AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 PLAYS
This month, Argentina
Nearly 10,000 miles away from the shores of last month’s country of interest, Indonesia, lies the immensely biodiverse land of Argentina, home to the tallest mountain in the Southern Hemisphere and the largest Spanish speaking nation in the world.
In regard to the country’s traditional games, Argentina is a relative newcomer to the hobby with most titles dating back not much more than half a century. Perhaps the most popular of the lot is Estanciero; a take on Monopoly but with a distinctly Argentinian flavour. Estanciero draws on the country’s cattle-farming history and casts players as rival ranchers snatching up provinces. Mechanically things remain pretty similar, but this slightly pastoral theming is a nice alternative to Monopoly’s greedinducing estate acquisition.
The game was released in 1942 and has since seen several editions, spin-offs, and anniversary releases, even amidst the eventual Spanish language release of Monopoly in 1985. Curiously, the first entirely Argentine edition of Monopoly
didn’t appear until 2001. Prior to this, the 1980 game TRUST Financiero offered players an Argentine take on the typical Monopoly
formula with its near identical rules covering the familiar streets of Buenos Aires.
In 1976, economics student and board game shop owner David Jiterman founded the publisher Yetem S.A. with the intention of releasing his newly patented game T.E.G.
The Spanish acronym roughly translates as ‘Tactical and Strategical War Plan’, with the game itself being heavily based on Risk. T.E.G. introduces the idea of ‘secret missions’ which offer alternative paths to victory than the usual ‘conquer thirty countries’. Interestingly, these rules were later implemented into Risk itself. So far, Yetem S.A.’s T.E.G. line has expanded to seven games, with the latest being
2016’s T.E.G. Junior. This expansion has spread onto digital and online platforms too, with an official app version of T.E.G. releasing in
2013 through Widow Games.
Nowadays, a number of modern publishers such as
El Dragon Azul, Maldon, and RunDOS Studios pepper the Argentine gaming landscape, with each bringing their own roster of talented designers.
El Dragon Azul publish a modest number of internationally recognised games such as Coup and Spyfall, alongside several titles from Spanish speaking countries including, of course, Argentina. One of their most popular releases is the quirky and quick worker placement game Cultivos Mutantes (Mutant Crops) by designer Sebastian Koziner. The game tasks players with taming and sowing the best crops following an ecological disaster which has rendered common vegetables as vicious carnivores. Koziner is also the designer of 2014’s colourful memory game Oni and has also contributed illustrative work to a number of highly regarded games including Heroes of Terrinoth, Dice Hospital, and Skulk Hollow.
RunDOS Studios has been the base of operations for designer
Martin Oddino, who has released six games through the publisher since 2017’s fantasy dungeoncrawl Magus: Aura Mortis.
Oddino’s latest design is this year’s La Isla Perdida;
a roll & write game tasking players with sketching out the varied terrain of the ‘Lost Island’ in an attempt to meet specific criteria. Long-time collaborator Lucas Charra provides the art for much of Oddino’s work, but has notably also produced his own game designs, in the form of push-your-luck game Lab Rats and the zombie themed roll & write, Roll and Die.
Argentina may not possess the rich gaming histories of some of its neighbouring South American countries, but it nonetheless emerges as one of the most intriguing yet overlooked regions in regard to its growing modern tabletop scene.