Ludicrous and Truculent

This make is of a Roman game. I hear there here are some accounts of this game being played in Scandinavia in the middle ages and if ever I find them I will link them here. For now take that with a pinch of salt. What is certainly true is that there is a lot to be recognised in this game, the equal sided opposition of chess, the lack of heirarchy of the playing pieces as in draughts and the capturing method of the tafl games. The game is Ludus Latrunculorum,  or Latrunculi or Latrones, which means the Game of Brigands, or Bandits or Mercanaries or Soldiers.

Not a chess board.

When it came to making the game I already had the board! I covered this in a previous article (Article! He calls it an article now!) I picked up some Fymo cutters and some self drying clay, and cut out some simple shapes I think are called floreats out of the clay, eight of each to give a complete rank (Beg pardon? You heard.).

Floreat Cambrensis

 They didn't look quite right but I found a dot on each petal added something. 

Shall we play a game?

Latrunculi is a reconstructed game, in other words one which no-one genuinely knows how it was played. However we are not entirely clueless. Cleverer people than I, who call themselves ludologists, have studied long and hard using contemporary records, similar games,  two yoghurt pots and some sticky-backed plastic to produce what are to believed to be a fairly accurate approximation of the rules. Unfortunately ludologists tend to be academics and there is no money in amity, so there are several different versions of the rules, all of which are truly authentic and accurate; for a given value of authentic, accurate and true.

Ranks assembled

So from the literature there are several possible set ups. There are 7x8 boards, 8x8 with 8, 9, 13 and 16 pieces. As you can see I've gone here for an 8x8 board for convenience sake (it's handy to have a board that can be used for several games), and an eight-a-side set with an additional, smaller "Duke" on each side. There are also differences of opinions as regards some of the rules but there are a few things that all versions agree on is the movement of the pieces. All the pieces, regardless of rank, move in straight, orthogonal lines as far as the player wishes without passing over any other pieces (friend or foe); just like a rook in chess. But you do not take your opponent's pieces by simply moving into a square occupied by them (which would make for a game shorter than my attention sp- ooh, look! A squirrel!). Rather a single opponent's piece has to be surrounded on two sides (horizontal or vertical) to be taken .

Variants include;

• the Duke cannot be taken (so will be the last piece on the board) 
• the Duke can jump over a single opponent's piece as part of it's move
• the pieces can only move one square at a time (slooooooooooowww)
• at the begining of the the game the players take turns placing their pieces anywhere on the board (why not just play morris?)
• roll a dice each turn to determine how far a piece can move (WTF?)

The game ends when one side has been reduced to one piece (so cannot take), or a player cannot make a legitimate move or 30 moves have been made without a piece being taken.

In conclusion then this looks like a really nice little game, with a couple of variants should lift it a bit although others I could happily leave behind (you'll never guess which).

If you have been effected by anything in tonight's blog...

Latrunculi at Cyningstan with a downloadable pdf leaflet. The wonderfully knowledgable Damien Walker.
The Game Cabinet although this has not been updated in over ten years the site still seems to be up (for now). Scroll down to the bottom for Latrunculi.
Roman Board Games a nice little site that does what it says on the tin.

Mini make: Games Compendium

Mini-medieval came home from school the other day whilst I was making some items and wanted to make something too, Daddy. So I grabbed a spare strip of linen and some ordinary poster paint and let Drogo have a go. The result was a really nice trio of boards, really clear what they were and good brush control. Once the paint was dry it has proved incredibly durable to everything bar water.

Three little game boards, all in a row.

Madelinette

Knockings In and Out

Noughts and Crosses

Having had a go with brush and paint I then let him loose on the self drying clay. He chose to make simple cone pieces, or 

pointy ones

 so, with a little bit of guidance he made the following.

I was about to cut out the three boards, hem them and then make a seperate bag to carry them all in when once more the wife waded in with another excessively good idea (if this ganging up and outshining me continues words will need to be had). She simply suggested I made the strip into a bag like those over the shoulder record bags with the flap over the top.

