Board Game Review: "Royal Game of Ur" (~3000 BC)

This week, I want give a shout out to one of the most popular board games of all time that also happens to be almost completely forgotten nowadays: The "Royal Game of Ur":

The Royal Game of Ur, also known as the Game of Twenty Squares or simply the Game of Ur, is a two-player turn-based strategy game where the players race to be the first to move all their pieces through and then off the game board.  However, this is easier said that done in this simple but elegant game that can become surprisingly intense.

On the player's turn, they roll four dice to determine how many squares they can move a single piece.  However, the dice are d4s (a triangular pyramid with four triangular faces), and not the d4 that are commonly used in RPGs today: two of the four vertex corners are marked with a white tip.  The number of white tips pointing upward equals the number of squares they can move a single piece.  This means a player can move 0 to 4 spaces, with the results distributed on a bell curve.

The game board consists of 20 spaces arranged in two rows of 6 and one row of 8 (looking like a deformed "I").  Each row of 6 is controlled by one player only and the row of 8 is shared.  Players must send a game piece through both their controlled row and the shared row before they can move the piece off the board.

The Royal Game of Ur, so named because it was first rediscovered by the English archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley during his excavations of the Royal Cemetery at Ur between 1922 and 1934, was first played in ancient Mesopotamia during the early third millennium BC and was popular across the large parts of the ancient world among people of all social strata.  In addition, boards for the game have been found at locations as far away as Crete and Sri Lanka.

This game is probably a direct ancestor of the backgammon family of games and was popular until late antiquity. At this point, it have may evolved into backgammon or may have been eclipsed in popularity by early forms of backgammon.  However, the Game of Ur was also brought to the Indian city of Kochi by Jewish traders, where they were still playing a recognizable version into the 1950s.

Modern replicas are available for purchase with an easy internet search.

If you'd like to see this five millennia old game in action, played by Irving Finkel, a curator at the British Museum, who rediscovered the rules of the game by translating in the early 1980s a clay tablet written c. 177 BC by the Babylonian scribe Itti-Marduk-balālu, check out this awesome video!

Board Game Review: "7 Wonders" (2010)

This week, I want to give a shout out to one of the best board games of the past decade: "7 Wonders":

7 Wonders is a strategy, building and resource management card drafting game wherein players assume control of one of seven ancient cities, each representing one of Antipater of Sidon's original Seven Wonders of the Ancient World: the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Mausoleum of Helicarnassus, the Colossus of Rhodes, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Lighthouse of Alexandria, and the Statue of Zeus at Olympia.

There are three decks of playing cards (called a "Age cards"), that are unsurprisingly only played in one particular Age of the game.  The Age cards represent different types of structures that the player can build to provide a resource and/or a mechanical benefit.  In addition, some structures are tiered to unlock further structures and/or mechanical benefits.

Furthermore, the each city has a different game board (called a "Wonder board") with different powers and resources that can affect a player's strategy.  Games are for 2-7 players and the player with the highest total of victory points at the end wins.

Winner of the prestigious 2011 Spiel des Jahres Kennerspiel, as well as numerous other awards, 7 Wonders is well designed, fast paced (turns are resolved simultaneously and the game can be finished in less than an hour) and deceptively challenging: While the mechanics are simple (pick a card each turn),  the strategy and scoring are not.

At the beginning of each Age, each player receives a hand of 7 cards, dealt randomly, from the corresponding Age deck.  After picking a card, the players passes their remaining hand of cards to the player sitting to the left (or right depending on the Age) and receive the remaining hand of cards from the player sitting next to them.  This means players know what cards they are passing on and can influence the receiver's options in the next turn.  However, since players will be passing cards to the left twice and to the right once, they have more influence on the left neighbor than the right neighbor.

There multiple potential paths to winning, although some may be more efficient than others for a given civilization.  Players must decide which strategies and resources to focus on and which to ignore.  However, it's not always clear at the time what is the optimal choice or the what is value of a particular choice!

So, if you are looking for a fast, fun, challenging and replayable strategy board game (especially if you are a history buff), this may be the game for you! 

