Developing a New Major

Image by nicolasnova via Flickrgames of alignment & configuration where goal is to get markers in a row, among hte oldest games that we know – earliest ones thousands of years old in many countries, many of these can be played with just a board drawn on the ground iwth a stick and using pebbles as markers (like tic tac toe, three in a row, five men’s morris, nin men’s morris, Go-moku is a 5 in a row game)

exchange games where you either try to capture their pieces or you try to get your pieces onto their squares, checkers = war game where you try to capture opponent’s pieces, pyramid, salta, halma, all played on board with squares and alternating colors like a checkerboard

war games based on war, 2 players usually, 4 types – battle games (date back to 1400 bc) where you try to capture or immobilize opposing pieces like with chess, territorial games where the idea is to occupy as much of the board as you can like japanese game i-go, blockade games where you try to immobilize (not capture) opposing pices, clearance games  where you try to make as many captures as you can of opposing pieces board type can limit moves – latticed boards let player move horizontally/vertically, diagonally or some combo Some pieces can mve one square and other pieces move multiple square

chess (kind of war game  invented in india more than 1300 years ago tho current game doesn’t resemble it at all and different forms developed and mutated in different countries – most analyzed board game ever, there are chess clubs, big prize money, celebrity status (in some countries), 1986 battle between Karpov and Kasparov (2 soviets) had big entourages including secretaries and trainers and seconds. rules have changed over time to speed it up and make it more popular tho stabilized since middle ages, changes to the importance of different pieces too

checkers around since about 1000 AD maybe but probably by early 13th century, might have started in france or spain US and britain ahve same rules. in europe its called draughts

hunt games developed later than war games, very opular in asia, usually 2 person games where 1 person has a lot of pieces/resources to be the hunter and the other player has just a few people/resources to be the prey, examples fox and geese

race games – oldest type of board games – senat and hound nad jackals are race games and so ais the royal game of Ur, teams of players race around a track and first person to complete the track for his team wins, you throw dice to know how to move, some regional race game specialties and others are more widely popular like backgammon ( romans had a game very similar to backgamman, game design may be influenced by the cycle of hte year with 12 points on each half of hte year

parchesi is a race game played on a cross shaped board

mancala games – 2 player games, earliest boards from about 3500 years ago in egypt

activity games – not played on boards but played out in the air – bowling games (found in lots of countries often layed outside on the grass or on special pits like bocce, kites, ball games  golf, hockey, lacrosse

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