Many a rainy evening has been spent with friends and family sat around the kitchen table working out who killed Colonel Mustard, and board games are one of the timeless entertainments that have amused children and adults alike for generations. Board games are believed to have originated in Egypt in 3500 BC, where a game called Senet was played using a wooden board with shallow indentations and pebbles. By 220 AD Backgammon (as we know it) now had come into being. But it was in the 1930’s that many of the most well-known and well-loved board games of the modern era were invented. In recent years many classic board games have been released on the computer, but there is still something essentially charming about playing the original version.
Originally the board itself would have been made of wood and used coloured pebbles or bits of clay as pieces, most early games would be grid based and the aim of the game would be to move your pieces to another part of the board. Nowadays board games can involve highly complex strategies, war games in particular can take years to master.
Some board games take many days to complete, Monopoly in particular is known as a long-lasting game which can run on for days, whereas some games can be completed in a few minutes on a makeshift board, such as Tic-Tac-Toe.
Most games involve a component of luck, which helps to randomise the outcome and allows the game to be played multiple times by the same people. There is also an amount of skill involved, so one can become proficient in a particular game, which can result in tournaments, like chess championships, where the worlds best players face each other in a test of skill.
