Tale of the Almost Was...

Fantasy Flight Games released an ingenious game design about three or four years back, called DISKWARS. In Diskwars, the game is truly contained in the pieces themselves. Each game piece is a Disk, a fantasy (mostly) creature, location, monster, etc. Players set up on a special Headquarters DISK that is close to the edge of the playing space. In the center (usually), there is some giant "objective disk" (a keep, a treasure, a dragon, etc). The cool part now commences. The pieces "walked" from the edge of the table to the center (and into fighting range of other disks) by flipping end over end over end... like a coin flipping, but it was using the flipping movement to MOVE on the table.

As you can see, the disks came in several different size ranges, making some of the more valuable (bigger) pieces move faster than the more common (smaller) pieces
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Combat was dirt simple.. ranged combat was handled by holding a certain amount of arrow markers about two feet above the target zone and dropping them. "Hits" were "Hits" in a combat sense. Magick worked pretty much the same way. And physical combat was a simple system of comparison of attack and defense variables, once the disks were within melee range. There were several exceptions and nuances, not the least important was speed factors and racial bonuses, but that's about it.

There were SEVERAL DISK SETS (sold as "collectible flats") and sorted by race-- the standard fantasy races.

The artwork was top-notch; Fantasy Flight has ALWAYS had talent working for them and they really kicked out the jams on this one. I loved this game system because it hits all the elements I appreciate in good game design; easy to play, easy to teach and learn, you can play it with youngsters (but us oldsters like it too), and just a treat to look at.

Unfortunately, DISKWARS was released right about the same time as the subject of the THIRD essay on "The Game is in the Piece", MAGEKNIGHT clickies. FFG put in a wonderful effort in supporting and expanding this line (and there really is a lot of this stuff available yet, in third party and aftermarket sales, if you are interested), but I think they saw the writing on the wall and now the game appears to be out of print. At least the official Diskwars site no longer appears to be up.

FFG also, sadly, didn't help their product by releasing a VERY SIMILAR product right on the heels of DISKWARS called VORTEX, also collectible, also fantasy oriented, also tile based.. though that's a subject for a later essay.

See also: Doomtown, Legend of the Five Rings diskwars, the New Diskwars Computer Game.

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