ENTER! Misc Avatar Contest: Game Boards

[rhubarbodendron]

ohh! great topic! Here's one of my favourite board games, a 4000 year old one from Uruk =)
This particular one can be seen in the British Museum

 

[Timewalker]

ohh! great topic! Here's one of my favourite board games, a 4000 year old one from Uruk =)
This particular one can be seen in the British Museum

Is this the Game of Twenty Squares? I read about it in the Children of the Lion novels The Lion in Egypt, The Golden Pharaoh, and Lord of the Nile. In the series, the game is imported to Egypt with invaders from the north, and one of the protagonists makes his living as a professional player of Senet and the Game of Twenty Squares.

 

[rhubarbodendron]

I am not sure. I only know it under the name "the royal game from Uruk". But it does have 20 squares and historians presume that this game was spread through the whole Near East and that Senet was gradually developed from it. So I think it very likely that it's identical with the Game of 20 Squares.

As a big fan of Senet I am sceptical about the ancestor-theory. Senet has simpler rules and a simpler board, so I'd rather think that it was the other way round and the 20 square game devloped from Senet. However, archeological proof is to the oppsite: the oldest Senet boards found (so far) are almost a milennium younger than the oldest 20 Squre boards.

 

[Timewalker]

Sorry I'm running late, folks. Voting thread will be up after 12 noon MST (GMT-7). Any last minute entries have until then.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Ok, here's my entry. Many likely won't be familiar with this one, but this is the game my Grandfather any of his grandchildren played when visiting. It's Crokinole, a Canadian invention, though it was only until a few years ago that I'd heard we had been playing a variation of his own invention by using ringlets instead of solid round pieces, being able to score more points by hooking the ringlets onto the poles.

 

[Timewalker]

My grandmother and I used to play a lot of Crokinole. Just last week someone offered to buy my old crokinole board (it's at least 50 years old and very well-used by this time).

Okay, to recap the entries:

Dune (Timewalker)

Risk (macloudt)

Scrabble (Saga)

Chess (Kai "the spy")

Candyland (Locutus of Bored)

Mouse Trap (RJDiogenes)

Star Trek Catan (Timelord Victorious)

Othello (tharpdevenport)

Clue (Showdown)

Monopoly (auntiehill)

Operation (Avro Arrow)

Sarlacc Pit (Flying Spaghetti Monster)

Cornish Smuggler (RevdKathy)

Game of Twenty Squares (rhubarbodendron)

Crokinole (Owain Taggart)

 

[Timewalker]

The voting thread is up.

Good luck, everyone, and thanks for all the great entries!

 

[bbjeg]

Decided to do one after all. This Is what I get for procrastinating...

 

[Avro Arrow]

Ok, here's my entry. Many likely won't be familiar with this one, but this is the game my Grandfather any of his grandchildren played when visiting. It's Crokinole, a Canadian invention, though it was only until a few years ago that I'd heard we had been playing a variation of his own invention by using ringlets instead of solid round pieces, being able to score more points by hooking the ringlets onto the poles.

Hey, I remember playing that! I didn't know it was a Canadian invention, though. I used to play it as a kid at my grandparents' place... which seems to be a common theme!

 

[Owain Taggart]

Ok, here's my entry. Many likely won't be familiar with this one, but this is the game my Grandfather any of his grandchildren played when visiting. It's Crokinole, a Canadian invention, though it was only until a few years ago that I'd heard we had been playing a variation of his own invention by using ringlets instead of solid round pieces, being able to score more points by hooking the ringlets onto the poles.

Hey, I remember playing that! I didn't know it was a Canadian invention, though. I used to play it as a kid at my grandparents' place... which seems to be a common theme!

Yeah, I didn't know until recently either. It's one of those interesting things you often hear of only after the fact. Apparently was invented in Perth County, ON in 1876. I'm wondering now if my Grandfather hadn't learnt it from his father, who'd been Mayor of a small town in Quebec in the Gaspe region. For me, the game carries many sentimental memories.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crokinole

 

[Timewalker]

Take a look at some of these boards - they range from antique to thoroughly modern in design, including Star Wars and various hockey teams.

https://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&...msedr...0...1ac.1.60.img..0.8.704.n4Sf2uV6AnY


This one is similar to mine (minus the water stain). The other side has a checker board for checkers/chess, plus a race game where you start on Earth, orbit/land on the Moon, and finish on Mars.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Yeah, that one's very similar to the one we played on, minus the race game. But sometimes we'd flip over the board to play checkers. He was also an avid checkers player. I have a similar one in my basement somewhere that I bought at a garage sale. I know that there's one designer who does make boards with modern designs, but those cost quite a bit more.