hist-games: "Board Games Studies"

[Jane & Mark Waks]

Trevor James wrote:
> The purpose of this missive is to 'drum up' new subscribers to the journal. 
Seconded -- every serious student of period games should be subscribing
to this. I just got #3 in the mail, and it made my day. (It has a really
neat article on dicing versions of Merels, a concept that is unknown in
the SCA as far as I know.)

As another "whet your appetite", I discovered this in the last issue:

> ISSUE 2 (2000)
>         ARTICLES
>         La Metromachie ou la bataille geometrique - Michel Boutin & Pierre Parlebas (F)

It's remarkably cool -- a large-scale complex Elizabethan board game
that I'd never even *heard* of before. (It's not even mentioned in
Murray, the first time I can recall ever seeing that happen.) I went and
got the original Latin source, and I've transcribed it online:

	http://www.waks.org/justin/metromachy.txt

Master Steffan ap Cennydd and I are in the process of very slowly
translating it into English (my Latin is weak, but this is worth the
practice); I'll probably do an independent reconstruction once that's
done, for comparison with the one described in this article.

The article even put me onto *another* unknown Elizabethan game, also in
Latin by William Fulke, called Oympanomaxia; I'll transcribe that anon,
once I'm done with Metromachy (or need a break from the translating)...

The point of all this being: Board Games Studies is where much of the
hottest work is happening in this field, which is a lot more active than
many of us dilletantes may realize, and has oodles of interesting and
useful information. Well worth the subscription, even at about $50 an
issue...

				-- Justin

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