Introduction to Strategy Games
📋 What it is
A strategy game is one where your choices — not luck — mainly decide the outcome, requiring planning ahead.
🗣️ Coach says
Strategy games reward THINKING. Unlike a pure dice race, what you decide matters most: you plan, predict the opponent, and adapt. Chess, Go, and checkers are classics, but so are many modern board games. The skill you build — planning ahead — helps far beyond the board.
🧠 Memory hook
Choices, not luck, decide it. Plan ahead and adapt — that's strategy.
😂 Giggle
Why did the chess player bring a broom?
To sweep the board!
😲 Whoa!
The oldest known strategy games are over 4,000 years old, yet the core skill they train — thinking two moves ahead — is exactly what scientists and chess champions still practise today.
✅ Quick check: What mainly decides who wins a true strategy game?
Say your answer out loud first — then reveal.
The players' CHOICES and planning — not luck; strategy games reward thinking ahead and adapting, not rolling well.
Strategy games are defined by skill and decision-making dominating over chance.
🪄 Trick question: Is a game decided purely by a dice roll a strategy game?
Careful — think it through, then reveal.
No — if luck alone decides it, it's a chance game; a strategy game needs your choices to be what mostly matters.
Pure-luck games lack the decision-dominance that defines strategy.
🧪 Try it! (2 minutes)
Pick a game you know and decide: is it mostly luck or mostly choices? Explain which makes it a strategy game.