Have you ever played a game that distilled another game down to it's strategic components? A game that took the meta-game of a popular franchise and made it an game of its own? Or have you noticed how some games simplify portions of on game to amplifies the strategy of other portions?
I think about games like Dominion which made the deckbuilding genre explode with popularity when it gamified the deck-building strategy of CCGs and simplified the "play" portion. Or games like Combo-fighter that abstract the mechanical components of console fighting games and makes a compelling board game.
What I want to do is take a similar treatment to tabletop wargaming. I've always been fascinated by the meta-game of tabletop wargames like Warhammer 40k. There are definable metrics that you could evaluate an army and a huge variety of builds that could be considered competitive in everything but a tournament. For each of those builds, you could theory-craft an effective counter. It's this high-level strategic-spatial-competition that I hope to someday capture.
I'm attempting to heavily abstract the "play" portion of tabletop wargames to dig into the meta-level strategies. I've also taken a lot of inspiration from auto-battlers like Dota Underlords, Autochess, and Hearthstone Battlegrounds. Those are a form of competitive composition builders that rely on poker-like luck of the draw systems.
I've tried a lot of things that haven't worked out for a number of reasons. What are your first impressions? How would you proceed?
