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Board games to complement history


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Ancient Board Games (Finkel) -- we really enjoyed this one! but, alas, now out of print and out of reach $$-wise... However:
Games: Discover and Play 5 Famous Ancient Games (Finkle) is very likely a new edition of our old book, and it IS available new for under $12. 😁
- Also, Mancala dates back to 1000 B.C. in Africa / North Africa. (We've played that one over the years just for fun)
- And Go dates back to 2500-4000 years ago in China. (We've not played this one.)
- Known to date back as far as the 15th century is the Aztec board game Patolli. (Again, no personal experience)

More of a hands-on, but sometimes with a game included is the Treasure Chest series: Ancient China, Ancient Egypt, Ancient GreeceAncient Rome.
Similarly, not a game but fun hands-on: British Museum Incredible Writing Box (Chinese calligraphy; Mesopotamian cuneiform; Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs)

 

Edited by Lori D.
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Do your kids happen to like the Jumanji and Zathura books and movies? My kids make board games, sometimes of history topics, inspired by them. You could help that along ie "The board game sucked us back to Ancient Rome!" and make cards (my kids draw picture cards) of relevant events.

ETA: Oops, I misread your OP as kids ranging from 5-6 years old. Creative older kids might still like a project like that though.

Edited by Sarah0000
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Thank you for the suggestions.

I'm not only looking for strictly educational games. I'm wanting to have some light-hearted fun with my older kids before they leave home. They work hard at school. I'd like to have some afternoons where we just have fun together. Some games we already have, for example, are 7 Wonders and Imhotep.

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On 6/13/2019 at 12:55 PM, Meriwether said:

I'm not only looking for strictly educational games. I'm wanting to have some light-hearted fun with my older kids before they leave home. They work hard at school. I'd like to have some afternoons where we just have fun together. Some games we already have, for example, are 7 Wonders and Imhotep.

Some of our favorites:

 

Quarto

Iota

SET

Bananagrams

Stratego

A real mind stretcher is Equate. It's reminiscent of Scrabble and it has add on sets for junior and more advanced (Algebraic) players.

Rat-a-Tat Cat. It's a game that promotes logical thinking but is also a lot of fun.

The Secret Door (a co-operative game)

Save the Whales (a co-operative game)

Fluxx is accurately described as a game with constantly changing rules; our experience has been that people seem either to really like it or to dislike it! There are themed variants such as Zombie, Pirate, Monty Python, Eco, Family, and Martian Fluxx.

The Game of Things

Our favorite game to play with company (with all players aged ten and up) is Wise and Otherwise

 My teen enjoyed playing Loot with her friends.

Regards,

Kareni

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Zeus on the Loose    is one I can think of. 

There is a timeline game that I saw and almost got but ended up making our own in stead.   What I did is that I cut out timeline figures I found free online, wrote the dates for them on the back, cut strips of paper to represent   years each, and layed them out across our living room floor (we didn't go back all the way to the beginning of the book...).   I shuffled them and put them face up.    I put a few cards where they would go on the timeline for reference.  If it was your turn, without looking at the back of the card, you had to make a guess to where it went.   You got points for getting it between the correct two cards to right or left, even if you were off on where it went (game got harder as we got more cards).   It was fun.    We stopped when the timeline got too crowded.

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Just a note, because this is a pedantic peeve of mine: Mancala is a family of games, not a single game. There are lots of different rulesets. The one most often packaged with American boards is probably the simplest and least sophisticated, with a strong first-player advantage.

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5 minutes ago, Tanaqui said:

Just a note, because this is a pedantic peeve of mine: Mancala is a family of games, not a single game. There are lots of different rulesets. The one most often packaged with American boards is probably the simplest and least sophisticated, with a strong first-player advantage.

Which alternative do you suggest?

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I tend to mix and match rules. Probably legit, right? Like tossing purslane into tabbouleh, I'm sure the Greeks would do it to if they had purslane to use up.

https://www.mastersofgames.com/rules/mancala-rules.htm

So if I'm looking for something slightly more complex that doesn't need me to get a new board I might start with four seeds in every hole, skip both storehouses, Indian lapping (when you put your last stone into a pit with stones, pick them all up and keep going), collection of opposite stones but not yours when you land in an empty pit, if all pits on one side are empty at the start of a turn the ones on the other side go to that player. Or I might use the "don't skip your own storehouse, and if your last stone lands there take an extra turn" rule but otherwise keep that list up there. Or I might have it that landing NEXT TO an empty pit collects the opposite stones, but if you land next to a pit with stones you lap from that pit. Mixing up rules means you have lots of different options for play.

(I do the same thing when I play checkers!)

Edited by Tanaqui
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