Antique Board Games

[hamsterking]

While browsing for some other info I was led to the collection of the Victoria
and Albert Museum, and in particular that part of their collection that relates
to games.

http://collections.vam.ac.uk search on "games" and restrict yourself to items with
images. (Sorry for lack of hyperlinks but the V&A site suffers from hyper-extended URLs)

It's facinating stuff - some (A New Game of Russia vs Turkey, 1853) are
obviously wargames and some (The Pirates and traders of the West Indies 1847)
will sound very familar to fans of those glossy continental board games.

Some games (A New, Moral and Entertaining Game of the Reward of Merit, 1801) obviously come from a different time.
I wonder how you'd go getting modern kids settled down for a rousing bash at this little classic.
Actually I wonder how you would have gone with the more robust kind of Victorian child for that matter.

The "More Information" tab on the main page relating to each item often contains the
box top summary of the rules so you can get an idea as to how they were played.

Hours of time to be wasted here.

Dave Turner