Sometimes, James Ernst’s throwaway ideas should be thrown away

 I try and pay attention to whatever James Ernst is up to but I managed to miss his abstract game The Fractured Flat for a couple years. Sadly, after trying it out, I could see why it went under my radar.

It’s a two-player, perfect information abstract. The board resembles a broken piece of glass with some areas having dots on them. Players take turns placing pawns or moving them but only to spaces wirh more sides than the one they left. You get a point if the space has a dot and for every enemy pawn adjacent to it.

The score track is a tug of war and one of the ways to end the game is getting to your end of the track. The game can also end by running out of pawns and, if the score track is at zero, whoever made the last move wins.

As far as I can tell, there’s nothing _wrong_ with The Fractured Flat. At least to me, it’s not immediately solvable and I haven’t figured out if there is a first or second player bias. But I just don’t find it interesting.

I can’t put my finger on why. I do like abstracts. It may be that it doesn’t feel dynamic but but feels plodding. As a comparison, the only game in the GIPF project I haven’t enjoyed is GIPF. 

The game that I found myself comparing it to was Mapple, as earlier abstract series that Mr Ernst made. It’s also simple and about territory control. It’s not flawless or brilliant but it keeps me engaged. There’s a momentum to Mapple that keeps the play going.

(My favorite pure abstract by James Ernst is Tak, which is a very dynamic game. In fact, I’d even call it brilliant. But the only way that The Fractured Flat and Tak actually resemble each other is they have the same designer)

The Fractured Flat feels like a throwback to the early days of Cheapass Games where Ernst has admitted he was throwing things against the wall to see what stuck. It doesn’t feel polished.

While Mapple is a slight little game, it’s stuck with me. On the other hand, a year from now, I wouldn’t be surprised if I have no idea what The Fractured Flat is when I look at my notes.