Beggar's Chess

We just love stumbling across great board games that we haven't played before.  This weekend we visited the Georgia Renaissance Festival in Fairburn, just a little outside Atlanta.  Well worth the trip--if you're within driving distance, then go!  A big thanks to Mr. Cahoon for introducing us to Beggar's Chess.  It's a great game, quick to learn for kids and adults, but challenging on many levels.  The objective is to get four pieces in a row that share some attribute--whether that attribute is shape, color, size, or surface. For example, the board in the picture below is a winning board because there are four pieces with a hole in the top.  Very easy to lose track of the patterns if you're not careful.  Outstanding game!

Painting Senet boxes using Egg Tempera

We decided when we first started creating Senet board games that we'd use egg tempera for any painted surfaces. Egg tempera, also simply called tempera, is a painting medium used since the time of the pharoahs, if not even earlier. It's simply a mix of pigments with a binder, in this case egg yolk. Egg tempera was the primary method of painting until oil-based paints gained popularity in the 1500s.  In the images below, we're mixing pigment with the binder, and have applied a base coat.

Senet box under drawings

These are the penciled underdrawings for two Senet boxes, which will be painted using egg tempera.  The boxes themselves are some of our earlier designs, and have larger overall dimensions.

Game Board Squares

Spent some time today cutting squares out of oak plywood.  These are 1 1/4 inch squares that we'll use for our tafl games (mainly Tablut and Ard Ri for now).  We use the same size for our Seega games, but we typically use pine for those.  During assembly, we need to do a light sanding to make sure everything fits correctly, and then the pieces are glued onto a base.

Blue Senet Boxes

Two new Senet boxes.  No dark boarders for the game squares this time, and we used a brayer to apply the paint--really like the fading effect.  The markings and the sun disk on the scarab are copper leaf.

Casting new Tafl Game Pieces

So we decided we wanted a choice of game pieces for our Tafl boards.  For the new set, we're going simple, just a sphere on a base, inspired by some of the simple stone pieces of authentic germanic boards.  It's all one piece, cast in the same mold, but we'll play around with simple color variations.  These four will be used to create a 4-piece master mold.  This picture shows the new ones in front of a few of our larger Tafl pieces.

Blank Tablut Gameboard

It's been over a week since I've cut anything, so I cut and shaped the frame to this 11 x 11 Tablut board that I made about 2 weeks ago.  Here they are, unsanded, unstained, and unglued.   We're also working on a new design for the tafl game pieces.  I found some cool glass globe style tafl game pieces online that I think I'll base a new set on.

Carved Senet and Tjau Game Box Lids

These are some examples of our first Senet and Tjau game boards.  The squares, symbols, and edging are all hand carved.  These take more time and care to create, but are very much worth the effort.

Casualties of the Creative Process

When we started building game boxes about a year ago, specifically Senet and Tjau boxes, we went through a lot of designs and experiments to see what we liked.  This unseemly pile is the group of unfinished, some almost finished, boxes and designs.  Most of them we'll be able to complete in the coming days.  Some of them we'll probably quietly put away and use as utility boxes.

Finished Tablut board

Well, mostly finished. The 9x9 gameboard is still drying (applied a coat of danish oil).  Played around with a few different router settings before settling on a border frame that we liked. Once it's dried and glued, we'll probably add a high gloss or semi gloss finish to it.

And Back to Tafl games...

This is dry assembled tafl board...a 9x9 grid used in the tafl variant called "Tablut".  Before we're done, we'll apply danish oil to the board, and add a border frame to tie the set together.  Tablut is the best documented tafl game--the Swedish botonist Carl Linnaeus observed Sami tribesmen in Lapland playing the game in 1732 and recorded what he could (he didn't speak the language) in his journal.
(oh yeah, and notice the Orbiter Arts wine glass--ordered a set of these a few months back, just threw it in the pic to show it off)

Game Pieces mold finished

Our the game piece molds that we poured three days ago for our Senet boards are finished.  Didn't waste any time pouring a test set.  We'll experiment with some color combinations over the next several days.

Here's the first new set on an ebony and copper leaf Senet board.

Senet game boxes in various stages

We've more or less perfected the steps to produce our Senet boards.  They're not cookie cutter boxes, however.  Even using the jigs I've set up in my woodshop, each one is slightly different, and the lids are cut to fit each box specifically.  Staining, oiling, and decorating the boxes and board lids themselves also offer an incredible range of artistic licence, while staying true to the spirit of the game.  Here's a pic of boxes in various stages of completion.

Red Senet Board

This is another finished set.  I was initially skeptical that the red stain would translate well for our senet boxes, but once it was oiled and sealed, I think the results were impressive.  We're still putting together the final molds for the game pieces themselves; when we have those, we'll be able to vary the colors of the pieces.

Casting Senet Game Pieces

Finally got around to casting the game pieces for the Senet and Tjau games.  We hand-carved and baked the original pieces out of modeling clay, then created a single mold for each piece. From these molds, we created five game pieces of each of style (2 different styles for each player, a simple cone and spool, and a more ornate set modeled after a bundle of reeds and a papyrus flower).  Below are pictures of the sets we've made so far--really at this point we're just playing with colors.  The bottom picture shows a five-piece mold for our cone-shaped game markers.

20 Square (Tjau) board and pieces

This picture shows one of our 20-Square (Tjau) boards, with prototype game pieces and a set of knucklebones for dice.  The pieces were sculpted in clay and then cast in resin; we'll probably create molds to easily create complete sets for each game board.

Tjau boards were well known during the same time as Senet, and could be often found on the opposite side of Senet boards.  This particular set has a Senet board on the flip side of the lid.