Hello everyone!
Today we're going to talk about the game of Kubb!
Take aim at the enemy pins, in two teams and for ages 8 and up, for 20 to 30 minutes, to knock down the king and win!
Kubb, an outdoor game of Viking origin, is a combination of bowling, horseshoe throwing, and chess. The word "Kubb" means "wooden block" in the dialect of Gotland (a Swedish island in the Baltic Sea).
The rules can vary from country to country and region to region. It seems that Kubb was played in different parts of Sweden at the beginning of the 20th century, although the exact rules are unknown today.
Revitalized in the 1990s, Kubb quickly enjoyed a resurgence in popularity, and since 1995 the annual World Championship has been held on the island of Gotland.
The game of Kubb consists of 23 pieces:
- Ten Kubbs, wooden parallelepipeds (approximately 15cm L x 5.5cm W).
- One king (30cm L x 8cm W).
- Six wooden sticks, cylinders (approximately 30cm L x 3cm W).
- Six stakes, or markers, indicating the corners of the court.
Kubb is played on a rectangular court approximately 4m wide by 8m long (smaller if playing with children). The game is played on grass or sand.
The stakes are placed in the ground at the four corners of the court and on the center line.
The narrow ends are called the "baselines." The king is placed in the center, halfway between the baselines. An imaginary line drawn by the king and parallel to both baselines divides the court into two halves. Kubbs are placed along each baseline, five on each side.
The goal is to knock over the opponent's wooden blocks (kubbs) using sticks. The winner is the first, and only finally, to knock over the king.
There are two phases to each team's turn:
1. Team A throws the six sticks from their baseline onto their opponent's kubbs. The sticks must rotate lengthwise.
2. The knocked-over kubbs are then thrown by hand by Team B onto Team A's half of the court from their baseline. These newly thrown kubbs are called field kubbs.
These kubbs are returned to the spot where they fell. Play then changes hands, and Team B throws the sticks at Team A's kubbs, but all the field kubbs must first be knocked down before they can shoot the baseline kubbs.
If Team B doesn't knock down all the field kubbs, the field kubb closest to the king now represents Team A's shooting line. All fallen kubbs are thrown from the original baseline, as are attempts to shoot the king.
Play continues in this way until one team knocks down all the field and baseline kubbs. If that team still has sticks to throw, they may make one attempt at shooting the king. If a thrower successfully knocks down the king, they win the game.
However, if at any time the king is accidentally knocked down—even by a newly thrown kubb—the team immediately loses the game.
Have a nice day and good game ;)
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