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At times when I’m reading I unexpectedly wade into something much deeper than it initially appears. A turn of the page reveals a moment when the author suddenly stands on his head, and these are the moments that make it worthwhile. “Clausewitz likened war to a game of cards rather than chess because he saw chance and uncertainty as being just as important as precise tactical calculation. More recently, it has become popular for scholars like Culham and Kagan to apply modern scientific concepts of nonlinearity and 'chaos theory' to warfare, just as Clausewitz had...

"I want my team to lose today." This isn't the kind of thing you expect a coach to say to you when you're shaking his hand over top of home plate.  But Wally wasn't kidding -- he wanted his girls to lose.  In fact he wanted his girls to lose big, and he thought our team had the best shot at doing it.

Humor me for a moment.Take a look at the following IMDB page, where it details the top 100 films.The Top 250 Films according to IMDB users Done? Okay, now here's a link to one of many video game user database sites, where they track similar ratings.The Top 100 Games according to RF Generation usersNotice anything? For the most part, even if you're not a fan of cinema or video games, you've heard of many or most of these titles. Everyone knows who Mario is, or Sonic, or has certainly seen the controversial news stories about Grand...

What are the fundamental functional differences between boardgames and card games?  I’m not sure how important this question is from a game player’s point of view but it’s certainly important for game designers (even for video game designers).  The obvious physical format is important, but now that we can convert physical non-electronic games to electronic formats the lines are less clear. More importantly, each type of game emphasizes or encourages different kinds of challenges and gameplay, regardless of the physical format.

It’s that time of year again when I head on over to boardgamegeek and compile the average game ratings of everyone that’s bought an Ameritrash Fan badge and make a top fifty chart. In some ways it’s a meaningless excercise in number crunching but I know of no better way of capturing the zeitgeist of the Ameritrash community: certainly the “thematic games” domain on TOS falls woefully short. And people seem to love it, so I keep on churning out the stats year after year.

30-40 years ago many hobby game players looked for gameplay depth (and occasionally narrative depth) in their games. Now most game players don’t look for gameplay depth but look instead for variety, which is quite a different thing. Many more people now also look for narrative in their games, but I’m not sure whether they’re looking for narrative depth or narrative variety. Game playing has become much more passive where long-term decision-making is concerned, and that's incompatible with gameplay depth. Yes, there's lots of activity in many kinds of video games, and short-term decision making, but the decisions and...

A couple of months ago I had the pleasure of reviewing A Few Acres of Snow, Martin Wallace’s game of the American colonial wars. In short, I decided it was a deep and demanding game that was worthwhile only if you had the time - and a willing opponent - to devote to working through the strategies properly. Alas, it seemed that some people took my advice only too well and worked through the strategies in such intricate and amazing detail that they found a way, if executed with great precision, to break the game and pretty much guarantee...

“Imagine that the cow is a sphere.” This is the punch line to an old Physics Professor's joke. I could repeat the setup, but it isn't funny enough to warrant the effort. The punch line on its own is sufficient to reveal the absurdity of how physicists view the world. They do it for good reason. Physicists need to paint the world with big fat brushes so that the large concepts they consider don’t get lost in the minutia. Having the cow shaped as a rectangle would likely work, but having it shaped as a cow makes...

About a month or so ago, I traded for the very excellent game, Imperial. I’ve played twice now, with another game to come this weekend. So far, I’ve been really impressed with what I’ve seen. It’s tight, nuanced, intense, and very rich. It’s got loads of interaction, but it’s not so open that the game is fragile. So as I do with any game that has gotten a few plays, I go on Boardgame Geek to rate it, and for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what rating it should get.

I’ve done the full circuit in terms of hobby gaming. In addition to all the usual suspects, I’ve also dipped my toes into LARP and, at one point, spent some time involved with living history and battle re-enactment. If you think you’ve seen more oddballs than you can stomach at gaming nights across the country, they’re nothing compared with some of the nutters that living history attracts. Not to mention the prospect of camping with them, medieval style and no mod cons, for a weekend or longer. But one thing I did totally get out of...