The 70s are well known for bell bottom jeans and the meteoric rise of Abba. In a less comic sense, we saw an increase in tension in the Cold War and three US presidents – It was a messy decade. The 70s are now over 50 years ago and many board games published at the time have faded into distant memory. However, I am sure that many would find it surprising that we still play some of the board games published then, today.
Table of Contents
- Dune (1979)
- Uno (1971)
- Rummikub (1977)
- Cosmic Encounter (1977)
- War of the Ring (1977)
- 70s Board Games: Take a Chance on me?
Dune (1979)
Dune is the first board game iteration of the 1965 novel, by Frank Herbert, of the same name. The game, in the same vein as the novel, is all about using any method necessary to gain control over the spice on Arrakis. The game mostly focuses on negotiation and bluffing tactics to achieve this.
Players take the role of one of the six factions on the planet. Each faction has special abilities, specific to them. House Atreides, for example, can force their opponents to reveal one element of their battle plan during the combat phase. Another faction, the Emperor, has access to five elite units, the Saradaukar, which are twice as effective as normal units. The trend continues with each the other factions having different abilities which help them in different areas of gameplay.
However, it is not only other players you must watch out for. Iconic sandworms and deadly sandstorms also plague the Arrakis landscape. The game finishes when a faction is able to control a certain number of strongholds on the board. Alternatively, two allied factions can also win if they have enough strongholds combined.
Uno (1971)
Strictly not a board game, this beloved tabletop game first hit homes in the early 70s. It would be hard to find anyone who has not heard of Uno, although not many people can agree on the rules! It took them until 2020 to confirm that you cannot stack plus 2 cards.
The beauty of playing with friends is that you can play with whatever rules you like, so long as everyone at the table agree. My friends for example play with a monopoly card, from Catan, in ticket to ride because they enjoy the mechanic.
The simplicity of Uno is a double edged sword. Essentially, anyone can pick it up in about five minutes, but there is not a great deal of strategy or skill to the game. It is really straightforward, but does not challenge older audiences – for me, it does get boring pretty quickly. On the upside, kids love it, and as it is aimed at children who are we to judge?
What is most impressive is that Uno is the commercialization of a traditional game played with a regular 52 card pack – crazy eights. Really you can play Uno without Uno cards.
Rummikub (1977)
Rummikub is similar to Uno in this way, it is the commercialization of the Italian card game Machiavelli. Although other central European card games do have similar themes to it as well. However, the invention of Rummikub was more driven by the environment that creator Ephraim Hertzano lived in rather than any desire to make money. In Communist Romania, card playing was outlawed for being too lavish and so Rummikub was created as a substitute.
The game plays as follows: essentially, you are trying to get rid of all your tiles. To place tiles on the table you must create runs of three or more or three or four of a kind. The real strategy comes into play as more tiles are placed on the board. Anything on the board is fluid and can be rearranged as long as it fulfils the laying criteria described above. The more tiles on the board, the more options. The more options, the more creative one can be.
Cosmic Encounter (1977)
Cosmic Encounter shares some similarities to 1977’s Dune, this is not too unsurprising given that both games share the same designers. The win condition of Cosmic Encounter is occupying five planets in foreign systems and, like Dune, shared victories are possible too.
Each Alien race which you can pick from have unique powers. These players allow players to manipulate or even break rules in the game. Notable powers include:
- Chronos – Players can go back in time and replay encounters if they are unhappy with the result.
- Void – Opposing ships are permanently removed from the game.
To achieve your goals you may outright go to battle with opponents or enlist the help of other friendlier members of the table.
The game saw astounding commercial success. The base game has 15 aliens to choose from, by the 9th expansion there were 75. Honestly, there is enough variety in the base game, a lot of the gameplay is based on parlay and negotiation between players which has no physical elements. This being said, picking up the expansions can lead to whole new topics of discussion altogether.
War of the Ring (1977)
Oh boy, Lord of the Rings board games are a major rabbit hole to go down. There are simply so many board games both good and bad. War of the Ring comes somewhere in the middle as a solid 70s attempt.
Mechanically, War of the Ring pays a very interesting homage to the source material. There are two levels of the game. First, the fate of middle earth: where one player as Sauron fights to conquer the free peoples, the other player. There is also the option to play as Saruman as a third player. At the same time, another battle goes on between individual characters, like Frodo, who are marching the one ring to Mordor to destroy it. Evil players typically have an advantage on the grand battle level whereas good players have the advantage on the character level.
What is most interesting about this Lord of the Rings game is that it came out over 20 years before Peter Jackson’s trilogy on which most modern Lord of the Rings merchandise is based. It truly is its own game. Interestingly, this 1977 version of the War of the Ring went out of stock in many board game shops and so quickly became a highly sought aver collector’s item – most editions are over $100.
70s Board Games: Take a Chance on me?
Well, it is clear that 1977 was a good year to publish board games in the 70s with three out of five games on our list published then. In fact, only one game in our list was published in the first half of that decade, Uno. Overall, the 70s was not the best decade for board game publishing, Rummikub and Uno are the only real games that have stood the test of time. While Dune did get several remakes, one a recently as 2019, it is more down to the success of the franchise as a whole, rather than the success of the 1979 game.
