The A to Z of Board Games – C
In this series of articles we are taking a look at the ABCs… Of board games! An opportunity to explore random corners of the board game hobby, to highlight influential games, designers, concepts, and maybe to dig up the odd surprise here and there. It’s time to clamber through the Cs!
Campaign – Concept
Campaign are kind of a broad feature of certain games, rather than a specific mechanic. Such games allow you to play multiple, linked, plays of a single game, to form a campaign! Compare to a series of battles in a military ‘campaign’. These plays may be linked by a story, connecting a series of scenarios as in many dungeon crawl style games, like Gloomhaven or Arkham Horror The Card Game, or collate the scores across multiple plays to determine an overall winner. This later example is especially prevalent in sports style games like Blood Bowl.
Carcassonne – Game
The example game you point to when someone asks about tile laying, Carcassonne may not have invented the mechanic, but it perfected it to such a degree that it remains the game to which all other tile laying games are compared. It has you constructing and controlling walled cities, fields, roads and other features reminiscent of the landscape around the French city of Carcassonne using square cardboard tiles and the symbol of board gamers everywhere, the Meeple. Carcassonne is where that famous shape first came from!
Cardboard Edison – Media
A website and content curator that anyone interested in board game design should follow closely. Cardboard Edison firstly collates interesting articles, podcasts and other media from across the Internet so you don’t have to go searching for it. But it has grown far beyond that, running design contests and directly aiding indie designers get their foot in the door of the board game industry. A great resource!
Marie Cardouat – Artist
The beautifully whimsical art of Marie Cardouat has graced a number of games, most famously Dixit, in which players use image cards to suggest or match a given phrase. Her dreamlike pieces allow for much interpretation and I believe are in many ways responsible for that game’s success.
Castles of Burgundy – Game
One of my all time favourite games, and a title that until recently held a coveted spot in Board Game Geek’s coveted Top 10 games. It looks as dry and tedious a game you could possibly imagine, yet as soon as you start playing reveals a puzzle of beautiful simplicity, endless variety and constrained elegantly by the dice who’s whims you must either follow or spend the effort to control. Castles of Burgundy is almost always the game I recommend newer gamers play when they become curious about the more complicated Euro games out there.
Catan – Game
The legendary Catan was a gateway game for many of us in the hobby today. It was one of the first, and by far the most successful, European designed games to be imported into the US in the 1990s which really kickstarted the modern board game revolution. While there had of course been board games before that, the introduction of German low conflict games like Catan completely changed how games in the US were designed and ultimately brought us the incredible games we have today. All thanks to a game about trading wood for sheep and being a dick with a robber. Did I say low conflict? Oh, sorry.
Bruno Cathala – Designer
Bruno Cathala is, along with Bruno Faidutti, one of the two Bruno’s of board gaming, responsible for an astonishing collection of games between them. The two are often, and understandably, confused in no small part because they have collaborated on designs so frequently! Bruno Cathala is a serial collaborator, boasting 7 Wonders (with Antoine Bauza), Cyclades (with Ludovik Moublanc) and Mission Red Planet (my favourite of his collaborations with Faidutti). But Cathala is a more than accomplished solo designer, with Five Tribes and the Spiel des Jahres winning Kingdomino to his name too.
Collectible Card Game (CCG) – Concept
CCGs are a particular type of card game identified by their business model. The core of each game typically involves constructing decks at home (or as a pre-game activity) before setting those decks against each other, for example in Magic the Gathering players will bring out monsters and fight with the aim of reducing your opponent to zero health. The collectible part comes in during the buying stage. Cards in these games are generally made available in sealed booster packs where the content is a random assortment of cards from the current set. It is therefore very hard to obtain specific cards without spending a fair amount of money.
