ShareThisA guide to the best strategy games of the season:
Endeavor (Z-Man, $49.99; 3-5 players; age 12 and up; 90 min.) -- Skillfully balanced and sumptuously designed, Endeavor is the leading candidate for the year's best new strategy board game. Players compete to build up a world-spanning empire, beginning with cities in Europe and the Mediterranean and expanding to other continents by sending ships and establishing a toehold. Back home, meanwhile, you concentrate on building the infrastructure that will enable your military, cultural and political hegemony to take root. Oh, and there's also a slavery option, which gets you quick points but costs you deeply in the long run. As long as you can set aside whatever ambivalence you may have about rampant imperialism, this is a superb gaming experience.
Small World (Days of Wonder, $50; 2-5 players; age 8 and up; 40-80 min.) -- This delightful game of territorial control combines cartoonish whimsy with serious strategic play. On a map of different terrains, players unleash a series of fantasy populations, each one created by randomly combining a race with a special power. So you get Heroic Trolls, Bivouacking Skeletons or Mounted Ratmen -- each of them defined by the unique properties of its two halves -- who scramble to occupy as much of the map as possible before fading into oblivion in the face of some new population onslaught. The trick is knowing how long to keep your Commando Ghouls in play before switching to something fresher and stronger.
Tayu (Goliath, $29.99; 2-4 players; age 7 and up; 30 min.) -- This sleek and simple creation is one of the finest two-player abstract strategy games to come along in years (and yes, it's two-sided -- that four-player variant promised on the box merely involves playing in teams). Players take turns laying out rectangular tiles to create a network of water channels; each tile connects to the network at exactly three of eight possible locations. Your goal is to connect as many channels as possible to your sides of the board, while blocking your opponent. As with all the best abstract strategy games, the rules are simple enough to learn in three minutes, but the subtleties go wonderfully deep.
Steam: Rails to Riches (Mayfair, $55; 3-5 players; age 12 and up; 90 min.) -- This is the latest installment in the long series of train games by the English designer Martin Wallace, and for those who like this category it's a solid winner. As in other games, the goal is to build up a network of rail lines that can ship goods across your connections to the markets that need them; the placement of towns and cities, and the differences in terrain, complicate the process. A handsome two-sided board allows for a scenario in the Northeastern United States or Germany's Ruhr Valley, depending on the number of players.
Chicago Express (Queen, $59.95; 2-6 players; age 12 and up; 60 min.) -- This game offers a wrinkle on the traditional train-game format. The main play still involves creating rail routes -- in this case from the East Coast to Chicago -- across mountains, forests and open countryside. But instead of concentrating on the shipping of goods, Chicago Express is a financier's game; players compete to own stock in the railroad companies, funding expansion with their own investment capital and hoping to reap monetary rewards. Some of the resulting play can be counterintuitive (it's not always smart, for instance, to buy stock too cheaply if it leaves the railroad under funded), and there are plenty of surprise twists along the way.
Masters of Venice (R&R, $34.95; 2-5 players; age 15 and up; 60-120 min.) -- The intricacies of this marketplace game are daunting at first, but once you've got a sense of things, it plays very well. At its heart are six craft shops in 15th century Venice, and players compete to buy and sell their wares, deliver orders to wealthy customers and own a controlling stock interest -- which in turn will enable them to manipulate prices and supplies. The Catholic Church comes into it too, as do the tax collector and the gondoliers, who can hear useful rumors along the canals. The constant bookkeeping, unfortunately, is onerous -- nearly every time a resource goes anywhere, prices need to be adjusted -- but that's a small drawback for a game this fascinating and complex.
Sherwood Forest (Rio Grande, $49.95; 3-6 players; age 9 and up; 60 min.) -- While you and your merry men (green tights are optional) wait in ambush behind the trees, one traveling party after another makes its way along the forest's main paths. They're just begging to be attacked for gold, glory and fresh recruits, but your gang needs to be strong enough for the task -- and not get distracted by any weaker prey that may happen to pass your hideout first. If you divert one of your band to the marketplace, you can get information about the strength and route of one party, but you'll still have to persuade other brigands to cooperate with you. The success of the game will depend on your taste for extended negotiations.
Sutter's Mill (Mayfair, $50; 2-4 players; age 10 and up; 60 min.) -- The fundamental idea here is fascinating: Players race to build up their presence in a California Gold Rush town, then spend the second half of the game pulling out before the place becomes a ghost town. The winner is the player who builds up and tears down most extensively, making for a complex game of chicken. Unfortunately, that means that most of the decisive drama is concentrated at the very end of the game. It also means that you can't know how to begin until you've played the endgame a few times -- a process made more difficult by a prodigiously obscure and confusing rule booklet.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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