page_title: Board game
section_title: Luck, strategy, and diplomacy
hierarchical_section_title: Board game / Luck, strategy, and diplomacy
caption_attribution_description: English: Qataris playing the traditional board game of Damah in Souq Waqif, Doha.
context_page_description: Board games are traditionally a subset of tabletop games that involve counters or pieces moved or placed on a pre-marked surface or "board", according to a set of rules. In common parlance, however, a board game need not necessarily contain a physical board. Some games are based on pure strategy, but many contain an element of chance; and some are purely chance, with no element of skill.
  Games usually have a goal that a player aims to achieve. Early board games represented a battle between two armies, and most modern board games are still based on defeating opponents in terms of counters, winning position, or accrual of points.
  There are many varieties of board games. Their representation of real-life situations can range from having no inherent theme, such as checkers, to having a specific theme and narrative, such as Cluedo. Rules can range from the very simple, such as in Snakes and Ladders; to deeply complex, as in Advanced Squad Leader.
context_section_description: Some games, such as chess, depend completely on player skill, while many children's games such as Candy Land and Snakes and Ladders require no decisions by the players and are decided purely by luck.
  Many games require some level of both skill and luck. A player may be hampered by bad luck in backgammon, Monopoly, Risk; but over many games a skilled player will win more often, and the elements of luck can make for more excitement, and more diverse and multifaceted strategies, as concepts such as expected value and risk management must be considered.
  Luck may be introduced into a game by a number of methods. The use of dice of various sorts goes back to the earliest board games. These can decide everything from how many steps a player moves their token, as in Monopoly, to how their forces fare in battle, as in Risk, or which resources a player gains, as in Catan. Other games such as Sorry! use a deck of special cards that, when shuffled, create randomness. Scrabble does something similar with randomly picked letters. Other games use spinners, timers of random length, or other sources of randomness. German-style board games are notable for often having less luck element than many North American board games.
  Another important aspect of some games is diplomacy, that is, players making deals with one another. Negotiation generally features only in games with three or more players, cooperative games being the exception. An important facet of Catan, for example, is convincing players to trade with you rather than with opponents. In Risk, two or more players may team up against others. Easy diplomacy involves convincing other players that someone else is winning and should therefore be teamed up against. Advanced diplomacy (e.g., in the aptly named game Diplomacy) consists of making elaborate plans together, with the possibility of betrayal.
  In perfect information games, such as chess, each player has complete information on the state of the game, but in other games, such as Tigris and Euphrates or Stratego, some information is hidden from players. This makes finding the best move more difficult, and may involve estimating probabilities by the opponents.
caption: Two Qataris playing the traditional board game of damah, which requires both skill and luck
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