Reenactments and Board Games

 When I was growing up my family and I participated in a lot of historical reenactments.  We portrayed French Fur Traders, Voyageurs, from the 17th and 18th century.  After I got married my wife and I went to a few reenactments and then life just got too busy.  Well, this past weekend I went to the Feast of the Hunter's Moon at Fort Ouiatenon in West Lafayette, IN for the first time in about 12 years and brought my sons.  We had a great time, despite a bit of drizzle on Saturday, and both boys are excited to do more reenactments in the future.  (Like we need another hobby in this family, but yay!)

So, you may be wondering what I'm doing posting about this on my board gaming blog...  Well, there were board games in the past, too!  As I was browsing many of the seller's tents that were around the encampment I stumbled upon MacGregor Games: Purveyors of historic board, dice and card games around the world.  So of course I had to stop in and visit!  They had tables out with a number of different historical board games to try out, displays with historical cards and dice, and more.  So of course my son and I had to try out a few games.

About to get whipped by a seven year old!

We played a version of Connect 4 that used wooden marbles in a box, and then tried out Tablut, a tafl game from Lappland or Sweden that is at least 300 years old, and possibly much older than that.  And of course, my 7 year old son beat me!

So I guess I need to practice a bit more!

MacGregor Games had a whole bunch of other historic games and accessories from all around the world.  They had several different tafl variants, chess, morris, and plenty of games I had never heard of.  Plus lots of custom dice, period coins, and more to add that extra 'wow' to even your modern board games.

There were several other vendors that had other game components, too.  There were lots of dice made out of wood, bone, and cubed musket balls, several different styles of historical playing cards, and plenty of other games, like checkers and draughts on leather boards, nice chess sets, and more.  But MacGregor Games was the only vendor that had a bunch of different games all set up so you could play!  On Sunday my older son tried to block me from entering as we walked by again.  I could have spent all day there!  Alas, there were canoe races to win =)

If you're interested in historic tabletop games, be sure to check out MacGregor Games online or at a historical reenactment near you!  You can find them at http://historicgames.com/ or on Facebook!

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