Games

Most SCA events (other than meetings and practices) include games. These may be historical, modern interpretations of historical competitions, variations of modern games with a Renaissance/Medieval flavor, or modern games with historical elements. Some are not strictly games, but game-like activities.

The Inn of the Crimson Spade provides a place for gaming at events, and regularly hosts championship tournaments in chess and backgammon at baronial and shire anniversaries. Some of these field games were played at the Dreiburgen Summer Games

Games include

Board Games

• Pente Grammai, or Five Lines [1], Two player game dated to 600 BCE; Athenians imagined Ajax and Achilles playing the game during the siege of Troy.
• Chess (an ancient board game typically played using modern rules); can be played with dice.
• Hnefatafl - [2] ancient Nordic and Celtic strategy board games played on a checkered or latticed gameboard with two armies of uneven numbers. A later, simplified English game is | Fox & Geese [3] and Fox and Hounds [[4].
• Alea Evangelii (Game of the Gospels) [5] member of the tafl family of games. Known from an eleventh-century Irish manuscript. The game is played on the intersections of an 18 by 18 squares game board.
• Hare Game [6] is a two person game of unequal sides usually played on a diamond-shaped board. The hare attempts to reach the other end of the board as three hounds attempt to surround and immobilize the hare.
• Bear Hunt [7], a Roman game similar to the Hare Game and is usually played on a round board with three hunters trying to surround and immobilize the bear.
• Latrones (Brigands) [8] a two-player strategy board game played throughout the Roman Empire. Modernly played on an 8x8 checkerboard.
• Fox and Hounds [9] is played on an 8x8 checkers board. Four similar colored checkers as hounds and a single checker in other color as a fox.
• Backgammon [10] (an ancient board game typically played using modern rules) based upon the Roman Tabula
• Tables or Tabula, (Byzantine Greek: τάβλι), [11] is derived from an earlier Roman game called Ludus duodecim scriptorum. Similar to but pre-dating backgammon, played on a board with two rows of 12 vertical markings called "points," using dice.
• Merrills [12] (aka Nine Men's Morris, a modern recreation of Merrills), a strategy board game for two players dating at least to the Roman Empire.
• Alquerque [13] (also known as Qirkat from Arabic: القرقات‎), an ancestor of Draughts or Checkers [14]
• Mancala [15] African two-player turn-based played with small stones, beans, or seeds and rows of holes in a board or other playing surface. Versions of the game date back to the 7th century.
• Hounds and jackals, also known as 58 Holes, [16] an ancient Egyptian game that is known from several examples of gaming boards and gaming pieces found in excavations.
• Li'b el Merafib (Hyena Chase) [17], a simple race game played on a spiral board, played by the Baggara Arabs of the Sudan. It is similar to the ancient Egyptian game of Mehen [18].
• Patolli [19] Two player pre-Columbian Mesoamerican gambling game played by moving game pieces to the end of an X-shaped board composed of 52 cells. A player must get all six of their game markers from their starting queue to the ending cell on the game board before the other player.

Dice Games

• Farkle [20] is a dice game with historical roots, typically played using modern rule.
• Knucklebones [21] Knucklebones are the vertebrae (thebackbone) of medium-sized animals like sheep or goats, and the games you play with them are like jacks.
• Hazard [22] is an early English game played with two dice; it was mentioned in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in the 14th century.
• Passe-dix [23] two opponents using three dice. Sometimes called "Passage."
• Raffle - using three dice, players compete in turns to see who can get three of the same number or to throw pairs of the same number to win.
• Mäxchen, also called Max or Mia [24] a simple German dice game played by three or more players, with a strong emphasis on bluffing.
• Ship, Captain, and Crew / Ship of Fools [25], Be the player with the highest score after a single round
• Liar's dice [26], a game for two or more players requiring the ability to deceive and to detect an opponent's deception.
• Shut the Box [27], a game for one or more players, commonly played in a group of two to four for stakes. Unconfirmed histories of the game suggest a variety of origins, including 12th century Normandy.
• Threes / Gwen Wins Object of game: To obtain as low a score as possible, zero being perfect.