You would think with all this sewing that my backstitch would improve. No such luck . So now junior has a little compendium of games he has made himself to keep him occupied on the recreation field whilst Mummy and Daddy are talking to the punters.

Link
Abakhan again. I'm trying to make up for the time I forgot them still.

A Loom with a View.

I made a loom today, oh boy.

This make was not for me and my ego. We have had a specific request for someone to do weaving at a forthcoming event and the wife has experience but no loom, any excuse for me at the moment to have a go at a make. So I found the plans for a simple lap loom here and took a few pointers from the other half (I've never used a loom or weaved so I bow to her experience). A few things could have been done better but I shall explain as we go on. I also have fewer photos this time as it was freezing out in the yard and I forgot I had to assemble the workbench as it was still in the packaging before I could begin.

Ingredients

• 2m length of wood
• 1m dowel
• 1m length of thinner wood
• Saw
• Workbench
• Drill
• Hammer
• Dremmel style device.
• Sandpaper

Note no glue or nails or permanent fixings, and all the wood came to less than £5 at B&Q.

The first bit was easy, or at least it was easy once I'd assembled the blasted workbench. I cut the wood into two 11" and two 16" lengths and the dowel into lengths long enough to go through the width of wood twice. Then I drilled holes at the corners to take the dowel to join them together. The drill bit I had was unfortunately much narrower than the doweling, whereas we want it to be slightly narrower, too much of a difference can, and did, cause some splitting of the wood, as you can see on the lower pieces here. 

Splitter!

Improving slowly

I remember watching my father chipping a dowel into a wedge or taper to make a rawl plug (I don't think he ever bought a plastic one in his life), so taking this lead I attempted to reduce the extent of the splitting by not only doing this but also by carving a notch in the dowel along it's length to the centre of the diameter deep in the hope that this would allow the dowel to compress a little and this was at least a partial success, however I didn't think to do it until the last joint. Yeah, yeah, I know.

So my final contribution to the exercise was making a shuttle which the wife wanted to have two slits (one on each side) on which to wind the weft (I like the sound of that, wind the weft, wind the weft).  Looking something like this one, but with my own limitations of skill and materials. So I cut a 12" length of the thinner wood, cut a channel at each end beginning with the drill and then the dremmel. Then I took some sandpaper to thin down the ends and make them smooth to feed through the warp on the frame.  Here I pass on to my good lady as she understood and did the next bit.

First I warped the frame (wove the vertical strands of wool onto the frame). Firstly I tied my wool to the top of the frame and pulled this to the the left hand corner. Each strand has to go over one end of the frame and under the other as shown in the lap loom plans linked above and below. When I had finished I tied the end of final strand to the frame. Depending on how wide a piece of fabric you want to make it takes some time but it is worth being careful to make sure each strand is secured the right way to avoid flaws in the finished cloth.
Before beginning the weft I wound the wool for this around the shuttle. Normal I would use a different colour, especially for demonstrating to other people. But as I didn't have one I used the same wool as for the warp. As for pulling the wool down, a school ruler or chopstick works well. If I was doing this for a long time I would look for something to angle it against as you might a large book when reading.

Me again, it should be noted that this frame was not glued or nailed in any way. This was not just to add authenticity to it but also so that the frame can be at least partially dismantled in order to remove the finished weaving without cutting the warp off at the ends. How many such dismantlings and remantlings this frame will survive (or indeed how this may be accomplished without a docker and his crowbar) remains to be seen. Still not a bad for a prototype.

Lessons learnt

• The shuttle is too thick, even at a quarter inch.
• The doweling holes need to be closer in size to the doweling to avoid the splitting issue. For the record the wife thinks that it should be possible to cross tie the corners securely enough for our purposes. 

Links
B&Q. Source of wood, sandpaper, workbench etc.
Hallnet. For the original plans.
Bikkel en Been. Suppliers of re-creation equipment. I'm given to understand their English is very good if you want to email them.
Abakhan. I keep forgetting to mention these guys. The place we get most of our linen, wool etc.
NUT Cymru. I'm not a member but they gave me a free ruler. Yes, I am a corporate whore.