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| Oxford Games
& Past Times |
Past Times is a chain of shops selling repro items and books and stuff from periods in English history; Celtic, Roman, Tudor, Victorian, 30's, Wartime etc. A lot of the stuff is not cheap, and some is a bit bogus, but a lot is made just for them and is very nice. If you see a store, pop in, it is great to browse round and you are sure to buy something if you have any taste. The whole shop is very stylish and when items are reduced in priced to clear, they put a label on saying "Extra Value"! |
| Oxford Games knocks out high quality
products on historical/literary themes, many just for Past Times. The nice
thing is, many go on half-price sale, so keep popping in and you get some
original games pretty cheap. Unfortunately, a lot of the game ideas are
quite simple or simply remodelling of familiar ideas. But the components
are good and the design and graphics are top notch, so you won't waste
your money. You will not get a game of the standard of German makers, but
they are still pretty good. The boxes are generally not over-sized either,
usually big enough for the game and not flashy, empty packaging.
If you write to Oxford Games, they'll mail you a pack of postcards showing their games. The mail order includes postage, but the prices are not cheaper than the shop prices though. Oxford Games, Lea Lane, Thame Road, Long Crendon, Aylesbury, Bucks., HP18 9RN, United KingdomSo here are some I've bought. We haven't played them all yet, so I will amend my verdict as and when we've played them; |
| Playing Shakespeare © 1990 Finch & Scott. This game was produced in collaboration with ...Royal Insurance! They were sponsors to the Royal Shakespeare Company and the rules include a letter from the insurance co. chairman and a plug for the company that arranged the sponsorship deal! Beat that. The box includes a quarterboard, 3 decks of cards with quotes from Shakespeare's 37 plays, Comedies, Histories and Tragedies. You have lots of coloured pawns and a sand timer a a six-die marked with 1s and 2s. The board has a wheel with a segement and spotlight for each play. To win, you must get a pawn in the spotlight of a comedy, tragedy and history. Occupying several spotlights delays your opponents. The game is a team game, with one player in each team reading from the relevant card. The card has an easy quote (1) and a hard quote (2). Your team-mates must guess the missing word from the quote, or you can mime it (using the timer). Get it right and you put a pawn in the spotlight. Other teams can compete for the same play. The rules are brief and the book includes a summary of all 37 plays! A literary party game. Verdict - I'll let you know when I've found several friends who have read Shakespeare. Blimey. |
| Royal Comette - A Courtly Game Of Risk & Speculation. A quarterboard, a deck of cards and a bag of little plastic sticks to gamble with. The rules fit one small page and are in also in French, German and Japanese. They say this a game played in Court in the 17th Century. It involves playing out cards in a certain order and picking up tokens if you match cards placed on sections on the board. The cards are the standard 52 deck, so you could play this with your own deck and tokens. Verdict - Confusing. |
| The Game Of Maze (Now being sold as The Game Of Garden Maze) A quarterboard of a maze in a formal garden, four pairs of coloured cones as pieces and two six-dice. The rules are © 1990 to Finch & Scott and are only a few paragraphs, the rest being a history of mazes and a list of mazes open to the public (dozens!). You start with your 2 pieces in different places in the maze and to win, they must meet! There are garden implements to delay your passage and also you can banish opponents to the far corners if you land on them. Verdict - I'll let you know when we've played it! |
| Hazard A game based on Chaucer's tales of the pilgrim's journey to Canterbury cathedral. A quarterboard showing a wheel with the charcters in each of 23 segments; The Knighte, The Miller, The Seconde Nonne and so on. The design is drawn in medieval fashion, nicely done. A bag of various tokens, 2 six-dice and 2 decks of special cards and a book of rules make up the game. The rules cover only 2 pages, the rest being a digest of the character's tales. Hazard was a game played by pilgrim's apparently, rolling dice and gambling. In this game, you must move your pawn from Southwark to Canterbury, discarding 4 character cards as you land on the segment. To move, you must gamble tokens on the dice rolls, and your move depends on the result. Either you get to move backwards or forwards, or everyone else does! The winning or losing number depends on a deck of Hazard cards. The whole game looks very nice. Verdict - We found it a little confusing, working out what to do next. They bidding didn't seem to work either. Underdeveloped. |
| The Hieroglyphs Game © 1989 to The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford University. An odd rectangular box contains a n odd board with 2 vertical folds (like a leaflet), a scroll of rules tied bt a ribbon, a set of sheets showing translations of hieroglphics and a bag of little tokens, a six-die and a little blue scarab token. The sheets have numbered squares with a word in hieroglyphs. The same box has different words on different sheets. The starting player chooses a box number and all the palyers use the word in that box on their sheet. The playing board has all the hieroglyphs and players roll the die and move the scarb around. If it stops on one the pictures you need, you put a marker on your sheet. If it lands there again though, you must remove the token! Complete a word to win the game. A sort of Egyptian bingo! Verdict - I'll let you know when we've played it! |
| Tabula - The Roman Game A small box holds a quarterboard, 30 glass tokens (15 green, 15 blue), 2 six-dice. The game is a fore-runner of backgammon, you simply bear on, run forward in the same direction, bear off. The dice are marked with Roman numerals, which is nice but a little awkward to read correctly. The little rule sheet includes a history of the game. Verdict - Nice and simple. The strategy is different from backgammon, since you have more opportunity to block and hit your opponent. No doubt you can find a version in a book and play it yourself. |
| Runestone A small box contains a small jigsaw-board, various tokens and 5 dice with coloured runes instaed of numbers. Based on Anglo-Saxon runes, you first roll the 5 dice to select your 5 runes, mark them with your tokens. Your opponent does the same. Next you roll one die, move your token and try to collect your 5 pieces to win. If you land on an opponent's marker, you can move it. Verdict - I'll let you know when we've played it! |
| The Celtic Game © 1997 Oxford Games. Based on a 9th Century Welsh game called Howel Dha, this game is a version of Hneftafl, now commonly called the Viking game, in which a central king tries to escape to the edge of the board. The box is small with a simple jigsaw board and plastic dics as pawns for each army. Verdict Yet to play it. |
| Ludus Romanus © 1996 Oxford Games. A small box holds a jigsaw board with a mosaic design and plastic pieces like little tiles. You place your pieces down then move them to capture opponent's pieces and dux (leader). Verdict Yet to play it. |
| The Dickens Game © 1997 Past Times. This appears to be solely made by Past Times, the game being invented by Dicken's great-great-granddaughter Mary Danby. Past Times have a bit to learn, they don't put the number of players or ages on the box at all! A nice quarter board has you moving around without dice to collect quotations to match with characters from 4 of Dicken's novels. Verdict Yet to play it. |
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