Card Games

• Playing cards have ancient roots, and modern "Poker deck" cards are graphically similar to historical decks. Tarot decks were also used for gaming in the Medieval period. *See Tarots
• Scopa, is a two sided game and can be played by two players, or four players in two teams
• Laugh and Lie Down For three to five players using a French-suited 52 card deck.
• Piquet [28] an early 16th-century plain-trick card game for two players
• Karnöffel [29] Europe's oldest documented card game
• Gleek [30] is an English card game for three persons. It is played with a 44-card pack
• Primero [31] dates to 1526
• Tarots A trick-taking game for up to six players (though 4 is best)

Pub Games

• Glückhaus [32] High German for house of fortune and also known as "Lucky Pig" is a gambling game
• Shut the box [33] is a game of dice for one or more players, commonly played in a group of two to four.
• Toad in the hole [34], similar to Pitch-Penny [35] tossing coins.
• Shoffe-grote [36] played by sliding coins on a small, rectangular, smooth board usually made of wood or stone.

Field Games

• Bocce [37] (an ancient, bowling-style game related to British bowls [38] and French pétanque [39], with a common ancestry from ancient games played in the Roman Empire. There is an indoor version known as Skittles [40].
• Hoodman's Blind is a version of Blind man's buff [41] a multi-person game in which one person was to be chosen to be "it" and has his/her hood reversed so he/she cannot see. This person is then spun around several times. After which the rest of the group, called tormenters (or dogs if imitating bear baiting) will yell, slap and tag the blindfolded person. If the blindfolded person can tag one of the tormenters, then that person becomes it and the game continues.
• Throwing the Hood or Haxey Hood [42]- commemorates a Norman lady, wife of John De Mowbray. was riding through Craise Lound when the wind blew the hood from her head. Twelve men, whom she called Boggoners, chased it with much confusion and competition. This amused her so much that she gave them twelve acres of land. The game developed such that the hood was of leather, stuffed with straw. Villages would compete to see who could get the hood to the nearest alehouse. The villagers who did so, won the game, and, I suspect, a round of drinks.
• Kubb [43] - contestants knock over wooden blocks (kubbar) by throwing wooden batons (kastpinnar), the origin is supposedly Viking.
• Quoits [44] - Ring Toss. This game may be related to the game of Horseshoe pitching.
• Tug of War [45] pits two individuals or teams against each other on opposite ends of a rope in a test of strength.
• Toga Hönk - (Viking) tugging on a loop, Two players seated on the ground, facing each other pulling a loop of rope (hank). The first one to pull the rope to their chest wins (uses the same muscles as rowing a boat)
• Skindlegen - (Danish Tug-of-war) Four players start in a square holding a loop of leather (or rope). Outside each side of the square are batons. The first person to retrieve their baton without letting go of the leather loop wins.
• Ax Throw [46] WATL Rules: Target will have four rings and a bullseye in the center. Each ring is worth progressively more points up to six at the bullseye.
• Mumblety-peg [47] A knife throw game, throwing a knife end over end as deeply as possible into the ground,. The loser of the game has to take it out with his teeth.
• Glima [48], Viking Wrestling with various rules. SCA: Two opponents begin in a standing position with a hand on the opponent's shoulder and waist. Goal is to push the opponent out of a ring or draw them down to one knee.
• Løpet - A running game on a field (court) divided like a ladder; From the starting line, run to the first goal and tag it, return to the starting line and repeat with the next goals. Whosoever finishes first wins.
• Caber Toss - (Scottish) The thrower must lift the caber (a large wooden beam) by one end, run a short distance before tossing it, so that the beam goes through one complete revolution. Sometimes two ropes are used to imitate a river, and the caber is tossed to create a bridge and therefore has to land crossing both ropes.
• Shinty (Scottish Gaelic: camanachd, iomain), related to Irish Hurling; a form of field hockey
• Knattleikr, a Viking Field Game described in the Gísla saga Súrssonar, Knattleikr was played every autumn at Miðfjarðarvatn
• Dreiburgen Lawn Darts

Combat Games

• SCA Home Game (a rugby-like, armored combat melee game) originating in Heatherwyne inspired by the art of Greg and Tim Hildebrandt
• Blood of Heroes (a bushkashi-like, rapier melee game)
• Hnútukast or Viking Bone Throwing, A thrown weapon game using padded batons, played like dodgeball[49]. Can be between two players or played as two teams.

Other (not-so-period) Games

• Cloved Lemon, a flirting game
• Baubling
• Jenga [50]
• Cathedral [51] (a modern board game with a Medieval theme)