Tactics (board game)

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Tactics
Tactics logo
Tactics logo
Game data
author Charles S. Roberts
publishing company Stackpole Company (USA, 1954),
Avalon Hill Game Company (USA, 1958),
Grow Jogos (Brazil, 1981)
Publishing year 1954
Art Board game
Teammates 2
Duration 90-180 minutes
Age from 12 years

Tactics (English for tactics ) is a tactical board game that was published in 1954 by Charles S. Roberts . The game is widely considered to be the world's first successful conflict simulation game .

Emergence

Tactics was developed in the early 1950s by the American National Guard cadet Charles S. Roberts to train tactical skills as an alternative to the classic and elaborate military simulations and sandpit games. The great success of the game with his comrades prompted him to have his development as a board game printed in 1954 by the small publisher Stackpole Company and to sell it under the brand name Avalon Hill Game Company . In the following years the game sold so well that Roberts refined the gameplay and in 1958 brought the slightly modified version Tactics II to the market together with other games by the game publisher Avalon Hill , which he founded .

Tactics II was produced from 1958 to 1998 in almost unchanged form and sold worldwide. Except for the Portuguese-speaking area, where the game was distributed by the Brazilian manufacturer Grow Jogos e Brinquedos , the original American game was accompanied by instructions in various languages, including German, for a small surcharge. In 1983 the original Tactics was published again as an anniversary edition for collectors. When Hasbro took over Avalon Hill in 1998, production ceased.

Game flow

Game situation in tactics.

The aim of the game is to conquer all cities in enemy territory on a game board that represents an island with two countries and to occupy them for at least one round or to completely destroy the opposing army. At the beginning of the game, both players receive a large number of cardboard cards, the so-called counters , which represent military units. The counters can be moved across the board in turns and according to fixed rules, and at the end of each turn they can fight directly adjacent enemy units.

Battles are conducted using a die and a battle results table. The luck of the dice plays only a subordinate role, the results listed in the table depend much more on the position and numerical superiority or inferiority of the fighting units. The consequences of a battle can be forced retreats or the destruction of one or more units.

Game historical significance

Tactics is considered a milestone in the development of board games because it made a complex military simulation accessible to a wide audience for the first time . But it also introduced several innovative game mechanisms that are still being reused to this day. These include, above all, the realistic results tables that are little dependent on luck, which make the game largely a tactical challenge and not a game of chance . For the first time, however, it also made use of the possibility of flexibly combining various military properties using counters . These elements represent the basic principle for most military strategy games to this day.

Tactics triggered a boom for military simulation games, especially in the United States of America in the second half of the 20th century, which continues to this day with varying degrees of intensity. In the meantime, however, computer strategy games have clearly replaced board games in their popularity.

literature

  • Erwin Glonnegger : The game book: board and placement games from all over the world; Origin, rules and history . Drei-Magier-Verlag, Uehlfeld 1999, ISBN 3-9806792-0-9 .
  • James F. Dunningham: The Complete Wargames Handbook , Second Edition. Quill, USA 1992, ISBN 978-0688103682 .
  • David Parlett: Oxford History of Board Games , Oxford University Press, USA 1999, ISBN 978-0192129987

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christopher Lewin, War Games and their History , Chapter 8, Fonthill Media, Stroud (GB) 2012, ISBN 978-1-78155-042-7
  2. ^ A History of the World's First and Largest Wargame Publisher. The Avalon Hill Game Company, Baltimore, USA 1983.

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