Door 22
Tug of War is such a simple concept but it can provide a really tense gameplay experience. 🙃 Games involving this will have a track where players are moving a token away from a neutral position, fighting each other with a lot of back-and-forth - usually winning if they manage to completely move the token to a certain position. Simple but great mechanics like this should be celebrated, so here’s door 22 of MechanXmas highlighting Tug of War!
And our first prime example for this is 👑 Royal Visit! Tug of War is the core of the game. Your sole goal is to either completely pull the King’s figure over to you Chateau or have him in your half when time runs out. That sounds easy, but that’s not all of course. The King can only be moved if he’s between his 2 Guards. So to pull the King you will have to first pull the Guards over. And to throw more fun into the mix you also have a Wizard and a Jester figure. You are doing this whole rope-pulling contest with not 1 but 5 tokens!
To interact with the game you play cards. To avoid stalemates you will be using the special ability of the Wizard and Jester and also saving up cards for bigger combos to try and catch your opponent off guard. Really fun concept, implemented cleverly - with amazing art to boot! 😍
Our second example game is 🏛️ 7 Wonders Duel, a real masterpiece! 🥰 In this game Tug of War is just a side mechanic. There are actually 3 ways to win the game - you can win by having the most points at the end, or you could win immediately by either collecting enough Science symbols, or by pushing the War token all the way to your rival. So in this case it is not a pulling but a pushing contest. 😅
I really like how these 3 victory conditions make for a more tense game. You are always on the lookout to draft good cards, and always checking what the enemy is going for. If you are lucky and cunning you could just race for a cheeky win. 😁 The whole game is balanced really well so this tug of war feeling is there in other elements too. Depending on what your opponent is doing, you are constantly trying to counteract it somehow.
