My first real game.
The idea to this game was born in the late 1970ies when I started to develop my own creations at the age of 10. My favorite book at that time was Das große Krone Spielebuch, a very nice compilation of classic and (then) new board games. The great thing about it was that the rules were only roughly described and there were no photos at all. Just illustrations mainly to elaborate on the seventies’ life style. But no real pictures of game boards or playing pieces, hardly anything useful. At that time, I was really annoyed at that lack of information. Now I know it stimulated my senses immensely…
My favorite was the game Laska by chess champion Dr. Emanuel Lasker. I loved the illustration of two players handling large stacks of playing pieces and I learned about the beauty of hex boards from Władysław Gliński’s Hexagonal Chess.
From then on, all I wanted was to create a stacking game on hexes!
Well, it actually took me more than 20 years to complete it, but I’ve learned much about games and what powers them.
Accasta was first published by Bambus Spieleverlag in 1998 as part of the “tactic blue” game collection.
Abstract Games magazine
An article about the game was scheduled for publication in the Abstract Games magazine. Unfortunately, issue 17 / 2004 never came out and so the pages went asleep for more than a decade; finally here it is:
Accasta - Introduction to a Pure Stacking Game
But the game came back and made it to the cover of issue 21.
“Accasta (1998) is a game by Dieter Stein, and one of his first games. The image shows an Accasta prototype that Dieter sent to Abstract Games back in 2003; an article about the game would have appeared in the old Issue 17. Years passed in which Abstract Games was dormant, […]
Nevertheless, Accasta has stayed with us throughout the years, and every now and then we still play this fine, unusual stacking game, using the original prototype.” – Kerry Handscomb, 2021
