Wednesday, October 5, 2016

Autumn Checkers - Canadian Style!

This fun game was invented a long time ago, yet it is still enjoyed by millions today!

This new board and game piece set is specially designed to be a part of the Autumn Garden Collection, begun last week here at PPS.

Please observe and respect all copyrights and red letter Guidelines here, especially for this particular copyrighted design of mine. Thank you.

"The most popular forms are English draughts, also called American checkers, played on an 8×8 checkerboard; Russian draughts, also played on an 8×8; and international draughts, played on a 10×10 board. There are many other variants played on an 8×8, and Canadian checkers is played on a 12×12 board." 
This is from Wikipedia's article about the game of "Draughts" or "Checkers" as we call it here in the States.

"Checkers dates back to the 12th century, in France.[2][1] There are two main types of checkers played: the Anglo-American version (which originally came from France) and the Polish or continental version. The Anglo-American version is played on an 8x8 checkerboard with 12 pieces. The continental version (so-called because it is played on the continent of Europe) is played on a 10x10 board with 20 pieces each. There are also a number of variations in various countries."
The writer of that article skipped the Canadian version, didn't they?
:)

For my own game board, I've chosen to use the same size that our Canadian friends like to play on, which is 12 squares by 12 squares in size. 18" x 18" is what my big board will be, once completed. This will allow for each square to be slightly larger than one inch on all four sides.

Some online sources left me puzzling about the varying size discrepancies for both boards and squares. For example, one source said that each space on the board should be 1.5" by 1.5" square. But this made no sense in terms of math for some board sizes. I was quite frankly puzzled at first! After all, 12 squares border all sides of the Checkerboards used in Canadian style draughts (pronounced "drafts.") or checkers. 12 squares x 1.5" = 18".

Other sources later claimed that every square should be exactly one inch square. Some even claimed that the board must be 8" x 8" (such as the article above), yet that would make the board smaller than an average sheet of printer paper, wouldn't it?

Anyway, as soon as I saw all of the varying sizes, etc., I decided to decide for myself instead of following all of that varying advice. In fact, I went with the Canadian style (probably because of an old movie I was watching at about the same time which took place in Canada).

Below, the first thing to be shown is a Display model of the completed board with a pretend game in its first steps. Directly following that Display will be a list of the 4 downloads, each one labeled as per usual.

For complete instructions on how to put together the 18" x 18" board, I'd like to suggest the Instructions and Hints at one of my Paper Doll Room posts HERE. The techniques for both projects should be very much the same. 

This game does have pieces or tokens. I'd like to suggest the use of small wooden discs, such as craft and hobby stores often carry for these. The size should be no smaller than 1.25" or one inch plus one quarter across. That is the exact size of each of the circular pieces I've created for the set. Another option might be for chip board circles of the same size, 1.25". I imagine there are various tabletop die cutters that might be useful for such a project, as would a 1.25" circle crafting punch. Cork or felt padding  on the underside of every piece will help to ensure the life of the board.

Each free printable download comes with 6 game pieces, 3 pieces per design, so that once all 4 sections have been printed, so will all 12 game tokens have been.

As most home printers have ink which runs when wet, some wide enough clear packing tape could be very useful for putting together your tokens (or checkers). Glue stick is an old favorite of mine for paper projects, however, perhaps double sided tape (the strong kind often used by crafters today) would work best, as it is applied without dampening anything and is sturdy. 

Remember that you can always save the 4 downloads as files and reprint them if you need to.

Below the Downloads and the Guidelines, I will offer a video of the game's basics for beginning players.

Happy Autumn Playtime!


PPSGames™: Autumn Checkers (or Draughts)
Canadian Style!

Display model:


Download Upper Left HERE
Download Upper Right HERE
Download Lower Right HERE
Download Lower Left HERE


You are free to:
play with this game
and/or the tokens.
You are not free to:
ever sell any part of this game set
for any reason.
Thank you
for helping me to 
keep free things free!

Checkers basics:


The next one shows a little more skill.


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