Board Games in 100 Moves

Board Games in 100 Moves by Ian Livingstone and James Wallis

This book is a history of board games filled with beautiful photographs of the games. The history of board games goes back millenia. Archaeologists have have found cuneiform instructions for an ancient game in Ur. There are boards for ancient Egyptian games (but no rules). Games that are still being played mostly originated after the time of Christ. Chess went through a few variations in India and Persia before going ot Europe and settling on the modern version today. Go is an old game from China. The 1800s were when board games really started to take off. Some were simple "luck" games. (There was a popular goose game that served as the basis for others.) There are many stories of games that seemed destined for the dustbin only to take off. (Scrabble and Twister are two examples.) Monopoly was based on a previous anti-capitalist game. (Her patent was bought out before publishing Monopoly.)

There are many cases of innovating concepts spawning derivatives. There was an "educational" game boom. Moving forward games (like goose game) were popular. Dungeons and Dragons and Magic: The Gathering both launched a whole slew of similar games. A number of "war" games became popular. In post-war Germany, however, cooperative games were more popular. Party games have also come in many varieties.  Today, many new games are created via kickstarters. Some games are purely based on luck and can be played in a few minutes, while others take multiple hours-long sessions to complete. Despite the popular of electronic entertainment, board games continue to be increasing in popularity.