Joe Gola: Pure Strategy

I’m excited because I got a new game this week, namely Tzaar, designed by the Belgian Kris Burm. Gamers always refer to this type of game as “two-player abstract,” though the label is misleading because it suggests that one of the primary distinguishing qualities of the type is its abstractness – in other words, that the games do not make any pretense of being analogues of real-world situations in the way that Monopoly is “about” real estate.

It may well be true that most of the games that fall under this umbrella aren’t “about” anything other than themselves, but what gamers are really thinking of when they talk about “two-player abstracts” are games which are 100% skill-based, games in which there is no random element. For example, checkers is a two-player abstract while gin rummy is not¹. By contrast, the game Mole Hill does have a real-world setting, fanciful though it might be, but most gamers would still consider it as being a two-player abstract (and indeed someone has classified it as such on BoardGameGeek).

On the box cover Tzaar bills itself as a “pure strategy game,” and I think this is more apt a description than “two-player abstract,” though I will probably go on using the terms interchangeably from force of habit.

Tzaar is a chess-like game in which pieces capture other pieces. The moves are less restricted than they are in chess except that a piece cannot move to an empty space; a piece instead moves along one of the lines radiating from its intersection to capture an opposing piece, just so long as the capturing piece is at least as strong as the piece that is captured. “Piece” in this context refers to both a single piece and a stack, and strength is measured in terms of the height of the stack, with a single piece having a height and strength of one. Each player has three types of pieces, and some are scarcer than others; if any single type of a player’s pieces is eliminated from the board that player loses. A stack’s type is dictated by the topmost piece.

What makes the game interesting is that players have two moves per turn, and on his second move a player can forgo capturing an opponent’s piece to instead jump on one of his own pieces to stack and thus create a more powerful piece. He can also increase the height of an existing stack. The downside is that instead of reducing his opponent’s pool of pieces by one he has reduced his own pool of pieces by one; this can be problematic because a player will also lose if he is unable to make a capture, and fewer pieces means fewer options.

The result is a game which has an almost philosophical element to it; players must make a choice between approaches which are qualitatively different but both good in their own way. This is a very common feature of the “German” style of family board games that has been popular since the mid-1990s, but it is not necessarily something which is seen very often in pure strategy games outside of the choices between opening moves. Certainly there are sacrifices in chess, where a player will willingly give up a piece in order to gain a better overall board position, but this is only done with a very specific aim in mind, whereas in Tzaar a player might choose to create stacks to explore a strategical approach or simply because the play style appeals to him.

I love well-designed pure strategy games. There is a wonderful feeling of exploration about them, and the sense of psychic connection that one feels when pitted against a well-matched opponent is something unlike any other gaming experience. There are often odd, half-silent conversations that will take place during play as one player shrugs or chuckles or curses and the other player knows exactly what his opponent is referring to. Despite the supposed dryness and abstraction, players’ personalities are on center stage, and they sometimes show through the moves as clearly as if they were painted on the pieces.

The difficulty is that some people are just not suited to this type of game. For many gamers the setting of the game is the single most important element; when the story takes place in ancient Rome or in the age of the rail barons or in deepest outer space the imagination kicks in and conjures up associations that tickle their fancy. In this case the point of playing is to live out history, enjoy a role, or simply reconnect with the daydreams of adolescence. For this type of player a game without a setting is like playing hockey without a puck.

Beyond that there is a pitfall even for those who enjoy the abstract mechanisms of a game more than the window dressing. The problem is that a player can perceive his ego or self-worth being at stake when the game is a pure test of wits, and so not only an intense sense of competition arises but sometimes also a paralyzing fear of making a mistake and a compulsion to leave no stone unturned in searching for the best move. The result is a game that takes hours to play because one player (or, God forbid, both) will be approaching it like a puzzle which is solvable given a sufficient amount of effort.

Chess solves this problem by adding a clock to the game which forces players to keep things moving, but this solution can be awkward or potentially insulting to suggest when playing a casual game with a friend. It is better, I think, to try to find opponents who have an instinctual sense of the social contract of this type of game and who understand that the game is not really about the winning but about the playing, just as a journey is often more meaningful than the destination. To me a good player is a player who can make good moves in a reasonable amount of time; a player who wins a lot of games but takes five minutes per turn is just a good robot.

So far I’ve played two games of Tzaar, once as white and once as black. In the first game I lost when my opponent whittled down my tzarras, then set up a fairly convoluted but devastatingly effective attack against my last tzarra piece. The second game went a little longer, and both my oponent and I were under heavy pressure at various points; my opponent had constructed a three-stack piece which was very menacing, but I had a hunch that I could get him to run out of captures first. He didn’t see the danger and eventually I abandoned most of his pieces to one side of the board except for a little herd which I was able to harvest at leisure.

The game was a joy to play. Through the haze of inexperience I began to perceive vague regions of strength and peril on the board, an experience which is the first hint of the intuitive element that I enjoy so much in this type of game. The push and pull of the two different victory conditions was also fun and interesting. I felt like I could have played five more matches right there and then, and that is a very good sign.

¹It’s worth mentioning that there are a few games which lie in a gray area; some people might consider games like Stratego or Plateau two-player abstracts because strictly speaking there is no randomness, but there is hidden information which introduces an element of luck. Another question that arises is whether a game which can be played by more than two players is “pure strategy” if there is no random or hidden element. Perhaps this is snobbish of me, but I am inclined to say no; player A might win not because he is the best player but because player B is a poor player and does something unpredictable which helps player A or hurts player C.

Editor’s note: This article reprinted with permission from Joe Gola’s blog, Skunked Again. Check it out for more good stuff!

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