Area Control is a classic board game mechanic dating back to the 1950’s when Risk was developed. Since then it’s shown up in a lot of board games but there is a piece of it that always remains the same. For some people, this is a mechanic that they don’t like because it can be too confrontational but let’s take a look at this mechanic.

In area control players are trying to control portions of the board for some benefit. This can be to win the game, it can be that they get a resource if they control the area, or it can allow them to acquire currency or victory points. To do this, you are looking to have either all or the majority of the pieces in an area.

Like I saw saying, the classic example of this mechanic is Risk. In Risk you are getting armies, taking them to conquer areas of the world hoping to eventually reach world domination and hold every area. You do this by rolling dice to see if you can defeat your opponent and push your armies out as far as you feel is safe so that when your next turn comes around, you can get more armies and push things out further in your march to victory.

As I was saying earlier, for some people, this mechanic can be considered mean or less fun to play because it encourages confrontation. If you have the majority or the area completely controlled, I might want it to help me win the game, so I’m going to directly interact with your pieces and negatively impact your plans. What can happen in games like this is that someone will take the early lead in the area control and then will have the other players gang up on them to help prevent them from running away with the game, but that can feel very mean to the player who is getting ganged up, and this is something very common in Risk, because there are just some positions that are extremely strong.

A lot of modern board games try and balance this out. Some of the examples I give will make it so that the confrontation is much more common but not as negative in the game. Or some games now balance it out by saying if you don’t have the majority, you get some lesser option or the leftover option from the person who has the most selects from. This helps keep the game from feeling as mean and as personal because either everyone is always in the midst of the conflict, or the conflict isn’t as directly negative as because you still get some reward. This really makes area control more appealing to a general gaming crowd and can remove the memory of old childhood fights while playing Risk.

Gateway Game

Smallworld – This game is one of those that is conflict all of the time. In this game you are collecting coins, which are victory points at the end of the game. To do this, you just look at the number of areas that you are controlling at the end of each round. So you are regularly fighting for areas on the board. But with Smallworld, a 2-5 person game, the map size changes depending on player count in order to keep the conflict level high. So on a three player game, you are guaranteed to be running into your opponents. Beyond that the race and trait combination that you select at the start of the game isn’t the one that you have the whole time. So maybe your commando pixies were good to start, but as your opponents start to attack you, you can put the pixies into decline and get a new race and start attacking your opponents with that race. So it’s a balancing act that keeps you in the game and in conflict throughout the game. But because there is so much conflict no one generally feels ganged up on.

Medium Weight

Hanamikoji – Now this game is actually pretty simple as well, but I really like it as a thinky two player area control/area influence game. In this game instead of a chunk of land like so many area control areas, you are trying to win the favor of Geisha. To do this, you have to give them gifts. What makes this game interesting is how the mechanics work. Each player has a total of four given actions that they can do, and they can do them each once per round. Each player gets four turns during a round, so they can either set aside a gift that their opponent won’t see, discard two gifts that won’t be used for influence, show three gifts, of what their opponent can take one, or create two groups of gifts that their opponent can see and their opponent picks one. The game plays extremely fast but offers more interesting and important decisions than a lot of larger games do as you try and puzzle out what your opponent might have based off of the choices that they give you.

Heavy Weight

Blood Rage – In this Vikings themed game, you are fighting with the power of the Norse gods backing your clan. You do this by spending action points and upgrading your troops and completing missions. To complete these missions and to get more action points for turns, glory for winning in battle, and other things, you need to control an area. However, conflict will arise as you raid an area and the opposing clans can come rushing in and try and stop you from being able to take it. This one is about grabbing that control each round and trying to get control of Yggdrasil so that you get improve in multiple areas. This game does a good job of balancing out winning fights and getting control of those areas and losing because of what is known as the Loki strategy. Loki is all about tricking people and gaining victory points that way. Definitely a good game all around with a lot of different objectives you can go for and an area control game that can allow you not to have to be purely in the conflict and you can still do well.

There are so many options for area control out there, these are just a few that I like a lot and that work well for a good variety of people. Area control or influence doesn’t have to be as swingy or give as many options for a run away leader as something like Risk did so it shouldn’t lead to hurt feelings like straight up conflict games can. What are some of your favorite area control games?

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