|
Evidence for Ring
1 pieces of evidence found.
Id DLP.Evidence.2401
Type Ethnography
Location 18°20'12.08"S, 130°38'12.87"E
Date 1953-01-01 - 1954-12-31
Rules A circle with eight radii. Three pieces per player. Each player's pieces must begin on adjacent points in the outer ring. Players alternate turns moving a piece to an empty point along the lines of the board. The player who makes a line of three through the center of the circle wins.
Content Account from Mervyn Meggitt: "In 1953-54, while engaged in fieldwork among Walbiri Aborigines at Hooker Creek, in the western desert of the Northern Territory of Australia, I observed that younger men occasionally played two sedentary games which require diagrams drawn in the sand. Only one, however, is a true " boardgame " in that counters are used with defined powers of movement...The other game, “ ring ” or three men’s morris, is not such a riotous affair, but is quietly played by two opponents. Each places three counters side by side on radial points marked on the circumference of the circular “ board ” (see figure 2). If A, B, C and a, b, c are the respective counters of opponents X and Y, they can, eg., be arranged either as AI, B2, C3, a4, b5, c6, or as AI, B2, Cg, a5, b6, c7. Each player moves one counter in turn only to an unoccupied, adjacent point, including the centre. The object is to place one’s own counters in a straight line through the centre. There is no capturing of men. Details of two sample games will indicate the pattern and inherent limitations of the game. Opponent Y may move counter b from 5 to 0. X moves A from I to 8. Then it is c
from 6 to 7 ; B from 2 to I ; c from 7 to 6. At this point, C could move indefinitely between
3 and 2, and c between 6 and 7. Then c to 5 ; A to 6. b must vacate 0, because a and c cannot move one space to an unoccupied point. So b to 7 ; B to o ; b to 8 ; and C to 2. X wins because A, B, C are on the diameter 64-2. Alternatively, X starts with A from I to 8 ; then Y moves c from 6 to 7 ; b from 5 to 6 ; B to 2 ; a from 4 to 5 ; C from 3 to 4. Y must now move to o ; so a to o. Then B to 3 ; a to I ; I? to 0, and X wins. No real advantage lies with the player who starts first. The basis of the strategy seems to be to force the opponent to be first to occupy the central point, then to force him from the centre. Older men at Hooker Creek maintain that both games have always been played by Walbiri, and they have no knowledge of their being introduced from outside the tribe." Meggitt 1958: 191-192.
Confidence 100
Ages Adolescent, Adult
Spaces Outside, Public
Genders Male
Source Meggitt, M. 1958. Two Australian Aboriginal Games and a Problem of Diffusion. Mankind 5(5): 191-194.
|
