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A review by bohemiancoast
Board Games in 100 Moves by Ian Livingstone
4.0
Requested from the library about a lifetime ago and finally turned up this week, complete with home delivery! I could get used to this.
A necessarily brief overview of the entire history of board games; when I learnt that not-mentioned-on-the-cover James Wallis had written this book with Ian Livingstone I thought of the massive board game encyclopaedia my family owned. But that was a long time ago and books surveying the field are now thin on the ground. Besides, there is no longer any point providing long lists of rules for classic games: “look them up on the Internet” say the authors, persuasively.
I found this endlessly entertaining; there was something I’d like to argue with the authors about on almost every page. I also learnt all sorts of odd facts; did you know that Waddingtons inserted escape maps into games sent to British prisoners of war? Or that Buddha banned games with eight or ten rows? Or that Ludo is based on a good game?
However, the DK style necessarily leads to brevity in some areas. I would have found the omission of many great games like shogi, Stratego and Labyrinth easier to cope with if there hadn’t been long pages on the detail of games company mergers and specific now-forgotten games of the 70s. Nintendo’s origins as a playing card company are mentioned, but Hanafuda, the classic game they made cards for, is not.
The book also appears to have been designed to sell into both US and UK markets rather than being localised for each. And although this book purports to be about multiplayer board games, physical building and stacking games, dice games and card games are also included. Fair enough, though it seems like an odd choice given the brevity of treatment. However, I think five separate mentions of a series of solo game books might be a bit much, even if one of the authors wrote them.
The book starts with a list of 100 key examples of games taken over time, much like the history of the world in 100 objects. These choices are necessarily arbitrary; but I would have liked to see a more global selection here and without so much weighting towards very recent games that may not stand the test of time.
Obviously the authors were somewhat separated from the picture editors, and picture selection is dictated by what’s available and a budget. This is an extremely attractive book that is a pleasure to read and look at. I would have preferred to see more rigour in using pictures from early or definitive editions of games. A fifteenth century chase game is illustrated with a nineteenth century illustration, and Master Mind, the great game of cheap injection moulded plastics, is illustrated with a wooden set.
Anyway, I’m at risk of spending longer writing the review than I did reading the book. It’s splendid! Everyone should read books about board games! I want to go and play a load of these games now!
A necessarily brief overview of the entire history of board games; when I learnt that not-mentioned-on-the-cover James Wallis had written this book with Ian Livingstone I thought of the massive board game encyclopaedia my family owned. But that was a long time ago and books surveying the field are now thin on the ground. Besides, there is no longer any point providing long lists of rules for classic games: “look them up on the Internet” say the authors, persuasively.
I found this endlessly entertaining; there was something I’d like to argue with the authors about on almost every page. I also learnt all sorts of odd facts; did you know that Waddingtons inserted escape maps into games sent to British prisoners of war? Or that Buddha banned games with eight or ten rows? Or that Ludo is based on a good game?
However, the DK style necessarily leads to brevity in some areas. I would have found the omission of many great games like shogi, Stratego and Labyrinth easier to cope with if there hadn’t been long pages on the detail of games company mergers and specific now-forgotten games of the 70s. Nintendo’s origins as a playing card company are mentioned, but Hanafuda, the classic game they made cards for, is not.
The book also appears to have been designed to sell into both US and UK markets rather than being localised for each. And although this book purports to be about multiplayer board games, physical building and stacking games, dice games and card games are also included. Fair enough, though it seems like an odd choice given the brevity of treatment. However, I think five separate mentions of a series of solo game books might be a bit much, even if one of the authors wrote them.
The book starts with a list of 100 key examples of games taken over time, much like the history of the world in 100 objects. These choices are necessarily arbitrary; but I would have liked to see a more global selection here and without so much weighting towards very recent games that may not stand the test of time.
Obviously the authors were somewhat separated from the picture editors, and picture selection is dictated by what’s available and a budget. This is an extremely attractive book that is a pleasure to read and look at. I would have preferred to see more rigour in using pictures from early or definitive editions of games. A fifteenth century chase game is illustrated with a nineteenth century illustration, and Master Mind, the great game of cheap injection moulded plastics, is illustrated with a wooden set.
Anyway, I’m at risk of spending longer writing the review than I did reading the book. It’s splendid! Everyone should read books about board games! I want to go and play a load of these games now!