Board Games at Cyningstan

A Time for Play

Here at Cyningstan we want to spread our enthusiasm for the traditional board games that have entertained people not just for centuries, but for millennia. These are games that you can make yourself, usually using simple pieces, and without restrictions of copyright or patent. Many of them are easy to learn, but difficult to master, providing a life time of amusement for people through the ages. It is no wonder that they have lasted so long!

Our activities are threefold. We provide information about many games, in the form of pages to read on this site and leaflets to print. We provide simple computer versions to play in your web browser. And for those who want to take their play away from the computer, we make and sell wooden games for you to play.

The catalogue of games we provide information about spans thousands of years. The oldest games can be traced back to about about 3000 B.C. The newest date from around A.D. 1900. We do not cover newer games than that because, as well as copyright issues that affect many of them, the sheer number of games published in the 20th century does not allow us to make anything like a complete survey. For similar reasons, we do not aim to provide information about proprietary games before 1900.

So now you know what we are about, feel free to browse the site, to shop, to play, to learn, and if you have any questions for us, please get in touch!

Featured game: Ming Mang

A Tibetan game of strategy, Ming Mang was popular with monks before the Chinese invasion of 1959. The game was taken with the monks to their various places of refuge, becoming more well known in other countries. It resembles reversi, in that pieces when captured change colours and are taken over by the side who captured them. It differs from reversi, though, in that pieces are moved around the board. (read more...)

Keeping in Touch

You can email us at the address boardgames@cyningstan.org.uk. Or to keep updated about what we're doing, you can follow us using one of the social media sites below.

All the Games

News/Blog

New Site for Hnefatafl

15 Jun: Our old sister site, formerly "Tafl: an Obsession", has been renamed and redeveloped. The site deals exclusively with the Norse game of Hnefatafl. Originally designed in 2004, the site was looking a bit old and tired, but was still being well-used. Especially popular is the embedded applet that allows visitors to play against the computer using mix-and-match rules. (read more...)

A New Game for Sale: Yote

10 Jun: We've added a new game to our catalogue this month: Yote. This game comes from West Africa. Its rules are as easy to learn as draughts, but it has some interesting features that make it very dramatic indeed! Pieces start off the board, and are placed, one at a time, during a player's turn as an alternative to movement. A single piece is captured by jumping over it, but when you do, you can choose a second victim from anywhere on the board! (read more...)

Iron-Age Gaming Pieces Discovered

26 Apr: Some unusual gaming pieces have been discovered at an excavation by archaeologists from Leicester University, it was announced earlier this week. The dig at an iron-age site at Burrough Hill, near Melton Mowbray, has uncovered a large number of metal objects, alongside the gaming pieces. (read more...)

Agon now playable on iOS

27 Jan: Jan Petter Nielsen kindly got in touch to let us know about his new game for iOS, "Challenge!" This is agon for iOS, and has been published by SoftCraft AB. The game was released earlier this month, and runs on an iPhone, an iPad or an iPod touch. (read more...)

Go Symposium 2012 Papers Now On-line

22 Nov: The International Go Symposium 2012 was held in August in Black Mountain, North Carolina. It has taken some time to prepare, but the papers from that symposium are now on-line and available for anyone to read. (read more...)

Charles I's Board Game For Sale

21 Nov: London auctioneer Sotheby's has announced the sale of a very desirable piece of board gaming history. A game compendium by the renowned Georg Schreiber of Koenigsberg will go under the hammer on 5th December. (read more...)