As a card-carrying member of the Elite Geek Corps, I have an obligation to be a fan of board games. Now, as fun as a game of Monopoly or Risk can be, I tend to prefer the more abstract board games, as these tend to forgo the random element that can make an otherwise stellar game of Settlers of Catan, Risk, or Magic: the Gathering go terribly awry. Some of my favorites: Go, of course. And chess, in all its, though the only variant I have ever played more than a couple of times is standard Western chess. I also dig Reversi/Othello.

I've been looking into other abstract board games recently. Here are a few that seem interesting to me.

• DVONN: A modern abstract board game, part of a series that all look good. I'll probably pick this up in time to try it out with Ben when we move into the apartment in August.
• ZÈRTZ: Another from the same series as DVONN. I won't go into the rules, but players can choose to either play their pieces or remove a piece of the board for tactical or strategic gain. I love dynamic board systems (Catan, anyone?), so this strikes me as cool.
• TAMSK: Yeah, perhaps I should've just linked directly to the site? This one is really interesting, because some of the pieces are hourglasses. Eh? Yeah! If an hourglass runs out, it's gone. Thus time becomes as much a strategic factor as liberties in go or pawn structure in chess. How cools is that?!
• Tablut: Maybe not as sophisticated as these other three (you can tell because the name is ever so slightly less weird), but this is a cool one. Essentially, this is Viking Checkers. It's simple and fun.
• What's with these names?

On an related note, check out Brettspielwelt. Well, let me point it out anyway. A huge number of online games, including a bunch that I've already talked about. The problem, die Seite ist auf Deutsch. Yup.