The royal game of Ur

I am really sorry about how long it has been since I last posted, but for the game we're going to be reviewing that wait probably went past in a blink of an eye, seeing as it is over 4600 years old! You might think snakes and ladders has been around for quite a long time, but compared to this game it is barely a young whippersnapper (literally, it has been alive for 3800 years more)! So before I start on the normal review, I feel like we need a history lesson(this is the point where you all shout 'Yay, I love history lessons!' and start jumping up and down excitably).

The only reason we know about this game is because of a man called Sir Charles Leonard Woolley who was famed for his excavations in some tombs in Ur (in Mesopotamia) which uncovered two game boards, no awards for guessing why the game found in them are called the royal game of Ur. Although
the true rules will never be fully uncovered (what I'm going to be reviewing is an educated guess of what it played like all those years ago, many other interpretations exist) a tablet date to 177-176 BC was found which explains it partially allowing approximations to be played today.

Now, on with the review. The aim of the royal game of Ur is to get all of your seven markers of the end of the board while at the same time trying to get extra movement by landing on special squares
and kicking your opponents back to the start by landing on their pieces. You do this by on you turn rolling four, four sided dice which have two whit dots on two sides and moving one of your counters the amount of white dots you got on all of your dice. If you land on a star, then you get another roll but you don't necessarily have to move the same counter. If you land on your opponents piece you send it back to the start.

To get your piece to the end, you start at on of the sides of the board, first moving up until you hit the top of the board then going down the central isle until you can breathe a sigh of relief as you round the final corner meaning your opponent can no longer catch you as you each have separate ending spots. If any of this confuses you, I suggest watching this video of this age-old game being played, as it includes an explanation of the rules.

In terms of the actually quality of the game I was pleasantly surprised, their is a lot more strategy than you would think; when to dash down that central row while avoid being caught, what piece to move with your throw and how to get one of those precious extra rolls by landing on the stars.

Although there is strategy, this is still a game based on luck but that is not necessarily a bad thing, because no matter how well you played, there is always a chance of your plans coming crashing down with a roll of a dice, which makes for some serious tension. However instead of this kind of defeat absolutely ruining the game for you and scuppering your chances of winning, due to the small size of the board it doesn't take long to get back into the race. As well as this, to make the game even more exciting, the royal game of Ur has a built in balancing mechanic as the more pieces you get of the board, the smaller amount flexibility you have with choosing which piece to move giving your opponent an advantage. Also, the more pieces the losing player has, the more they can put more onto the board at one time, making it a lot harder to navigate all the way to the end without being kicked of.

If I had one minor complaint that would be that you could roll zero white spots on your turn therefore meaning you would not being able to move anything, which is really boring and makes it feel like you wasted your turn.

For me this really feels like a next step from snakes and ladders, while still being simple and letting people who have only played a couple of times having a decent chance to win but do remember if you are looking for something more in-depth and strategic then this game might disappoint you. Overall I would give this a 7/10 and recommend it to anyone who is playing with children or is slightly brain-dead.

P.S. The main reason I wrote this review was that I was lucky enough to actually see a copy of this game at the British Museum which was pretty incredible and if you are in the area I highly recommend giving it a visit.