By the mid 18th C many of the games that had been played throughout the medieval period and into the period of the Civil War had been forgotten or changed. The two great survivors Backgammon and Chess were still popular but had adopted different rules. Dice games and card playing were still ever present. We present here a range of games popular from the latter part of the 18th C through to the first twenty or so years of the 19th C. Some of these games continued to be popular while others were forgotten.
- The Conspirators – A board game where either two or four players attempt to take their men to safety
- Queen’s Guards - A board game where two players race to protect their queen
- Aslato - A development of the medieval board game Fox and Geese where attention is turned from the rural to the military.
- Dominoes - Plain wooden dominoes or bone dominoes are offered
- Polish or Continental Draughts - This is draughts played on a 10x10 board with twenty men aside. The concept is similar but the rules are different. This is the game played today in parts of mainland Europe
- Period playing cards (late 18thC) - see playing cards
This
is a French game of the very late 1700s probably played on
both sides of the channel during the Napoleonic Wars. The
game is played on the intersections of a 16 x 16 squared
board. As a two-player game there are twenty men on each
side that have to escape to the thirty-nine marked sanctuaries
on the board’s periphery. The player who manages to
get all of his men away to safety wins. A four-player version
of the game has ten men on each side.
The two players begin the game with a queen and six guards each arranged on the board’s outer hexagons. Players take alternate turns to move one of their guards or their queen. The winner is the first to place his queen on the central hexagon surrounded by her six guards. Price £24 |
Adam Vaugeois, a Parisian furniture maker made two marquetry
table tops displaying this game in the 1780’s which was
some one hundred years earlier than the game’s first
description in games literature. It is generally accepted though
that it belongs to the latter half of the 18th century and
is the first game to use a hexagonal board.
Aaslto
is a late development in the Fox and Geese family of games
and an example of the military emphasis of 18th C board games,
replacing earlier more rural themes. 
A double-six set of plain backed wooden dominoes similar to
those that would have been owned by soldiers in the late 1700’s
to early 1800’s. Simple block games would have been played,
though the range of known games from the early years after
their introduction into Britain is small.
Price £30 |
Played on a 10x10 board with 20 men aside five on each
of the first three rows. The right hand square is white.
The game first appears in the early 17th C in the Netherlands
and quickly becomes popular in much of Europe, though does
not compete well with English draughts in this country.
The name ‘Polish’ refers to the game being
exotic when it first appeared not referring to its actual
place of origin. The rules are somewhat different since
the game belongs to the family of draughts games that allows
the promoted man (King or Queen) to move any distance.
This is known as Long Draughts as opposed to Short Draughts
to which family English draughts belong