Most of my favourite games, such as Diplomacy, have little or no element of luck - either via dice rolls, hands dealt, or other methods.
What other games can you recommend that rely on 'skill' alone?
One game per answer, game name formatted as header and link to more information. Vote for your favourite if it exits already.
Another Civ-lite game. Battle is handled by removing troops one after another, and a lot of it is guessing what the other players are going for, and trying to beat them to the punch.
Wayfinder Movement mechanic similar to mancala. Up to 4 players with a simultaneous movement element.
From the wikipedia write-up:
Terrace is an award-winning strategy game played by two, three, or four players on a multi-leveled 8×8 (or, more recently, 6×6) board. It is most widely known for also being a prop in the American television series Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Years ago there used to be whole websites devoted to describing the rules to Axis and Allies chess, which is a no-luck version of the popular board game, but Google seems unable to find the rule set I remember, which I think was originally developed by the A&A club at MIT.
The basic modification from the standard game is to replace rolling with a deterministic combat model. The standard model is to roll one die per unit and score hits against a unit specific threshold (i.e. an attacking tank hits on a 3+). In A&A Chess, the attacking or defending values are summed and divided by 6. Remainders of 4 or less are discarded and remainders of 5 or considered hits. For example, four attacking infantry can't do any damage, but two tanks result in one casualty.
Although theoretically this model would enable a player to work out a complex combat round in their head, this is impractical: first, it's too much math to keep in your head for multi-round combat; second, you don't know how the enemy will respond to taking casualties and/or if they will retreat (if attacking).
Anti-aircraft guns are resolved by the same rules: meaning an AA gun is ineffective against 4 or less aircraft attacking at once, but will automatically record (at least) one hit against 5 or more.
Typically chess does away with tech research, but it would be easy to set a price for each technology.
I haven't played the other Project GIPF games, but DVONN reminds me of a variation of chinese checkers -- but each time you move a piece, you affect how it can later move. You also sometimes sacrifice some of your pieces to take out the opponents pieces by disconnecting from the red DVONN pieces.
Um ... this explanation is probably more confusing than helping make the case, though.
Martian Chess is another Icehouse game with no element of luck. It's not as deep as some of the other assorted games mentioned, but since I prefer light games that doesn't bother me. ;)
There are many games that have just a tiny bit of luck, but zero-luck games are hard to come by (most are probably already listed here). I wouldn't be so quick to label games as no-luck just because they have no dice or cards though. If a game is more than 2 players, one player could wind up benefiting greatly if the actions of other players are not focused at them. For instance, if Players 1 & 2 wind up ganging up on Player 3, they could create a runaway leader in Player 4. Would you say Player 4 was the benefit of some luck, having not been chosen as the target of these attacks? Or would you say then simply made their obvious optimal moves in the face of unskilled play by Players 1 & 2? I view the actions of an unskilled player as an element of luck, since at times they could be making decisions seemingly on a random basis.
Blam!
A fun little piece-placing, abstract, unit management game... No luck. No hidden knowledge.
You'll want one Icehouse stash per player. Two to four players.
Rules online: http://www.invisible-city.com/play/29/blam
Asynchronous, online, at SuperDuper Games: http://superdupergames.org/main.html?page=listgames#blam
A bit of randomness in the startup. Pieces are placed in the order of oldest first and he/she is the one who starts the game. After that you make your move in clockwise order. The first player marker moves every round creating a supprising new level of strategy where you also needs to consider at what point in the current and the next turn you will make your move.
