Hnefetafl pieces

Hnefatafl--those familiar with this old Scandanavian board game will realize I'm missing pieces in this image of one of our boards.  The 9 versus 16 ratio belongs to the 9 x 9 Tablut gameboard, rather than Hnefatafl's 11 x 11 board.  Truth is, I ran out of resin.  We're still deciding which game piece style to go with on our tafl boards. 

 As much as I like our game pieces, I'm fascinated with an image of authentic Hnefetafl pieces found on Wikipedia, from the Swedish Museum of National Antiquities:

We've played with spherical gamepieces before, and I'm leaning toward that style.  We'll try to turn out a few in the next week or so.

Seega boards now available on EBay!

Finally got around to listing some of our boardgames on EBay.  Right now we're going with Seega boards to see how things go.  Two styles are listed: one with the raised fence frame, and one with the flush frame.  Very excited about this big step.  Eventually we may set up our own online storefront.

Back in the Game

Time to dust off the blog--took quite a sabbatical, but we're back.

I just created a new page with a draft of the rules of Seega (you'll see the link along the top of the page with the other page links).  There are several websites out there that detail this very enjoyable game, but we felt that since we plan to continue making (and soon, selling) Seega boards, we should provide the rules off this page.

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!

Casting Senet Game Pieces

Over the last several months we've come up with four or five different designs for the game pieces that go with our Senet boards.  We decided it made sense to pick two of our favorite designs and just start making sets of them.  These pics show our workspace as we cast some of the pieces (usually a pretty messy process when you start dealing with the dyes), and a few sets of one of the game piece pairs we decided to go with. This pair is one of the first that we designed and cast.  I think it's one of our favorites because they're so simple, and are very true to the original ancient Egyptian pieces.

Ancient Mexican Board Game Uncovered

I don't typically re-post or reblog other material, but the Archaeology News Network recently posted about a recently uncovered Mayan game board found etched into a stone floor.  This game, called Patolli, was probably played at the site more than 1,000 years ago.    Fascinating stuff.  Here's the link:
http://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2012/02/mexicans-find-millennium-old-game-board.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheArchaeologyNewsNetwork+%28The+Archaeology+News+Network%29

Senet throwing sticks, tafl frames

There are a lot of parts to even simple games, and sometimes the simple pieces get overlooked in favor of building the main game board.  So I spent a lot of time in the woodshop today, cutting frames for tafl boards and cutting throwing sticks for all the senet boxes we've put together over the last several months.  This is the second batch of throwing sticks, after an initial sanding.  The first batch is drying after a light stain was applied.  A couple of 9x9 tablut boards are to the right.