Backgammon is the most widespread member of the large family of tables games played with counters and dice on the characteristic tables boards with 24 long triangles. The family of games on this board date back nearly 5,000 years in Mesopotamia and Persia, whilst the earliest record of the basic gameplay rules of modern backgammon dates from 17th century England, derived from an important variation on the 16th-century game of Irish, which had the same setup as most Middle Eastern versions of the game.
Sternhalma, commonly known as Chinese checkers or Chinese chequers, is a strategy board game of German origin which can be played by two, three, four, or six people, playing individually or with partners. The game is a modern and simplified variation of the game Halma.
Stratego is a strategy board game for two players on a board of 10×10 squares. Each player controls 40 pieces representing individual officer and soldier ranks in an army. The pieces have Napoleonic insignia. The objective of the game is to find and capture the opponent's Flag, or to capture so many enemy pieces that the opponent cannot make any further moves. Stratego has simple enough rules for young children to play but a depth of strategy that is also appealing to adults. The game is a slightly modified copy of an early 20th century French game named L'Attaque. It has been in production in Europe since World War II and the United States since 1961. There are now two- and four-player versions, versions with 10, 30 or 40 pieces per player, and boards with smaller sizes. There are also variant pieces and different rulesets.
Chess strategy is the aspect of chess play concerned with evaluation of chess positions and setting of goals and long-term plans for future play. While evaluating a position strategically, a player must take into account such factors as the relative value of the pieces on the board, pawn structure, king safety, position of pieces, and control of key squares and groups of squares. Chess strategy is distinguished from chess tactics, which is the aspect of play concerned with the move-by-move setting up of threats and defenses. Some authors distinguish static strategic imbalances, which tend to persist for many moves, from dynamic imbalances, which are temporary. This distinction affects the immediacy with which a sought-after plan should take effect. Until players reach the skill level of "master", chess tactics tend to ultimately decide the outcomes of games more often than strategy does. Many chess coaches thus emphasize the study of tactics as the most efficient way to improve one's results in serious chess play.
Checkers, also known as draughts, is a group of strategy board games for two players which involve diagonal moves of uniform game pieces and mandatory captures by jumping over opponent pieces. Checkers is developed from alquerque. The term "checkers" derives from the checkered board which the game is played on, whereas "draughts" derives from the verb "to draw" or "to move".
Halma is a strategy board game invented in 1883 or 1884 by George Howard Monks, an American thoracic surgeon at Harvard Medical School. His inspiration was the English game Hoppity which was devised in 1854.
Archon: The Light and the Dark is a 1983 video game developed by Free Fall Associates and one of the first five games published by Electronic Arts. It is superficially similar to chess, in that it takes place on a board with alternating black and white squares; however, instead of fixed rules when landing on another player's piece, an arcade-style fight takes place to determine the victor, and each piece has different combat abilities. The health of the player's piece is enhanced when landing on a square of one's own color.
Connect Four is a two-player connection board game, in which the players choose a color and then take turns dropping colored tokens into a seven-column, six-row vertically suspended grid. The pieces fall straight down, occupying the lowest available space within the column. The objective of the game is to be the first to form a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal line of four of one's own tokens. Connect Four is a solved game. The first player can always win by playing the right moves.
Martian Chess is an abstract strategy game for two or four players invented by Andrew Looney in 1999. It is played with Icehouse pyramids on a chessboard. To play with a number of players other than two or four, a non-Euclidean surface can be tiled to produce a board of the required size, allowing up to six players.
Jungle or Dou Shou Qi is a modern Chinese board game with an obscure history.
The Game of the Amazons is a two-player abstract strategy game invented in 1988 by Walter Zamkauskas of Argentina. The game is played by moving pieces and blocking the opponents from squares, and the last player able to move is the winner. It is a member of the territorial game family, a distant relative of Go and chess.
Fields of Action is an abstract strategy board game for two players.
Blokus is an abstract strategy board game for two to four players, where players try to score points by occupying most of the board with pieces of their colour. The board is a square regular grid and the pieces are polyominoes. It was designed by French mathematician Bernard Tavitian and first released in 2000 by Sekkoïa, a French company. It has won several awards, including the Mensa Select award and the 2004 Teacher's Choice Award. In 2009, the game was sold to Mattel.
Lasca is a draughts variant, invented by the second World Chess Champion Emanuel Lasker (1868–1941). Lasca is derived from English draughts and the Russian draughts game bashni (Towers).
Khet is a chess-like abstract strategy board game using lasers that was formerly known as Deflexion. Players take turns moving Egyptian-themed pieces around the playing field, firing their low-powered laser diode after each move. Most of the pieces are mirrored on one or more sides, allowing the players to alter the path of the laser through the playing field. When a piece is struck by a laser on a non-mirrored side, it is eliminated from the game.
Rubik's Games is a, five games in one, PC game created for Windows 95/98 developed in part by Ernő Rubik with Androsoft and was published by Hasbro Interactive. It was part of Hasbro's classical games collection of PC related games, translating their most famous board games into best possible quality video games. A history of the Rubik's Cube and its inventor, written out in a webpage type file, with pictures is available from the Menu.
This page explains commonly used terms in board games in alphabetical order. For a list of board games, see List of board games. For terms specific to chess, see Glossary of chess. For terms related to chess problems, see Glossary of chess problems.
The Duke is a two-player abstract strategy board game played on a square-tiled gameboard, with 36 squares arranged in a 6×6 grid. The game has been compared to chess and chess variants, while retaining notable differences in unit movement and overall gameplay.
