Looking for recommendations of Strategy =5, Luck =1 games.

[Yahyra]

Hi all,


I am looking for recommendations of more Strategy =5, Luck =1 games. I know Chess is up there; I am not good at it and I don't find learning it is fun - so not that one.

I know Terra Mystica and its offshoots (T Nova, Innovation, Gaea's Project?) and love all of those already. Any other recommendations? I prefer 2 player games; at higher player counts... I lost focus / attention during other players' turns.


Looking forward to reading your recommendations. Thanks.

[RicardoRix]

What kind of brain burn are you after? Abstracts offer the highest...

But if you're strictly looking for 'big box' games, then Ark Nova and Terraforming Mars are top of the popularity list, and for a reason.

My personal recommendations for simpler 2-player (not so popular but interesting) would be war chest, battle for the hill 218, Orion Duel and Pax Pamir. And also the real 'Innovation' not that terra mystica one.

[Andrei3009]

Hi all,


I am looking for recommendations of more Strategy =5, Luck =1 games. I know Chess is up there; I am not good at it and I don't find learning it is fun - so not that one.

I know Terra Mystica and its offshoots (T Nova, Innovation, Gaea's Project?) and love all of those already. Any other recommendations? I prefer 2 player games; at higher player counts... I lost focus / attention during other players' turns.


Looking forward to reading your recommendations. Thanks.

I can recommend Pyrga (Strategy 5, Luck 0) and Clash of Decks (Strategy 4, Luck 1).

Both games are not very popular, so the best way to find a game is to start looking for a turn-based game, preferably in Arena (finding games in Pyrga can take a long time even with Arena).

A few notes about each game:

Pyrga is pure strategy. I love it because it doesn't need nearly as many opening moves as Chess (you can do decently knowing only the first move for the 1st and 2nd player), and you can't find good moves from a book or engine – you need to discover them yourself.

Clash of Decks contains 2 phases:
1)Draft an 8‑card hand.
2)Play a card from your hand every turn (with restrictions), trying to break through the opponent's defense.
The game has a very interesting core mechanic regarding which cards you can play.

Ark Nova, Terraforming Mars and War Chest (suggested above) are also good options.

[BarnardsStar]

I’m a big fan of Mapmaker. The only random element to it is the initial board setup, which usually matters less than you might think. After that, it’s open-knowledge, zero randomness, very interactive between players, and quite strategic.

And yet simple enough to explain the basics in a paragraph: the board is made up of hexagons representing counties. Each county has the color of a player and a number 1-10. Each player has 2 each of 2-9, and one 1 and one 10. (There is also a single 0.) Players take turns adding boundaries to combine counties into districts. Each district must have at least 4 counties and not be further subdividable into two or more districts. Each district counts for the player with the highest total in it. The player with the most districts wins. (There are various tie-breaker mechanisms along the way that I won’t go into here.)

[FrankJones]

As much as I love Terraforming Mars, I would not include it in a list for someone looking for strategy 5 luck 1. Nor any other game primarily based on a face-down deck of cards.

As noted, abstract strategy games typically fit the bill. For someone looking for very high skill very low luck thematic strategy games, I would check the Elo leaderboards for thematic strategy games. That's one way to get a decent idea of how much luck and randomness there is.

Also, it's possible to generate a list using filter searches. I forget exactly how to do it, but I'm sure someone else can explain it here.

[dschingis27]

I think Tzolkin (my personal favorite, should fit the desires of OP quite well) and Feast for Odin should be mentioned here. Probably also Race for the Galaxy if you are into number crunching engine building.

As others mentioned, depends on what you are after. Abstract, engine building, number crunching, spatial recognition, map building, ...

[FrankJones]

I have heard good things about Tzolkin and Feast for Odin.

Race for the Galaxy is rather far from Luck-1.

[Cos-]

Photosynthesis is a great game that's all strategy, no luck. Also possibly my favorite game on BGA.

In the real world, it's also a very beautiful game, when you have that green board with all the different sized trees of different colors set up on it. Looks like a cypress dome from the Everglades done up for a Christmas-like holiday but with different colors.