A PERSONAL GAME COMPONENT PREFERENCE, though I haven’t been able to quite articulate why. I think maybe I have an idea now. How many games do you play enough times to reach a place where all players are intentionally making strategic decisions based on their awareness of the other players’ strategies? Very few. But these are among the best games, in my opinion.
Thesis: Simpler game components allow players to reach the metagame frontier of the game much faster than games with complex components.
The simplest game Imagine a game of rock, paper, scissors. Very mechanically simple game with the simplest imaginable components. Learning the game is mechanically trivial, once player agree on how to count down to throw. After several games, players will start to consider the metagame. “Player A throws rock more often, so I’ll throw paper to counter”, “Player B is throwing paper more often to counter, so I will throw scissors more often”. Unfortunately for these players, a true random strategy is best (because it is unexploitable) but the example isn’t about a game as much as it is about players recognizing very quickly that there is a game to be played beyond the game.
What about chess? Chess is a game with very simple components and enormous depth. On the other hand, it takes a player a very long time to reach the metagame frontier of this game, because while the components are simple, discovering hundreds of years of metagame takes a long time. Even reading books, attending lectures, and coaching can take years to play the game at the highest level along this frontier. But must the metagame frontier be achieves to enjoy the metagame that chess presents?
Even casual players are aware of the myriad of chess opening strategies, and players identify with which of these they select to learn. “I play the Najdorf” or “They only play the London” are part of the chess world. There’s no component in chess which is the Najdorf, rather a branch of opening strategy with it’s associated board structures and game plans. One need not play at the highest levels to enjoy this slice of the chess metagame.
Are tactics part of the metagame? Of course, there are simpler metagame structures that arise in chess, for example, the fork. When both players are aware of threat of a fork, play can cease to be about the end goals of chess to revolve around executing (or preventing) the fork tactic to gain broader advantages. Likewise pins, skewers, opposition, etc exist in the chess metagame and playing against player who are capable of presenting such tactics proves to be a richer, deeper game.
Drafting Games I think this is part of why I gravitate towards drafting games. They put these types of decisions right in front of the players with a very mechanically simple mechanism: pick a single card from a hand/pack of cards.
Related: Sushi Go Party is a Bad Game