Board Games of the World

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Board games have been played throughout the world by people of many different cultures and backgrounds across a time span of millennia. The oldest known games date back to about 3500 B.C. Board games may be categorized according to the type of strategy dictated by the rules of the game. These categories include race games, war games, games of position, and Mancala games. Today these are considered abstract games although when they originated the games may have represented real life situations like battles.

The book Board Games of the World is about the history, the boards, the rules, and the strategy of many different board games, as well as ideas on how to build the boards. This is a book for all ages, with a straightforward, easy-to-understand explanation of the rules, to ideas for constructing elaborate game boards. Some games have a simple set of rules that can easily be learned by younger children and these games will make interesting projects for the schoolroom.

In race games the opponents compete by moving their pieces around a pre-determined track on the board. The first player to complete the circuit with all his pieces is the winner. Race games may be divided into two types, pure races and running fight games. In pure race games the opponents compete by moving their pieces around a pre-determined track on the board. The winner is the first player that completes the circuit with all their pieces. During these games, pieces may be captured, removed from the board and forced to start the circuit again. These games include Senet, Pachisi, and Backgammon.

In running fight games the pieces are moved in repeated laps over same circuit attempting to capture their opponent’s pieces. Captured pieces are removed from the game. The winner is the player whose opponent no longer has pieces still remaining on the circuit. The running fight games include Zohn Ahl, Bul, Puluc and Ad Elta Stelpur.

All these games use various forms of dice such as six-sided cube dice, two or four-sided throwing sticks, cowrie shells, marked corn grains or knucklebones.

In war games the players marshal their armies made up of pieces of different strengths in combat against each other. The objective is usually to capture the enemy King or all the opponent’s pieces. War games can generally be divided in to those with equal opponent forces and those with unequal forces. In games with equal forces both sides have exactly the same type and number of pieces and have identical objectives. These games include Alquerque, Seega, Ming Mang, Checkers and Chess. In games with unequal forces each player has different numbers of pieces with different capabilities, and in addition the goals of each player are different. These games include Ringo, Tigers and Goats, Fox and Geese, Pulijudam, Tablut and other games of the Tafl family. Many of these games with unequal forces are also known as hunt games.

Games of position are those in which the location of a player’s pieces on the board in relation to those of his opponent is of prime importance. In these games the players fight for control of regions of the board. Games of position include Achi, Nine Men’s Morris, Renju and Go.

Mancala is these days the name given to a family of board games played throughout Africa, the Caribbean, India and south-east Asia. In these games the players distribute their counters along a fixed track and attempt to capture their opponent’s pieces by arriving at a particular position when the count is exhausted. These games are usually played on wooden boards with two, three or four rows of holes carved into them. Sometimes these games are played in a set of holes scooped in the ground. The counters used for these games include stones, marbles, seeds, beans, cowrie shells or small lumps of dung. Read more…