Border States

Border States dresses up a symmetrical area-dominance game in the theme of the American Civil War. It is not a bad game — far from it; it has a few genuinely clever mechanisms — but for me its initial freshness runs out sooner than I would like.

At its core, we fight for control of battlefields from the historical conflict. The game develops like a sequence of tricks: we try to win the crucial confrontations and, with them, dominance over the corresponding areas.

The interesting part comes from a system that feels like rock-paper-scissors, but spread across several boards at once, with a little hidden information clouding the picture. So contact with the opponent is constant: it is not enough for me to play “correctly”; I also have to guess where and how they will try to counter me.

Still, after two or three plays I did not feel much desire to set it up again, whether with the same opponent or a different one. I would keep it as a pleasant break for two players who want something abstract yet historical — especially if Brief Border Wars is not available — but not as a game I would return to regularly.