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History of the Take That! Card game
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A Spotlight on Games
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You know the type of thing. Each player has some card holdings on the table which he is trying to grow or at least preserve while at the same time playing events to destroy the holdings of others. These beer n' pretzel vehicles seem so common and throwaway that they're lost in the woodwork. On the other hand, I suspect that as a class they've earned themselves an amazing number of hours played over the years. In fact, I think one testament to their popularity is that only one game in the list lacks a photo in the database, not true for most other lists I have created. I'd like to try to trace the history of them: where they started, how their mechanics have developed and changed and what is going on now. Probably there are too many to fit in just one list and probably I will forget some too. Maybe folks can help by adding these as comments? For a more narrative version, please see http://spotlightongames.com/list/takethat.html
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Posted Thu Feb 27, 2003 9:34 pm
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A Spotlight on Games
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Apparently this is the one that started it all, nearly a century ago now, in 1906. Should we hold a party to celebrate four years from now? It was good enough to get US patent no. 836532 on behalf of the Wallie Dorr Company, but I have no information on what may have inspired its inventor. The property was purchased by Parker Brothers and published more or less continuously, with modernizations in artwork and terminology over the years, until 1975. The "thats" of this game are rather mild, probably because players are trying to build up their holdings, the number of miles traveled, at the same time and combination with strong events would have been unworkable. Even so, the deck distribution seems to be overheavy with disasters and sometimes players spend most of their time doing nothing but waiting for the right card.
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A Spotlight on Games
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Presumably the patent scared off any would be imitators for a long time and perhaps when it expired everyone forgot that that had happened? Well, apart from two 1927 mostly forgotten imitators which tied in to Charles Lindbergh's historic flight:
Lindy, the New Flying Game: http://boardgamegeek.com/viewitem.php3?gameid=4506
The New Lindy Flying Game: http://boardgamegeek.com/viewitem.php3?gameid=4507
Apart from, or maybe on account of, those short lived games it seems to have taken until 1954 when this one came out. The addition of the Coup Fourré concept whereby safeties could be held back added another level of interest.
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A Spotlight on Games
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This is the next one I could find, from 1965. What a bizarre choice of topic! It certainly proved popular nevertheless, or perhaps because of it? The innovations must have helped too though. Fixed holdings that only decline (for the most part) means that attacks can be that much more devastating (satisfying). The slow buildup of the attack added strategy and planning. And stealing from Mah Jongg to have the player order jump (with the anti-missile) was a good idea as well. Dice or a spinner was added to help in the damage resolution. Has been supplemented by three expansion kits.
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4.
Board Game: Grass
[Average Rating:5.99 Overall Rank:2092]
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A Spotlight on Games
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The 1980 game that depicts a hallucinogenic lifestyle adheres more closely to the pattern established by Touring. (Was there really nothing else in the genre in the decade and a half previous?) One twist is the Paranoia type of card that one must not be caught with at the end of the game, but which is passed around the table and so are difficult to avoid. The rules are a bit vague -- do you think maybe whoever created it was smoking something? 
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A Spotlight on Games
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Moving ahead to 1982, here was a very clever innovation, that of the creation of the very dynamic and often maddening queue of death which often takes on a life of its own. The player order jump idea was preserved as well.
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A Spotlight on Games
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Arriving in the next year from Avalon Hill was a game on World War II battleships that seemed more like Nuclear War than any of the other predecessors.
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A Spotlight on Games
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In 1988 AH transported the system, with improvements including much better artwork, to nineteenth-century sailing vessels. Apparently it sold well because in the very next year there appeared ...
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A Spotlight on Games
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... to cover the Cold War era. Featured two later expansion kits.
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A Spotlight on Games
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1990 featured a return to the idea of building up one's holdings instead of just tearing down a fixed position. As a result, the events are again relatively weak. It also added a lot of the mechanics from another seminal card game, Rummy.
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A Spotlight on Games
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This 1991 game was more a return to the Nuclear War model.
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A Spotlight on Games
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As was this vehicle set in Middle Ages.
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A Spotlight on Games
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Should this 1995 Reiner Knizia creation be in the list? Here holdings are indicated not by one's cards, but by one's position in the auto race.
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A Spotlight on Games
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1996's innovation was to create two different ways to win: one to try to grab the prize right away and hope to survive all the slings and arrows of one's opponents, the other to bide one's time and creep up on it bit by bit.
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A Spotlight on Games
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Another from the same year is reminiscent of Nuclear War in its mechanics and just as dark in theme, but without the levity.
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A Spotlight on Games
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1997 showed the maturity of the form as it won its first pop culture tie-in. A clever innovation is the set of special dice help to control what players can do to one another. Later spawned an expansion kit.
A 1998 effort that seems mostly Nuclear War inspired was Trailer Park Gods: http://67.105.64.226/viewitem.php3?gameid=1488
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A Spotlight on Games
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Originally known as Wucherer (Profiteer), another housing related theme. Also somewhat dark in tone.
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A Spotlight on Games
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Move to 1999 to find this unusual game that seems to be in the genre although the event cards seems to have vanished entirely. Instead, players use the holdings cards to accomplish much the same result.
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A Spotlight on Games
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Another from 1999 and the topics get stranger and stranger. Special abilities conferred by the holdings cards became more important. Has had several expansions so far.
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A Spotlight on Games
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The makers of Plague & Pestilence returned to the genre with a pirates game in 2000. Here the holdings can be stolen so it tends to be a matter of who can steal the treasure last and make a clean getaway.
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A Spotlight on Games
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Hasbro, by now the owners of both Touring and Milles Bornes, brought out this update on the concept in 2000.
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A Spotlight on Games
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2001's Wild West game about personal combat feels like Lunch Money, but with a lot more levity. Its companion game, Goldrush-City, could be considered a distant cousin to the genre.
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A Spotlight on Games
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Horror and alien movies also got a treatment in 2001. Later expanded with Cannibal Pygmies in the Jungle of Doom (also standalone).
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A Spotlight on Games
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This 2001 game, even more than Family Business, is about adjusting the state of the game parameters, which are owned by all the players in common.
Wyatt Earp, also 2001, is more in the Rummy vein, but as noted above, Rummy has been combined with the genre before. It's an unusual Rummy game though which permits reduction of others' holdings, even a little bit.
http://boardgamegeek.com/viewitem.php3?gameid=878
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A Spotlight on Games
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2002 saw the idea taken to outer space combat, a further re-working of the Naval War concept.
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A Spotlight on Games
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Even the dot com phenomenon has become the topic for such a game. In fact the mechanism of holdings gradually dwindling to nothing seems to work better here than anywhere previously.
There have been other games which use this concept in a wider context. James Clavell's Tai-Pan and Liberte are just two that spring to mind. But since it is just a small subsystem in those games, I do not formally include them here.
But now I am most curious whether anyone else has any games that they feel should be added here?
--Rick Heli, http://spotlightongames.com/
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Posted Mon Jan 1, 2001 11:09 pm
Unspecified
Massachusetts
Menomonee Falls
Wisconsin
Austin
Texas
Lakewood
Colorado
I just got a copy of Touring, and I'm anxious to get all the games on your list. Thanks!
Milwaukee
Wisconsin