Exploring lane battlers and area control via the example of Air, Land, & Sea. How far can we modify a lane battler by adding thematic elements before it comes a "troops on a map" area control game?
As a Compile fan (ESPECIALLY at 3 players) who has played only a few area control games, this has set all sorts of gears in motion in my head about what an area control game could look like when every little control token could have the mechanistic depth of a card from Compile. Very nice article!
Very interesting article. I really enjoyed seeing the evolution from lane battler to area control, especially since I enjoy Air, Land and Sea and like you, I also like larger thematic games.
Thank you! I think it's fun to think about stuff like this. Helps me understand games at a very basic level which usually leads to some inspiration for new game design ideas.
Interesting. If you mean Toy Battle (Mori & Zucchini, 2025), then that looks far more like an area control game than a lane battler to me. Maps have 10-15+ control points connected like nodes. Would you consider each node a lane?
Check out Compile! Many of the cards allow you to shift cards between lanes or shift the lane labels. Some even have cards swapping player sides! It's a very cool game.
really fascinating to think about :) like so many other things in life, it seems like lane battlers and area control games are a spectrum :D thank you for sharing <3
Awesome post! I think iteration 4 is a great start for conceptualizing higher-player-count lane battlers. It also got me thinking about what other differentiators might be.
For me, two common aspects of area control games are “adjacency matters” and “troop movement.” The board isn’t just a visual representation of discrete zones; it indicates where power is concentrated, what paths are open/blocked, where influence can spread, chokepoints, etc. Even in games with no area movement (Carcassonne), adjacency and the spatial system influence game decisions.
While lane battlers have cards that let you "break the rules" and shift power between lanes or play to offsuit lanes, I think moving power/units between zones (especially adjacent zones) is more intrinsic to area control games. And as a thought experiment, if we redraw the map from iteration 4 in several different ways, with different zone adjacencies, and gameplay isn't affected, it's hard to argue that the map/ spatial system actually matters.
Daniel Piechnick (designer of Radlands mentioned above) has a great article about spatial systems, which feels relevant here: https://daniel.games/spatial-systems
As a Compile fan (ESPECIALLY at 3 players) who has played only a few area control games, this has set all sorts of gears in motion in my head about what an area control game could look like when every little control token could have the mechanistic depth of a card from Compile. Very nice article!
That might turn into a skirmish game!
I’ll just have to wait for Skirmish Week to find out!
Skirmish Week turned into Scope Creep Week! 😅
I need to scale back and try to get that done soon without learning and playing 10 different skirmish games.
Very interesting article. I really enjoyed seeing the evolution from lane battler to area control, especially since I enjoy Air, Land and Sea and like you, I also like larger thematic games.
Thank you! I think it's fun to think about stuff like this. Helps me understand games at a very basic level which usually leads to some inspiration for new game design ideas.
Toy Battle would be an interesting example of obvious lane battler, but quite a non-typical area control.
Interesting. If you mean Toy Battle (Mori & Zucchini, 2025), then that looks far more like an area control game than a lane battler to me. Maps have 10-15+ control points connected like nodes. Would you consider each node a lane?
One thing that can be done in many area control games is allow movement of units/tokens between areas which I have not seen on a lane battler.
Check out Compile! Many of the cards allow you to shift cards between lanes or shift the lane labels. Some even have cards swapping player sides! It's a very cool game.
Right on target! Whatever that target is....
Thanks!
really fascinating to think about :) like so many other things in life, it seems like lane battlers and area control games are a spectrum :D thank you for sharing <3
Thank you! ☺️
Awesome post! I think iteration 4 is a great start for conceptualizing higher-player-count lane battlers. It also got me thinking about what other differentiators might be.
For me, two common aspects of area control games are “adjacency matters” and “troop movement.” The board isn’t just a visual representation of discrete zones; it indicates where power is concentrated, what paths are open/blocked, where influence can spread, chokepoints, etc. Even in games with no area movement (Carcassonne), adjacency and the spatial system influence game decisions.
While lane battlers have cards that let you "break the rules" and shift power between lanes or play to offsuit lanes, I think moving power/units between zones (especially adjacent zones) is more intrinsic to area control games. And as a thought experiment, if we redraw the map from iteration 4 in several different ways, with different zone adjacencies, and gameplay isn't affected, it's hard to argue that the map/ spatial system actually matters.
Daniel Piechnick (designer of Radlands mentioned above) has a great article about spatial systems, which feels relevant here: https://daniel.games/spatial-systems