Race Game - Not Race Games

Not Race Games

Many board games share some characteristics with these games, but are not categorized as race games. For example, the characteristic roll-and-move mechanism of race games is also found in running-fight games, but here the object of the game is not to finish first, but to capture and remove enemy pieces from the board. Similarly in games as diverse as Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit, players roll-and-move to spaces which may help or hinder their progress, but there is no physical "finish line": a win is not attained positionally, but rather by the collection of assets.

It is possible to broaden the definition of the term "race games" to comprise all board games in which the winner is the first to attain a specified position. In addition to the race games specified above, the category would then include games such as Hex, Agon, Chinese Checkers, and Tic-tac-toe. However, board game surveys generally follow Murray in assigning games played on two-dimensional fields to a separate category, such as Murray's "Games of Alignment and Configuration", keeping only linear games (as defined above) in their "race games" category.