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So, what is a ‘Bods on a Map' game anyway? That in itself has spawned lively debate amongst our blogging team! BOAM has been interpreted fairly liberally in the five games we have included here. To qualify, there needs to be some form of area control, plenty of direct player on player interaction and typically some aggressive, ‘wargamey' strategic and/or tactical crunch. This can mean different things to different people and one thing all of these games have in common, is the desire to get them to the table.
Blood Rage – Gavin Hudson
The time is Ragnarok. The end of the world. The great Viking clans and monsters gather in the lands around Yggdrasil for one final apocalyptic battle… on my sister’s conservatory table. Blood Rage has a special place in my heart. This is the game that cemented family game night with my sister and brother-in-law. It was a game with a theme we could all get into, it felt epic without being laboriously long and allowed me to share my love of the hobby with my family.
Since then, it’s the game we revisit the most. We’ve had close battles and runaway victories, but every single play was fun. Blood Rage has all my favourite mechanisms in one; card drafting, battles, area control and engine building. I love the way the different clans start the same but soon become wildly asymmetric as you upgrade them.
But let’s be honest, the reason this became a game night favourite is those minis. Figures that are so cool that my brother-in-law often sacrifices a winning strategy just to have a Frost Giant or a Sea Serpent in his clan! And that’s the real joy of this game; winning is secondary to the childish fun of stomping toys around a board. That’s what I want from a bods on a map game. The nostalgia of tipping out my Thundercats and Ghostbusters on the living room floor and kicking some bad-guy’s ass.
Blood Rage is five years old now, but I would still never turn down an opportunity to play it. The game has so many routes to victory with the different strategies and combos of gods, I’ve still only scratched the surface. Throw in the expansion and there’s even more choice, giving it an almost sandboxy vibe. Yes, I like to win, but these days I’m just as happy to explore different avenues. Like my brother-in-law, I’m content just smashing stuff up with my Frost Giant.
Kemet – John Hunt
To me, Kemet is the epitome of the genre. It's all about getting lots of little bods onto the map, to either win you VP by occupying temples or to win you VP by starting and winning fights. There are so many things I love about this game! The combination of rewards for attacking, teleportation movement and the choice to sacrifice surviving units from a battle for their purchase costs makes for a particular dynamic. It means movement if fast, fluid, and aggressive play is the name of the game in most cases. Controlling space for long is hard, and the picture of troops and area control on the board swings, but not as a result of luck.
I love the fact that the game has 48 power tiles meaning as the game progresses you are crafting asymmetry into your experience, very deliberately in the service of your strategy. In particular, some of these give you fab monster minis to add to your armies as they trundle around the board – and who doesn’t want a giant scorpion at the head of their army? I really appreciate the lack of dice in combat. You all (initially) hold the same 6 battle cards which you must cycle through before they return to your hand. That, combined with some Divine Intervention cards that can augment your combat or be used for bluffing, makes for a quick, tense fight phase.
The only criticism I have heard is that Kemet can be a ‘bash the leader’ game ... but it really doesn’t matter if you know that and build it into your strategy. In fact, playing carefully so you don’t reveal an obvious lead in the early game is a skill in itself. Great theme, great mechanics, great game!
City of Remnants (reprinted, Neon Gods) – Thom Newton
City of Remnants is one of the older games in my collection. The story of the game is that you take control of a gang in a sort of futuristic high-rise refugee camp which is controlled by some aliens called the Yugai. The game has an element of deck building to it. Each gang has a unique starter deck that all play a little differently. You can add to this started deck by bidding on new gang members and buying new equipment.
To buy these new cards you need money. And money mostly comes from the buildings you can construct on the board. Each game has a different selection of buildings which will each have a different set of unique abilities. You need to send your gang members out to establish these facilities, and importantly, hold on to them. Controlling the facilities means you can potentially set up a little black market economy to keep you gang well supplied, but a rival gang, or even worse the Yugai police, may well launch an assault to try and take over your buildings.
Combat is thematic in City of Remnants. You can play down your gang members for combat values and abilities and then roll a bunch of dice depending on how many supporting gang members are nearby. The loser must remove a figure from the map, but also remove one of their gang members that they played during the fight from the game. This makes combat extremely risky as you don’t want to end up losing your best fighters in a shoot-out with the police.
Sadly, this game is horribly out of print now, but, Plaid Hat Games has re-implemented the game as Neon Gods with a more colourful theme. The mechanics are largely intact, and it is worth a look if you fancy a sub two-hour skirmish game with an element of deck building.
War Chest – Rob Wright
First off, War Chest is gorgeous – you’d be hard-pressed to find another game with such high production values, but it’s not just about the shininess of the things (I think).
The game itself is an elegant blend of abstract war game, customisable chess and bag builder. Each player (it can be played with 4 but plays best with 2) has four units to choose from and a bag full of chips representing these units, plus a ‘prince’ token. Players draw three tokens from their bag and can play them face up or face down. Unit tokens played face up can go on the board, move the appropriate unit, give the unit an action (these vary depending on the unit, but all units have an attack or capture action) or reinforce the unit. Any token can be played face down to buy more unit chips from resources or gain advantage (play first in a round). When the bag is empty, refill it with your discard pile. Each player has several control tokens – the first player to place all his control tokens at the capture points on the board wins the game.
The reason I love this game is that it feels wonderfully traditional while being utterly modern. The pieces have a real heft to them and clatter nicely in the embroidered bags, as if it were a Viking relic. The mechanic of having a wide range of units to be randomly or specifically chosen is very designer – and it’s simple/complicated in the way that chess or shogi are. You can also set up particular historical encounters (like the battles of Thermopylae or Hastings) using different units, or just let the cards fall where they may. It’s not your average BOAM because of the bag-building element, but it’s definitely in the BOAM stable because of its asymmetrical strategic elements. And… did I mention that War Chest was gorgeous?
Scythe – Jim Cohen
I am a bit of a Stonemaier Games fan boy, so probably take what I say here with a pinch of salt! Now with that out the way, Scythe is the greatest game ever made! OK, in all seriousness, there is a lot of hype with SM games, and Scythe certainly is a brilliant game, and for me, definitely in my top 10; but let’s try and cut through the hype.
First up, there is not a lot of player on player engagement here. You can be a bit eyes down in Scythe, and as much as there are two points up for grabs for winning battles, you can easily play a game without ever needing to do this.
The game also has a few mechanics to discourage it from happening too often. So, this is more of an area control and engine building than a pure skirmish game. Obviously, player count affects this, the more people, the more chance to engage. Also, which factions and strategy you employ.
However, the board is clever to help here. Designer, Jamey Stegmaier, didn’t want to have a different board for reduced player counts, the world of Scythe is the world of Scythe. It doesn’t change with less players. I like that. So, tunnels are used to get you from A to B if you want to traverse the world more quickly.
As an absorbing “Euro-style,” deeply thematic encounter-based game, this is right up there for me. The minis and mechs are gorgeous, the art atmospheric and gameplay smooth.
Is it a “Bods on a Map” game? I am not sure. In truth, I don’t really know what that is! But when I compare it to the other games on this list, it certainly has a lot of similarities for me, and I would rank Scythe as being up there in terms of gameplay.