Fox Games: part 1

Fox Games is a term to refer to classic games based on the idea of asymmetric forces. One side needs to encircle/block the adversary, while the other needs to escape or capture all enemy pieces.

Perhaps the oldest game in this family is Hnefatafl played in medieval Scandinavia, where one player with the central player tries to escape to the edge of the board.

The Ballinderry Halatafl-Board

Alea evangelii (Game of the Gospels) in a 11th century manuscript

A more well-known modern game is Fox and Geese where, instead of escaping the board, the Fox needs to capture all the Geese (by jumping over one piece at a time, checkers-like), while these can only try to block the Fox. The next board uses one fox against 13 geese (or hens, in this case),

Nouveau Jeu du Renard (The New Game of the Fox)
board from Collection de Jeux Anciens

Another variant is The Game of Assault (Le Jeu de Assaut), with more pieces, making the board more crowded: there are two defenders against 24 besiegers:

Collection de Jeux Anciens

This previous board, c.1860, is from the game The Siege of Sebastopol (Jeu de l'Assaut de Sébastopol). The theme is based in the War of the Crimea

 

Assault games had several war motives over the 19th century; check the excellent blog Collection de Jeux Anciens for more examples. 

 

The next board is older, c.1814, again with a (rather abstract) military theme,

Two other games with foxes (renards in French),

 

 

patricia m, Flickr

This one has a sports-based theme:

 

A simpler version of this family was mathematically analyzed at Winning Ways, the bible of Combinatorial Game Theory (chapter 20 is dedicated to Fox Games),

This more abstract setup is older than Winning Ways, since it appears in 1938, published by Spear Spiele, and named 4 Gegen 1 (1 against 4).

 

[addendum] Two years later, also in Germany, another game with a similar idea, this time on a larger 22x22 board, uses two asymmetrical armies in a naval context of U-boats and destroyers, 1940's Das U-Boot-Spiel:

The map is based on the actions of German U-boat Captain Gunther Prien, 
who sunk the British battleship ‘Royal Oak’ in Scapa Flow, Scotland, in 1939 

One player has four destroyers and one taker (that start at the marked squares at the top rows), and the U-boat either at A or B. 

The original rules:

The rules are not too specific of how the pieces should move (automated translation):

Four destroyers (each represented by four stones of the same color) take their positions on the dotted squares, and the steamship on the square marked with “T”. The submarine surfaces either at “A” or “B”, whichever the attacker chooses for their first move. The destroyers must bring the steamer safely into the harbor, traveling around the island. The submarine tries to stop them, by surfacing in front of or behind the steamer, or by passing alongside it.

It moves only on brown squares, usually one square at a time. Contrary to the steamer, which moves diagonally forward only, the submarine may also move backward.  To make the game more difficult, some squares can be marked as minefields. If the steamer enters one of these marked squares, it is considered destroyed. If the steamer reaches the harbor safely, it is rescued; if not, it is sunk. How the battle unfolds is left to the intelligence of the players.