Black Hole (board game)

Black Hole is a science fiction board wargame designed by Robert Taylor and published in 1978 by Metagaming Concepts as the tenth title in the company's microgame series, the line of small, inexpensive, ziplock bagged wargames that Metagaming had launched the previous year with Ogre. Two players each represent a rival corporate power racing to seize control of a doughnut shaped, artificially built asteroid and the black hole anchored at its center, along with whatever alien artifacts the structure contains. Forces on both sides consist of heavy armored units carrying either rockets or lasers, maneuvering across a map that shows both the exterior surface and the interior passages of the torus shaped asteroid, with movement rates that vary by sector rather than a single uniform speed. Rockets add an unusual wrinkle to the combat: once launched they immediately enter orbit and spiral endlessly around the torus until they strike another unit in their path, so a fired weapon can remain a threat circling the battlefield well after the turn it was launched. Units that stray too close to the black hole at the asteroid's heart risk being seized by it and relocated at random to another point on the map, adding an element of chance to an otherwise maneuver-driven contest between two evenly matched corporate rivals.