Saturday, November 5, 2011

Fox and Geese and Alquerque - Travel Edition

These were my first attempts at making some game boards. They were done in a bit of a hurry in the couple of days before my first re-creation event.
I had a stroke of luck a few days before the event in a charity shop called Crest. Whilst wandering around I discovered a bin of furniture remnants including a leather seat cushion cover. The outside surface of this was tanned to within an inch of it's life, however the inside was still a very nice dark chamois like leather. Lacking paper and card medieval game boards were often on scraps of cloth or leather for potability's sake. So this was perfect for my first make.
I picked apart every stitch in it which left me with a good few pieces of usable leather, two of which I cut into circles with a radius of about 8cm. This left me with a good size board for a travelling minstrel and gambler like myself. Then it just came down to the board markings.
Fox and Geese
This is one of the more remote members of the Tafl family of board games, and was familiar throughout Northern Europe through this period. The board on which it is played is probably more familiar to people these days as the Solitaire game where marbles or pegs are used to hop over one another until you only have one left (this is more of a puzzle than a game and a much later invention).
The above picture is the basic board for Fox and Geese, you play on the intersections or points. A good geometric design which is easy to reproduce with a ruler and pencil. All I needed was a method with which to mark the board on the leather. I had always pictured doing this with a touch of pyrography, however the leather I had from the cushion cover was a rather dark colour beggars not being choosers. So I wracked my brain for a while to try to balance what would be available to a medieval person with what I had available to me. Then I had a flash of inspiration, I not only had my own arts and craft box, but there is also a small boy in the house with his supplies. So I ended up with a white wax crayon, which marked out the board clearly although it's permanence may not be the best or indeed the most permanent.
The pieces are modelled from air drying clay as a handy little shortcut. The geese are represented by thirteen crude cones and the fox is a simple fluted cylinder which, if I'd had more time, I would have painted with poster paint.
The game is played with the geese attempting to trap the fox so he cannot move and the fox needs to eat enough geese to prevent this. The fox jumps over the geese draughts style to eat them. For more info on how to play see the links below.
Alquerque
This is a precursor to draughts played on a 5x5 board however as with fox and geese above it is played on the points of the grid. I used exactly the same method for marking the leather as above. For this game however I needed two sets of twelve pieces, but only had one colour of clay. Thankfully my graduation gift from my mother is a seal ring that, along with my wedding ring, is the only thing I always wear. This seemed a fantastic opportunity to finally put it to its intended purpose. The picture I'm afraid do not do it adequate justice, for twelve pieces have a small Welsh dragon standing proud on them.
The other refinement to this board was to take a hole punch and puncture a series of holes around the outside of the leather disk (yes, I know I did one too many. Measure twice etc.). Through these I threaded a cord, courteousy of the piping on the seat cover. This means that all sides of the board can be drawn together around the pieces to form a self-contained travel pouch. Alquerque is played by moving one space or jumping over an opponent's piece as in draughts following the lines on the board. Multiple jumps are allowed.
So there we have two very successful boards to start off with. They were certainly very popular with the visiting horde of children, but some lessons learnt;
  • These soft boards are great for travelling and transporting around but they need to be laid on a board or table to be played. Layed on the ground the pieces are liable to knock around everywhere.
Links

Crest Co-operative. The shop where I picked up some arts supplies and leather.
Traditional Games
. Really useful site.
Fox and Geese. Great PDF
Alquerque. Same

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