5 Tabletop Games Set In The Middle Ages And Antiquity
Fans of Crusader Kings 3 and other games set in the Middle Ages or Ancient Times might be interested in these real-life board games from the time.
Even though computer games are fairly new, people have been playing different kinds of board games for thousands of years. In fact, archeologists often find pieces of games from ancient times and the Middle Ages when they dig in cities or places where armies were stationed. So far, sixteen game boards have been found just at the Roman fort of Vindolanda in Britain.
Written records also allude to board games with famous poets making references to their rules. But King Alfonso X of Castile’s Libro de los juegos, or Book of Games, which describes a huge number of different games, has to be the best source of all, at least for the Middle Ages. These ancient and medieval board games are often the ancestors of their modern versions, and some of them are even included as extra mini-games in the best historical board games.
Chess
The past of chess is long and complicated, and the rules of the game haven’t always been the same everywhere. Even though the Lewis Chessmen are the most famous picture of medieval chess, Alfonso X’s Book of Games tells us more about the game during that time.
Chess is called the most noble game in the book, and it is said to take more skill to learn than the other games in the book. Even though there are different kinds of chess, the most common game had the same number of pieces as modern chess and followed similar rules. The biggest change is that there is no queen. Instead, a fers, or in the English version, a prime minister, has much less power. Most of the time, bishops were also called elephants. Dice were sometimes used to speed up the game of chess.
Great Chess
People have been trying to make crazy versions of chess for a long time. Great Chess is one of the most interesting ways to play chess in Alfonso X’s Book of Games. As the name suggests, this is a bigger version of the game. Instead of an 88 grid, the board is 1212 squares, and each person is in charge of 24 pieces.
More surprising, though, are the pieces used in Great Chess, which are made to look like exotic animals like alligators, giraffes, rhinoceroses, and lions. Each piece has its own special move. Anyone who knows about bestiary art from the Middle Ages knows that the pictures might not have been very correct.
Ludus Latrunculorum – The Game Of Brigands
The Roman board game Ludus Latrunculorum, which roughly means “The Game of Brigands,” was very famous all over the Roman Empire. Even though historians still don’t know the exact rules, and it’s possible that they weren’t standardized at the time, most people agree that it’s a military tactics game similar to draughts. For example, it was a two-player game played on a grid, and a player’s pieces could take an opponent’s piece by putting it between two of their own pieces.
Ludus Latrunculorum was mentioned by famous authors like Ovid, and sixteen boards have been found at the archeological site of Vindolanda. These boards were found near the officer’s quarters, the regular barracks, and outside the fort.These games are for people who like Roman history.
Dice Games
The fact that so many dice have been found shows that dice games were very popular in both ancient times and the Middle Ages. Ajax and Achilles playing dice on a famous Greek amphora is one of the most striking pictures of a game of dice. People who could afford it would have used bone, wood, stone, or even silver to make dice. Alfonso X’s Book of Games talks about dice with seven and eight sides, which were sometimes used together in the same game. Most dice would have had six sides.
There would have been many kinds of dice games, and they would have been linked to gaming. However, dice would also have been used in chess and tables. Breakout Game, which is generally thought to be one of the best medieval video games of all time, has a minigame where you roll the dice.
Astrological Tables For Seven Players
Many of the games on this list are for just two people, but Libro de los Juegos describes a game called Astrological Tables that is for seven people and is all about the number seven. Tables was a popular game in the Middle Ages. It probably came from a Roman game, but people today know it as the ancestor of backgammon.
This form of Tables is played by seven people on a board with seven sides. The board is divided into seven sections, each of which has seven spaces. Not surprisingly, each person has seven pieces, and dice with seven sides are used. The goal of the game is to get all of the pieces and be the only one left standing. This has to do with astronomy because at the time, there were only seven planets known, including the moon and the sun. Each section of the board was colored to match a planet.
