Just the Two of Us: Notes on the Modern Board Game Duel
For most of recorded history, if two people wanted to sit down and play something purely against one another, either because of circumstance or out of necessity, they turned to a small and venerable set of games. Games like Chess, Draughts, Backgammon, and a handful of regional variants such as Go (China) or Nine Men's Morris. With the exception (to an extent since it uses dice) of Backgammon, these were all abstract strategy games in their purest form. Not much of a theme, no backstories, no cards or resources standing in for anything. A pawn was a pawn, not a would-be soldier with a backstory. For instance, the thematic names in chess are merely functional labels. Something akin to mnemonic anchors for movement mechanics rather than an attempt to model real-world concepts. I figure that the appeal of these classics lies precisely in this minimalism. Remove the icing as it were and what remains is a trial made up of calculation, pattern recognition, and nerve, refined over centur...
