Tug o' War: an original Knizia mechanic?
Brian Thompson
United States
Tucson
Arizona
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When I first starting buying Euro games and coming to BGG.com, I got used to reading remarks about Reiner Knizia and how the good Doctor is known for re-combining a mish-mash of gaming mechanics to come up with his own designs. Opinions of this nature always seemed to me, to be less than complimentary. As if Reiner Knizia is some hack who can't come up with any original ideas of his own for any of the many games he has designed. This has always bothered me a little bit.
I have become a big fan of Reiner Knizia and his game designs. I am of the personal opinion that his game designs are extremely original. I think people tend to pick on Reiner Knizia a little unfairly mainly because he is such a prolific game designer. After designing more than 200 games there are bound to be a few duds, but I could go on for hours about how games like Medici, Ra, and Taj Mahal (just to name a few) are simple, clean, and beautiful game designs. (I'm trying really hard not to use the work "elegant" here, but its really hard.)
There is one game mechanic that Knizia uses in several of his games. To my knowledge, it is a mechanic unique to Knizia games and not borrowed from any other game designers. It is what I call, the "Tug o' War" mechanic. This is when game pieces get pulled back and forth by the players to give either player an advantage. This list is a collection of the Knizia games that utilize this mechanic. (Actually my friend and fellow BGG user, Rayito, was the first person I ever heard refer to this as a Tug of war mechanic.)
Again, I may be wrong, but to my knowledge, I would say that the Tug o' War mechanic is one of Knizia's signature, unique game mechanics. Feel free to add to this list.
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Brian Thompson
United States
Tucson
Arizona
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This game involves playing cards that influences or pulls pawns on a linear track towards one or the other player.
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Brian Thompson
United States
Tucson
Arizona
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In this multiplayer game, players attempt to pull a dragon meeple along a linear track such that it will be closer to the street vendors that they have deployed along the track.
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3.
Board Game: Amun-Re
[Average Rating:7.45 Overall Rank:97]
Brian Thompson
United States
Tucson
Arizona
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In Amun-Re, the players make a sacrifice to Amun-Re. Players can either sacrifice their money or actually steal money from the sacrifice. The sum of all the players sacrifices in turn influences where the temple token will be placed on the temple track. This affects the amount of income players recieve during the harvest. This is probably my most favorite use of Knizia's "Tug o' War" mechanic. Amun-Re is one of my favorite games.
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Brian Thompson
United States
Tucson
Arizona
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Blue Moon is a card game where the players are trying to win a series of battles and thereby "pull" one or two of three dragons towards them. Once a player wins one additional battle after pulling all three dragons to their side, the player wins the game.
The dragons go back and forth in a tug of war manner. Only one player can have dragons on his side at any given time. In order to get dragons to your side of the board, one must first win enough battles to pull all the dragons away from their opponent, to the center of the board. Then the dragons may be pulled towards your side of the board.
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Brian Thompson
United States
Tucson
Arizona
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In this two-player version of Medici, players attempt to collect sets of tiles that represent goods to be shipped. This game has several linear tracks for each tile type where players are attempting to pull markers towards themselves by shipping more of a particular good than their opponent. Having the marker on your side of the track gives you more money to bid with in later rounds.
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Brian Thompson
United States
Tucson
Arizona
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This is probably the coolest and most unique utilization of Knizia's Tug o' war mechanic, where the game itself is trying to pull the hobbit adventurer's closer to Sauron on the Corruption track. The players can play cards and use special priveleges to pull there pieces back away from Sauron.
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7.
Board Game: Duell
[Average Rating:6.41 Overall Rank:1483]
Chris R.
United States
Unspecified
Missouri
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This game appears to have the ultimate Knizia Tug o' War mechanic...
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Just call me Erik
United States
Waldorf
Maryland
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In this Knizia title, players are represented on the board by a single wooden turtle. However, player identities are secret like Heimlich & Co. Players play color-specific + or - cards to move turtles forward or backwards on the track. The interesting part is, if a turtle moves forward to a space with another turtle or turtles, it goes on top. If a turtle with other turtles on it moves, all turtles on it move with it. The + and - cards represent a tug-of-war at times, with people preventing a certain group or individual turtle from reaching the finish line.
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Matt Dodor
United States
St. Paul
Minnesota
I'm gonna be the next Canadian Dracula
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Don't forget about Richard Borg's Heave Ho!, a game that has a Scottish tug of war theme.
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Ken Waters
United States
Aloha
Oregon
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Mercenary from 1978 uses a 5-way tug of war system for minor power diplomacy. Each of the 15 minor powers is represented by a chit placed on the chart, and the 5 players (major powers) can expend money to 'tug' the chits towards themselves into several zones of increasing control over the minors.
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Portland
Oregon
But I don't blame him for doing that. Often the result is a good game, and I don't think that it is possible to make hundreds of games without recycling some mechanics!
Auckland
I have to say I agree with richard, having a game where you gain some kind of advantage or disadvantage based on relative score is common to many, many games. I don't think Tug or war is a good name for it. Do you think powergrid is a tug of war game? I just think that it sounds like it is the fact that there is points differential shown on the board that is really the decisive factor. If that is the case it is not a mechanic, points differential is merely a means of showing something on the board. It sounds like you intend it to be more than that, perhaps it includes an automatic victory or advantage based on points differential, but too much emphasis is being placed on the push and pull of a victory point counter.
To me this reminds me of the difference between area movement and point to point movent, area maps are functional a subset of point to point maps (on purely game functionality terms), they aren't really different.
Medford
Oregon
First thing I thought of:
I think you hit it on the nose. I completely forgot about that one.
Arizona
I'm talking about a specific advantage as it pertains to this geeklist. Though there is merit (perhaps in another geeklist?) in discussing all the different ways game designers allow us to "game" the score track. Interesting examples include the turn order effects of Power Grid and the bonuses for getting specific numbers of points as seen in Carcassonne: The Castle. Each one of these things forces the players to make decisions on how many points they want to get at any one time.
Both hex and area movement games can be defined as point to point. It's just a question of what type of graphical representation works best for the situation.
Auckland