.

FYI: TAK was a fictional game in a fantasy novel, The Wise Man’s Fear, before the author made it real in partnership with a game designer.

Rules: here | Buy: here

Category #3: The best classic abstract games

These are older, culturally established games. They tend to be serious, with tournament scenes, but there’s a range. If you love tradition or studying strategies players have discovered through the ages, these are for you.

How it works: Two teams of pieces with varied movement powers start on opposite sides of the board, and each team moves to trap the opponent team’s King piece.

How it feels: Like you’re some kind of abstract spider, weaving a complicated web of geometric influence, to snare your opponent’s King.

FYI: Chess is the best known abstract game, by far. It’s showing its age in high-level play, where long memorized openings and draws are common, but it remains the king (pun).

Rules: here | Buy: here

How it works: Capture opponent pieces by surrounding them with yours, and wall-off territory.

How it feels: It’s like a festering war that starts with scattered skirmishes. As the battles’ size and number grow, they shift and merge, affecting each other’s outcomes, and transforming into a titanic conflict. New players can find it disorienting.

FYI: Many consider Go the deepest of the classical games, maybe all games. If I were to pick one classic abstract to play, it would be this or Shogi (below). Here’s a great introduction.

Rules: here | Buy: here

How it works: Eliminate all your opponent pieces, by jumping over them in chains of jump captures.

How it feels: Like conjuring a vortex and sucking your opponent into it. There’s a rule: if it’s possible to make a capture on your turn, you must. You can use it to force your opponent to make captures leading to devastating counter-captures for you. Once your opponent is sucked in, you own their fate. You feel omnipotent.

FYI: This is the form of checkers played most widely and seriously. There’s more to this style of game than many realize. However, I think Dameo (above) is far superior: it offers more freedom, and the capture-traps are more dramatic.

Rules: here | Buy: here

How it works: move beads through a series of pits to move as many as you can into your home pit.

How it feels: Smooth. There’s a soothing rhythm to the plink of stones in pits. The game can be played with a lot of forward calculation if you like, and then it feels tactical and mathy. But in my experience, it invites you to play in a more relaxed way.

FYI: It’s the least-demanding of the classic games listed here. Great for playing over coffee on a lazy Sunday morning.

Rules: here | Buy: here

How it works: as in Chess, two teams of pieces with varied movement powers start on opposite sides of the board, and each team moves to trap the opponent team’s King piece. The big difference: In Shogi, captured opponent pieces can be put back into play as your own.

How it feels: as in Chess, you feel like you’re weaving a web of geometric influence to snare your opponent’s King. However, Shogi has a greater feeling of crescendo: it starts slow, but then because lots of pieces stay on the board throughout, the action gets hairier and hairier, and wild endings abound.

Rules: here | Buy: here

Category #4: the best abstract games I’ve designed

I’m an accomplished abstract game designer and I’ve won a number of awards for my games. I hope you’ll indulge me as I show off my best.

How it works: Capture opponent pieces by surrounding them with your own, in a race to capture a certain number of pieces first.

How it feels: It’s like Go (above), but shorter and more playful. To capture opponent pieces is to feel like you’ve expelled an impurity. It’s like the pleasure of having tidied up a room.

FYI: Blooms was winner of the 2018 BGG Best Combinatorial Game award.

Rules: here

How it works: You build shapes on a hexagonal board, which then eat each other. The shapes that survive grow into different, larger shapes until one player runs out of space to grow, and thus wins.

How it feels: Like a roller coaster. The advantage seesaws back and forth until one player finds a way to make one of those temporary advantages permanent.

FYI: It’s a good game even in 10-minute matches on tiny boards, as in the 6 example games animated above. Winner of the 2017 BGG Best Combinatorial Game award.

Rules: here

How it works: The goal is to have the largest group of stones on the board when it’s full, but as you get closer to winning, your opponent gets to add more pieces.

How it feels: It’s a game of brinksmanship and timing. Also, when the game is over and board is full, it can feel like the players have created an abstract work of art.

FYI: a finalist for the 1000-Year Game Design Challenge.

Rules: here

How it works: It’s an ecosystem simulation where players evolve species to eat each other in a food web. A diagram around the board shows which species eat which. Be first to fully colonize the ecosystem or eat 20 opponent pieces.

How it feels: Like you’re evolving, feeding, and protecting a growing bestiary of creatures. It also has a seesaw dynamic similar to Bug above.

