Royal Game of Ur

I recently saw a video of a curator at the British Museum explaining the Royal Game of Ur, a 5,000 year old game from Mesopotamia.

Click to play video

The game is similar to backgammon - though much older. It uses playing pieces, a type of dice, and players remove opponents pieces by landing on them following a roll of the dice.

RULES:
The Game
1. Each player has seven play pieces; one set is white with five black dots and the other is black with five white dots. The game board is composed of two rectangular sets of squares, one containing three rows of four squares each and the other containing three rows of two squares each, joined together by a common “narrow bridge” of two squares.

2. Moves are determined by rolling a set of four four-sided, tetrahedron-shaped dice. Two of the four corners of each die are marked and the other two are not. The number of marked ends facing upwards after a roll of the dice indicates how many spaces a player may move during that turn.

3. The object of the game is for a player to move all seven of their pieces along the course of the board, then off the board before their opponent. When a piece is on one of the player's own squares, it is safe from capture, but when it is on one of the eight squares in the middle of the board (the shared lane), the opponent's pieces may capture by landing on the same space. This sends the piece back off the board so that it must be restarted from the beginning. This means there are six “safe” squares and eight “combat” squares.

4. When a player rolls a number using the dice, they may choose to move any of their pieces on the board or add a new piece to the board if they still have pieces that have not entered the game. There can never be more than one piece on a single square at any given time.  If a player cannot make a valid move then play passes to the opponent.

5. A player is not required to capture a piece every time they have the opportunity. Players are required to move a piece whenever possible, even if it results in an unfavorable outcome.

6. If a piece lands on the space with the rosette, it is safe from capture. When a piece lands on any of the three rosettes, the player gets an extra roll.

7. In order to move a piece off the board, a player must roll exactly the number of spaces remaining until the end of the course plus one. If the player rolls a number any higher than this number, they may not remove the piece from the board.