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Royal Game of Ur
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.. tags:: large, boardgame, game, twoplayer


The Royal Game of Ur is a 5,000-year-old game from Mesopotamia. Archeologists
rediscovered the game in the Royal Cemetery at Ur, in modern-day southern Iraq,
during excavations between 1922 and 1934. The rules were reconstructed from the
game board and a Babylonian clay tablet, and they’re similar to Parcheesi.
You’ll need both luck and skill to win.

Two players each begin with seven tokens in their home, and the first player to
move all seven to the goal is the winner. Players take turns throwing four
dice. These dice are four-pointed pyramid shapes called tetrahedrons. Each die
has two marked points, giving an even chance that the dice come up marked or
unmarked. Instead of dice, our game uses coins whose heads act as the marked
point. The player can move a token one space for each marked point that comes
up. This means they can move a single token between zero and four spaces,
though they’re most likely to roll two spaces.

The tokens travel along the path indicated in Figure 63-2. Only one token may
exist on a space at a time. If a token lands on an opponent’s token while in
the shared middle path, the opponent’s token is sent back home. If a token
lands on the middle flower square, it is safe from being landed on. If a token
lands on any of the other four flower tiles, the player gets to roll again. Our
game will represent the tokens with the letters X and O.

A video featuring YouTuber Tom Scott and British Museum curator Irving Finkel
discussing the Royal Game of Ur can be found at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZskjLq040I.


.. collapse:: royal_game_of_ur.py

   .. literalinclude:: royal_game_of_ur.py
      :language: python
      :linenos:


https://inventwithpython.com/bigbookpython/project63.html