Utah-based designer, maker, and all-around clever person Joe Larson thumbs his nose at scarcity by reviving Troke, an out-of-print strategy game from the 50’s. Without Larson’s work, this game would have faded into obscurity.
The original’s wooden pieces were constrained by the manufacturing capabilities of the day, but Larson’s upgrade takes advantage of 3d printing’s free complexity to give us textured towers and wavy moats. Either way, don’t step on them barefoot. Yowza.
This re-imagining of the 1956 game, Troke, changes the simple cylinders of the original into detailed models and adds a 3D printed board with spaces for the pieces. A classic, out-of-print game is back! 3D printing is once again thumbing it’s nose at scarcity.
From BGG:
“The sub-title for Troke is ‘Castle Checkers’.
“Abstract strategy game where players move three different kinds of pieces (tower, wall, and moat) across a board diagonally forward, straight ahead or sideways, but never backwards. …. [I]t is a race to see who can get all their pieces to [the opposite] goal line. A feature of the game is that if you merge with one or two different pieces you take one or two extra moves. You are allowed to merge (capture) with opponent’s pieces and thus move them away from their goal and towards your own. Making moves becomes complicated as the game progresses because capturing pieces requires that additional moves be made. If these extra moves can not be made, then the original capture move can not be made.”
This will be a printed on demand. It requires 4 color changes so give some time for printing this. Then again it’s been out of print for decades so a few weeks shouldn’t be a big deal.
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