Also, please note that the above is in regard to 1839, a design that I’m working on. It is based in part on the work I did with 1843, but 1843 does not have the off-boards-as-companies-and-train-buyers concept.

I rather like this view.

Can you provide a link to the conversation that quote came from?

1) How do I play the cards I drew?

and:

2) How do I move toward my end-game model?

The apparency is that new(er) players are primarily concerned with #1, which is actually mostly a parsing question and thus contains few decisions, and more capable players spend their attentions on #2.

More specifically, I agree that Dominion (mostly) fits the definition.

0) In Dominion the Kingdom cards are laid out at the beginning of the game, and players can (and probably should if they are trying to won) consider which of them they intend to concentrate on and in what combination.

1) The game may or may not reward continuous 3-5 turn look ahead, depending on whether you consider things like when your deck is going to shuffle, how long it will be before you draw the card you buy this turn, and other things of that nature to be “looking ahead” – you don’t know exactly which cards you will draw turn to turn, but you do know that you will draw all of your cards before reshuffling. It could be argued that this condition is satisfied by Dominion.

2) The decisions made in that look ahead, the decision as to which card to add to your deck that you make each turn, are absolutely concerned with end-game planning and the plan instigated in point #0 above. I believe that’s one of the overarching features of the Deck Building mechanism – all of the small choices you make over the course of the game have a large impact on your position in the late game. Thereby the decisions you make in the early game are all primarily concerned with the end game planning.

3) Players who create a plan at the outset and constantly choose wisely how to support that plan given their draw turn to turn will succeed over players that do not.

By this definition, Dominion meets the criteria to be called “strategic.” I have heard people argue against that however, citing that the game is purely tactical. I’m curious as to whether Dominion, or deck building games as a genre, are generally considered “strategic,” and whether the popular answer to that has any bearing on this definition of “strategic.”

Yeah, that’s a bug in one of the WordPress plugins I use. Don’t worry about it. I delete such droppings from comments when I approve them.

An updated version of the above video now that YouTube has removed the one I embedded above:

Another, perhaps more suitable metaphor would be stock trading around the 1960s or so. Everything is already changing very fast (not as fast as today, mind you, but still), while you don’t have computers and have to call your broker by phone to make a move. The mediator introduces somewhat random delays and even possible failures (no stock available at the desired price when the broker got to it).

(sorry if the comments are not welcome, I’ve just found your blog and am enjoying it very much)

I should drop him an email and see if he’d send me the current version’s files.

What’s up on that long-dead site is all there is. The variant was nothing more than a one-liner response to someone on the 18xx mailing list who wanted an 1830 variant with more companies.

I’ve updated the article accordingly.