FYI: Winner of the 2015 BGG Best Combinatorial Game award.

Rules: here

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Abstract Game Databases

Where you should go to find collections of games and their rules.

Abstract Game Collection at Board Game Geek – By far the biggest and most complete collection of abstract strategy games online (more than 4500), though it includes many mislabeled games too. It focuses on commercially published games. Newcomers often find the site hard to use.

World of Abstract Games – This site has been around forever and isn’t the prettiest on earth, but it’s easy to navigate, has lots of games, and I believe it’s still intermittently updated.

The List at AbstractStrategy.com – This one has also been around forever, and I’m not sure it’s updated anymore, but has a ton of games.

igGameCenter Rules Page – a site for playing abstract games in real-time online, and it has a well-designed collection of rules for the more than 140 games you can play there.

List of Abstract Strategy Games at Wikipedia – Far from comprehensive but still good. Has great potential because it’s wikipedia and anyone can add games.

ChessVariants.org – Chess variants are a major sub-genre of abstract games and many designers started designing with chess variants. This site is the first and last word on the subject.

Traditional Mancala Variants and Modern Mancala Variants – Mancala variants are a second major sub-genre of abstract games. This site describes more than two hundred variants.



Where to Play Abstract Games Online

The first three items listed are the ones that have proven most valuable to me. If you don’t want to explore all these sites, stick with those.

Little Golem – My favorite turn-based site (which means players don’t need to be online at the same time to play; one player takes a move whenever and the game just sits there until the other player gets online and makes her move). Features only about 30 games, but they’re generally excellent (plug: this is the place to play my game Catchup).

Board Game Arena – this may be the most popular online play site for board games in general. It has an abstract section with a few dozen abstract games, many with lots of players. You can play both turn-based and real-time games there (plug: this is the place to play my games Circle of Life and Blooms).

AiAi – A free downloadable game-playing engine that allows you to play many abstract strategy games against AI, as well as do analyses, and play against others online. It’s updated with new games constantly so check back and re-download it often. A must-have.

Boardspace.net – A tad old school, but that’s not a bad thing. Good game graphics and about 70 carefully curated games to choose from. Many have AI to play against.

igGameCenter – Good for playing abstract games online in real-time. Features more than 140 games, a clean, simple interface, and lots of nice play options (time controls, etc.). The site also has a tool called the “sandbox”, which game designers use to playtest new game concepts. I’ve developed many games there. It can be hard to find an opponent, however.

It’s Your Turn – Turn-based site with a colossal membership and a relatively small selection of games.

Your Turn My Turn – English-language portal to Jijbent, a popular Dutch site where you can play turn-based games. 42 games to choose from, most of them abstract.

Mindsports – A real-time play site owned by one of the pillars of abstract game design: Christian Freeling. Until recently you needed Java to play there, but the site is being updated to eliminate that requirement. Features around 100 games (see here and here), many of which you can’t find online anywhere else.

Ludoteka – Active Spanish site with an English interface option (which is where the link goes). Has more than 60 games.

Super Duper Games – Another popular spot for turn-based games. 117 games. The developer of the site is in the process of creating a new site, called AbstractPlay.com, about which I’m excited. You can follow the development here.

Brain King – Has a large, active membership and 129 games. Especially good for chess variants. However, it appears that, as of 2018, it’s no longer actively developed, though it is being maintained.

Skill Games Board – Offers a small number of classic abstract games for turn-based play. I don’t know much about about and haven’t played there, but it looks sharp and is designed to work well on mobile devices, which isn’t always true of in-browser platforms.

Gamerz – This site launched in 1996 and it looks like it. But it has an active membership and plenty of games.

Public Abstract Games Google Doc – I created this a few years ago, and at first not much happened, but then Clark Rodeffer stepped in and made it useful. Because two or more people can edit a Google Doc simultaneously, you can use it to play abstract games online in real time, and that’s what this document allows you to do. It’s a presentation doc where each slide pictures a board and pieces for playing a different game. There are about 70 games there now, and it’s easy to make and add your own, which makes it excellent for playtesting new game concepts. Please treat it with care.

The Garden Gate – This site is a little embryonic, as there are only 8 games there, all of them played on a board inspired by The Last Airbender. I’m including it because it’s mobile friendly (many abstract game play sites aren’t), and the developer is interested in adding more games. I’m hoping that including it here will give it some exposure and prompt the developer to do so.