Vlaada Chvatil & CGE – Designer and Publisher
A two for one entry here because they are near impossible to separate! Vlaada Chvatil is a Czech designer of exceptional imagination and skill. His designs are uncannily successful and broad in style. From the party word game Codenames to the super complex Dungeon Lords, the Co-operative real time Space Alert, to the two player abstract Tash Kalar, Vlaada has created some of the most influential and unique games in the industry (for what it is worth, he has the most games in Board Game Geek’s Top 100). Czech Games Edition (CGE) is the publishing house that has produced all of Vlaada’s games, and has expanded to publishing all manner of unique titles like Tzolk’in with its moving gears, and the third person shooter Adrenaline. If a game comes out of CGE, it is always worth a look.
David Cochard – Artist
Responsible for a lot of the artwork in Czech Game Edition’s games, David Cochard has a cartoony style that reminds me strongly of video game art, especially in his characters. The cover to Alchemists above could have easily come from a 2000s era PlayStation game!
Co-operative – Concept
Co-operative games see all the players working together to try and defeat the game itself. The genre exploded in popularity after 2007’s Pandemic showed the world what a great co-operative game could look like. They are often compared to collaborative puzzles, in which the game features a rudimentary AI, often with a solid degree of randomness to keep the game replayable. They often make great games to introduce new members of the hobby to, but can also suffer from over-bearing “alpha gamers” that control the game to the detriment of their teammates. Most modern co-ops therefore feature some degree of hidden information to ensure everyone contributes some knowledge to the game state. Examples of co-ops include Flashpoint Fire Rescue, Gloomhaven, and Robinson Crusoe.
Cosmic Encounter – Game
A true marmite game, Cosmic Encounter showcases what variable player power can mean. A game of cosmic negotiation and conflict that is one of the oldest hobby games on the market, originally released in 1977 and later kept in print in an ever-expanding collection from Fantasy Flight. Each player represents an alien race and looks to form colonies on the other players home world’s through a mixture of conflicts and negotiation. This negotiation element is key, as it allows for the most ridiculously out there alien powers whose interaction ensures no game ever plays quite the same. It’s an absolute must play game, but the player manipulation and trickery required makes it a game that some players will absolutely hate.
CMON limited – Publisher
CMON (previously Cool Mini Or Not) started life as a website showcasing high quality miniatures painting. With the introduction of Kickstarter, CMON branched out into game publishing, starting with Zombicide and rapidly expanding to a host of other titles like Arcadia Quest and Blood Rage. They are one of Kickstarter’s biggest success stories, regularly dominating the platform whenever a new title is released, and enthusiastically championing stretch goals, exclusives and add-ons to drive up pledges. Receiving a CMON Kickstarter through the post is truly an experience. While they are best known for their (excellent) miniatures, they have also released a number of titles through regular distribution, games like the Grizzled or Ethnos that fall well outside the stereotype of a CMON game.
Cthulhu – Unknowable Great Old One
You can’t go far in the board gaming hobby without running into Cthulhu. Hell, even Pandemic has a Cthulhu edition. For those who remain blissfully ignorant of this being, Cthulhu is one of many many bizarre creatures invented by the pulp horror/sci-fi author H.P. Lovecraft in the 1920s, creatures so otherworldly that to gaze upon them is realise your infinite insignificance and, ultimately, to be driven insane. Famously green and tentacle-faced, Cthulhu captured gamers imaginations and that, coupled with the fact that Lovecraft’s works are not protected by copyright, has seen his inventions, especially the great green one himself, splattered across board game after board game. It’s all rather maddening sometimes.
Mr Cuddington – Artist
More like art house, Mr Cuddington is the business name for artist Lina Cosette and husband David Forest who together have provided illustrations for some of the most beautiful games in the industry, especially amongst Kickstarter titles. Examples of their work can be found in Charterstone, Santorini (and other Roxley games), Unfair and the upcoming new edition for Brass. While I would have instinctively highlighted their brightly coloured cartoon style, Brass has demonstrated that they can do much more realistic styles too!
Join me again at some point in the future for article D! And meanwhile, let me know of important ‘C’s that should have been on this list.
Leave a Reply