Duke-ing it out

Following on from Sam’s post about Castle Dice: I like games which involve short-term, tactical decisions (unless I'm really in the mood for grand strategy). I think it’s one of the reasons Brass remains a favourite, despite it’s length and complexity. You have to form an overall strategy, sure; but you also have to respond to the changing situation on the board - and be opportunistic. 

At least that’s the way I play - then again I don’t often win . . .

This weekend I tried out the ultimate in tactical abstracts -The Duke; a chess-like game where each piece's possible moves are depicted on them, and pieces are added to the board as you play. 

The Duke - it's got wizards!

I'm not a huge chess fan, preferring the mixture of luck and skill, not to mention theme, that modern euros offer, but this is getting such buzz on the Geek I couldn't resist. It's also really beautifully produced, with lovely wooden tiles for the pieces.

The great thing about this game is that rather than having to commit a huge number of rules to memory, you can see exactly what your pieces are capable of just by looking at the board, so the cognitive load is very gentle. You only have three pieces on the board at the start, the eponymous Duke, and two footmen. The goal is to kill your opponent’s Duke, and on your turn you can move one of the pieces on the board, or take a new one from the bag at random (there’s a lovely risk/reward at play here, since the piece you draw might save you, or block you in and hasten your demise).

Possible starting positions

The twist is that each piece is double-sided, and once moved must be flipped; the reverse side offers a variation on the movement/attack capabilities. This might seem like it requires a lot of stuff committed to memory, but you can always have a peek at the piece or consult the player aid, and actually lots of the pieces reverse-sides have a logic to them, so you soon get the hang of it.

My girls are unwilling gamers, to put it mildly; a tendency I put down to a combo of wilful dad-bating and an understandable disdain of rules-learning.  So my sell for this to Bea was ‘it has no rules!’. I had to change that to ‘you don’t have to learn any rules’ after she started counting on her fingers as I was explaining the game. Bea and I played two games, and she won both.

Brown's duke is running out of options

I then played once each with Martha and Matilda, and won both of those. I wouldn’t say any of them loved it, but that really shouldn’t detract from the game itself; it’s an incredible achievement that all three of them were willing to give it a go at all. I look forward to playing against some more willing opponents soon - a great lunchtime, teatime or Roll for the Soul-time two player, and bound to turn the heads of any chess players passing by . . .