Today I Learned about Boardgames

Boardgames
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We don’t have a thing for this but I think it might be fun to collect weird boardgame facts…

So my first weird fact is this one.

Today I learned (while scanning SPIEL Hype Lists) that the point scoring around the board, that many boardgames have, derives from Heimlich & Co (a fave during my childhood) and is called Kramerleiste: Kramerleiste – Wikipedia

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Wolfgang Warsch is a real-life, full-time brain surgeon. That’s his job. Brain surgery. And while he was taking a little break from being a brain surgeon (did I mention he’s a surgeon? Not sure it’s come up in conversation) he designed six of the greatest games ever made by human hands.

He’s also shockingly handsome.

If I ever meet him: stab, rotate, extract. Too much talent in one place, it’s totally unfair.

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I own this game, didn’t know I had a piece of history

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To be fair, I’ve dabbled in brain surgery and it’s not rocket science.

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If I ever have to have brain surgery, I definitely want the surgeon to know that it’s not rocket science :melting_face:

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Given that he’s a brain surgeon, can we be sure that he hasn’t operated on six board game designers and during surgery stolen their ideas directly out of their brains?

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Seeing as how @yashima has only just learned about board games (all evidence to the contrary), I’m worried that brain surgery has occurred!

(I think this subject line is going to make me smile every time I read it :).

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I do try… accidentally🤪 and now you made it so I can’t fix it

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A local board game designer (Daryl Andrews of Sagrada fame) came into the store once, grabbed a copy of The Fuzzies, and, wide-eyed and smiling manically, said to me “I figured it out Marc! I know how Wolfgang keeps designing such incredible games!”

“Really!? How does he do it?”

“He has a time machine!”

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Someone made a geeklist. I am not repeating anything from there.

And in that list someone linked a list of Easter Eggs in games:

I had no idea Obi Wan Kenobi was in Agricola.

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I didn‘t know that pre-BGG someone already made Internet-Top-100 Lists…
Found a link to one posted on BGG today from 2003

Most interesting tidbit is that this guy required people to send in their votes with a rating average of 5.5 or they wouldn‘t be eligible.

edit: apparently those are still (all) hosted here: http://scv.bu.edu/~aarondf/Top100/edition250.txt
I bet qwertymartin is a repository of facts for this thread.

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Okay, board game “facts” that I’m pretty sure I remember correctly:

  1. There are an average of 100 new board games released (in English) per week. That’s approximately 4-6 thousand new games a year.(*)
  2. Snakes and Ladders was originally a Buddhist meditation aid, not a “game.” It wasn’t designed to be winnable… or even finishable. You were supposed to move around the board, meditating on the virtues (“ladders”) and vices (“snakes”) that caused you to move up and down, but never finish because life is, at its core, an illusion and futile.(**)
  3. The oldest board game known to humanity is Mancala, with sets dating 10,000+ years old. Number 2 is Go, Number 3 is the Royal Game of Ur, and Number 4 is Chess. Nine Man’s Morris is apparently based on an ancient Roman game and rounds out the Top 5 (**)
  4. Pass the Pigs was originally played with knuckle bones (kinda-dice-ish-shaped), and again, surprisingly ancient of a game. Roman soldiers had sets.(**)

(*) A lecture I watched Quinns give at a school way, way back when. I think.
(**) A PhD graduate who presented on SU&SD a long while back. I think.

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I have a book about Roman board games. Even built the Roman version of Nine Man’s Morris with my students in a workshop at a Roman museum. I like the modern version more.

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