Board Game Review: "Xiangqi (象棋)" (~1200)

This week, I want give a shout out to one of the most venerable and respected board games and war games of all time: "Xiangqi (Chinese: 象棋; pinyin: xiàngqí), also called Chinese chess":

Attribution: Daniel Danzer

Similar to Chess, Xiangqi is a two player board game wherein each player controls an army of 16 pieces of various types and attempts to checkmate the opponent's General, whilst preventing the opponent from doing the same.  The battlefield consists of a 9 x 10 board with a terrain feature, a river in the middle of the board that is impassible to certain pieces, thus dividing your army into offensive and defensive forces.  The other board features are the palaces (or command tents) of the armies (colored in green and red in the photo above), which restrict the movement of the Generals and the Advisors.

Like Chess, in Xiangqi each faces the other from opposite sides of the board but unlike Chess pieces which are placed within the squares, Xiangqi pieces are placed on the intersection of the lines.

Each army, represented as discs with Chinese characters, consists of:

• 1 General (labelled 將 (trad.) / 将 (simp.) on the black side and 帥 (trad.) / 帅 (simp.) on the red side). 
• 2 Advisors (labelled 士 for Black and 仕 for Red).  
• 2 Elephants (labeled 象 for Black and 相 for Red). 
• 2 Horses (labelled 馬 Black and 傌 for Red).
• 2 Chariots (labelled 車 (trad.) / 车 (simp.) for Black and 俥 (trad.) / 车 (simp.) for Red).  The chariot is sometimes called the rook by English-speaking players, since it is functionally identical to the rook in Chess. 
• 2 Cannons (labelled 砲 for Black and 炮 for Red).
• 5 Soldiers (labelled 卒 for Black and 兵 for Red). 

Although Xiangqi developed over a number of centuries, earliest references to the current version of the game come from around 1200 (e.g., a poem by Liu Kechuang (刘克庄), entitled <<象弈一首,呈叶潜仲>>).  Although overall complexity is similar to the Game of Kings, Xiangqi's gameplay and tactics are sometimes similar to Chess (e.g., forks, pins, and skewers are possible) but sometimes different.  For example, while the Horse and the Knight have similar moves (an orthogonal move followed by a diagonal move), it is possible to block a Horse (i.e., unlike the Knight, the Horse cannot leap over a piece).

In addition, unlike Chess, where the armies occupy the back two ranks of the board (and, indeed, one of the goals of the Development phase in Chess is to "bring your army on to the battlefield"), in Xiangqi, your Soldiers and Cannons are already forward deployed into a skirmish line.  This more likely earlier enemy contact, as well as greater long range orthogonal striking power, earlier promotion of Soldiers v. Pawns, and the restricted movement of the General often makes for an faster paced game than Chess.

Attribution: Peter Griffin

One of the most popular games in China and other parts of Asia, Xiangqi has developed a following in many parts of the world.  Like Chess, Xiangqi is an all-ages game that teaches strategy, patience, forethought and resourcefulness.  The rules are fairly easy to learn but the terrain and the different  nature of the various pieces add depth and complexity.  All in all, it's a fun and challenging game enjoyed by millions everyday.

Any fan of board games and war games owes it to themselves to take a look!

Board Game Review: "Dungeon!" (1975)

This week, I would like to take a look back at another well known "Old School" product, albeit not an RPG.  Sort of.

Dungeon! is a competitive board game where players race through the eponymous dungeon, slaying monsters and taking their stuff.  The first to reach their particular adventurer's gold piece goal and race back to the starting point wins.  Since adventurers have different gold piece goals and the dungeon has different levels of difficulty and loot, the game remains roughly balanced even though adventurers have different abilities.

The mechanics are quite simple: upon entering a new room or area, the player draws a monster card appropriate for the dungeon level that lists the target numbers for each adventurer.  If successful, the player draws a treasure card appropriate for the dungeon level.  If not, something bad randomly happens to the adventurer (including death).  Old School!

If fact the mechanics are so simple that for many gamers from the early days of tabletop role-playing, Dungeon! was a gateway to RPGs: you can get your dungeon crawl on without worrying about story or campaign elements.  This simplicity is also a reason for Dungeon!'s recent renaissance, as the children of those same early gamers come of age, such as the daughter of my AD&D DM!

Dungeon! is also of historical interest since Dave Megarry, the primary designer, was a friend of Dave Arneson and a member of the Blackmoor campaign, from which grew the rule set that eventually became into Original Dungeons & Dragons.

So, gamers can see and experience a version of the earliest days of tabletop role-playing.  Thus, in a way, Dungeon! is the closest that many gamers will get to adventuring in Castle Blackmoor.