Definitive List of Abstract Games for iPhones and iPads – This is a curated list I created because it’s hard to find what you’re looking for in the App Store. Contains about 50 games, both classic and modern. Many of them allow you to play online.



Where to buy abstract games

There are many companies that publish abstract games, but usually just one or two, either as sideline or as the only games they publish. The companies below publish a bunch of them, which isn’t easy. You can buy games directly from each of these publishers. I urge you to do so, because I want them to thrive, and they make more money when they don’t have to share revenue with middlemen.

Gerhards Spiel und Design – German publisher which makes a bunch of beautiful wooden abstract games. The link is to an English language version of their site. If you live in the U.S. here’s an importer from whom you can purchase some of Gerhards’ games.

Steffen Spiele – Another English link to another German publisher focused on beautiful wooden abstracts. See their list of games here. Gooooo Germany!

Nestorgames – A small company offering a big bunch of excellent abstract strategy games. They offer two kinds of games 1) inexpensive, portable games, mostly made of plastic, foam, and acrylic; and 2) a line of pricey, beautiful, deluxe games

Kadon – Another little indie company. This one has been around forever and their website is REALLY old school, but the company remains active. Quality varies from game to game. Most are made of either laser-cut acrylic or wood.

Gigamic – French company known for making attractive wooden game sets. They’re perfect for leaving out on coffee-tables.

Maranda – Maranda has only been making games for a couple of years but they’ve quickly built a line of 2-player, luckless, abstract games. They generally have simple, intuitive rules, even by abstract game standards, which I love. Their sets are attractive and made of wood and/or plastic.

Discussion (Forums)

Abstract Game Forum at Board Game Geek – The most active forum for abstract games, though newbies can find the site intimidating. There are more experts here than in any other forum, and the discussions tend to be more informed.

Abstract Games Subreddit – I’m one of those demented Reddit fans who can’t praise it loudly enough. So I’m happy a subreddit for abstract games exists. Its membership has been slowly growing and I expect someday it’ll hit critical mass and have a chance to unseat BoardGameGeek as the most popular discussion spot.

Abstract Nation Facebook Group – The most popular Facebook group on the subject. The guy who runs it is skilled at getting people involved, and the group has grown quickly. It’s pretty active and I expect it will remain so for the foreseeable future.

Discussion Page at Chessvariants.org – This site is just for Chess variants. The forum here is fairly lively.

Online writing about abstract games

Where you’ll find the best writing about abstract strategy games on the web.

Nick Bentley Games – The site you’re reading right now. You can see all my posts about abstract games here.

Abstract Games Magazine – A former print magazine that relaunched recently as an online magazine (with a print option). An incredible resource, not in the least because previous issues have been digitized and made available as free PDFs.

Mindsports.nl – Website of Christian Freeling, Éminence Grise in the world of abstract games. You can play games there (both his and others), and he hosts a great deal of his own writing there. Not to be missed.

Cameron Browne’s Games – Cameron is not only the founder of the Game and Puzzle Design Journal (listed above), but he’s ushering table game design into the 21st century by writing software that AUTONOMOUSLY DESIGNS GAMES.

Spielstein – The site of Deiter Stein, a German designer who concocts elegant abstract games and then gets them published in classy editions. I don’t know Deiter well, but I know and like his games plenty.

Trabsact Sagme Diaries – The blog of Joao Pedro Neto and Bill Taylor, two of the great sages of abstract game design. I love these guys. The blog covers their own designs, modifications of other people’s designs, and uniquely, historical games about which I can find discussion nowhere else. However, they seem to have stopped making new posts a couple of years ago.

Mark Steere Games – I hesitate to put this here because, in addition to being a well-known game designer, Mark is a notorious internet troll. But his games are many and many are good (see Oust especially) and this list would feel incomplete if I didn’t include his site.

Combinatorial Game Theory – This blog is maintained by a professor in combinatorial game theory. There are other sites on the same subject but I decided to link to only one (the only one I know of that’s regularly updated) because formal game theory is a little obscure to most people. If you’re interested though, you can find a number of other good sites on the subject on the right side-bar of this one.

Books and periodicals

There are hundreds of books dedicated to single games, like Chess for example. This list doesn’t include them. It only includes books about abstract games in general or those covering many games. It’s just a list of links for now; I’ll add descriptions in the future. Warning: the last 5 books on this list require significant mathematical knowledge.