The best board game ever...

In early October of last year I had the opportunity to make a photo of a local Seattle game designer and entrepreneur who was beginning to market a new board game called Canoe. That gentelman was Bruce Alsip, who has been designing games for other people for over twenty years and has had some great successes. He is now living his dream of creating a world class strategy game exclusively through his own company.

The first game he invented was the beautiful and thought provoking Wykersham. In all of his designs he has tried to incorporate natural woods and hand crafted game pieces that are, as often as possible, made here in the USA. Canoe is no exception. He has a tendancy to keep his designs classic, and to add a timelessness that will make the games interesting to play and pleasing to look at for years to come. The other way Bruce's games set themselves apart is in the interesting look and feel of the boards and their pieces. All of his games are real conversation pieces. Just having them on your table invites all kinds of comment from those around. I play Canoe in public up to four days a week and have taken to having Bruce's marketing materials available to people because I get so many inquirys.

Canoe's name comes from a relative of Bruce's who used to have a company that built fantastically beautiful handmade wooden canoes. The Willits Brothers manufactured nearly a thousand canoes from their small shop in Day Island Tacoma over nearly 60 years. There is even a gambit in the game itself that is called a "Willits" in honor of these great craftsmen.

The best part though is, of course, the gameplay. Canoe is a "race game" similar to Backgammon with some of the strategy of Chess and the point scoring of Dominoes. There are also elements of checkers in it too. The play is fast-paced and allows the player to be wonderfully vindictive toward his or her opponent. This ruthless quality is one that I cherish. Having the ability to really thrash on your opponent is something that makes a good game great. Canoe can be very cutthroat.

The game is played between two players using cubes that look very much like the betting cubes from Backgammon. They were actually modified bacgammon cubes in the prototype. The cubes are moved around the board by rolling dice, but the dice also have another role. Depending on whether an even or an odd die is being played, the moving cube will be rotated to either the next number higher or the next number lower in the sequence. In this way the cubes have an extra transformation during the turn. Thus, the true dimention of the game comes alive. It is due to this complexity that this game has remained among the best I have ever played. That is saying a lot for me. It also says volumes that I play this game almost daily (up to 12 complete games a week in a typical workweek) and still haven't gotten to the level of proficiency that I would say I have become a "master."

I would recommend this game to anyone who has ever been an enthusiast of either Backgammon, Chess, or Dominoes.

A thorough explanation of the game and it's history are available at the Canoe website here. The website is also the only place to purchase the game. (Unless you live in the greater Seatttle area in which case you can get one from Bruce himself)

Take a look at the very least, it's fantastic!