Poll is about tactical games of the classical type, as in games traditionally played with physical boards, cards, bricks, or similar. Not the purely digital ones that don't have physical progenitors at all. 

 

Let's say you were stranded on some isolated location with 4 or 5 buddies and you had everything required for playing one specific game and no other ones at all - for sake of making the selection go easier. Might be a bit difficult otherwise. You could play one game and one game only for, say, 4 years. Your buddies could only play that one game, so you can't just make a board of your own and play, either. I allowed multiple choice, even so, because you might feel it's a tossup between some number of them.

 

Christmas time is coming up, so game present ideas might serve as inspiration as well?

 

I wish I'd had opportunity to play more of those I've mentioned, since they sound like a lot of fun. I've only played a very limited number. 

I have always been a big fan of othello.  I have had a board since I was a kid and play all the time.  Rules are simple but strategy can make the game challenging when playing an experienced opponent.

 

Always loved Mastermind as well.  More of a logic game than anything not really strategy but fun.

 

Another that many have probably never played is Vis-aVis. The game is played on a 5x5 grid.  The players attempt to lay randomly drawn colored discs onto the grid so that they make symmetrical patterns.  Depending on the sequence of discs in the pattern each is worth a certain amount of points.  The game is played in two rounds with each player having one round to create as many patterns as possible while the opponent disrupts the patterns by moving the discs around on the board. 

 

Othello is certainly my favorite though.

Starcraft

I've played GO, Shogi, Chess and Bridge from this list and personally Shogi and GO are the best.

 

I find both to be much more complicated and strategic than Chess. Go has the most room for strategy though and is in turn my favorite of all of these. It's very simple to learn in the beginning but there is so very much more to learn once you start getting good at it. I've actually been playing it for 3 years now though there is arnt very many opponents for it in Texas.

Calvinball.


*mic drop

Snooker.