This is the second in the series on old games people might be missing out on, games from well before Catan began the ‘modern board gaming’ era in 1995 (at least farther afield than Germany, where ‘eurogames’ had been around for quite some time), but which are definitely worth taking a look at.
All the King’s Men, published by Parker Brothers in 1970, is a Chess-inspired two-player game in which you strive to capture your opponent’s King using your Archers and Knights. Unlike Chess, a piece’s movement isn’t determined solely by the type of playing piece, but also depends on the square it’s sitting on.
The game was first known in English as Smess: The Ninny’s Chess, apart from in Britain for some reason, where it was called Take the Brain. Both these versions have rather frivolous Brain, Ninny and Numbskull playing pieces. However, someone in Parker Brothers clearly reckoned that was all a bit puerile, and what the game really needed was a sober makeover to attract adult players, so now we have medieval-style playing pieces and a wood-lookalike seven square by eight chunky card board. (There are also small changes to the board layout between the two versions.)
I was mildly amused to discover that the game can be found in the Victoria & Albert Museum, though apparently not currently on display.
How to Play
The pieces are set up as shown in the image above, the King in the centre of the back row, flanked by two Knights on either side, with a row of Archers in front. Turns alternate, moving a single piece at a time, until one player’s King is captured.
The rules for movement are that a piece can move only in one of the directions shown on the square it’s sitting on at the beginning of the turn, and cannot enter a space containing another piece of the same colour, nor can it jump over other pieces. Kings and Archers can move only a single space, while Knights can travel as far as desired in a straight line. (For what it’s worth, I’ve always thought Archers and Knights to be the wrong way round—a knight’s sword can only reach a nearby target, whereas an archer can shoot an arrow over some distance, so they should be the pieces who can move farther, but what do I know?) You can move a piece onto a square containing an opponent’s playing piece, at which point you capture that piece, taking it off the board; the move ends on that square.
Note that you are required to announce ‘Threat’ when you’ve completed a move such that the opposing King could be captured on your next turn (akin to ‘Check’ in Chess). Some folk deem it an instant forfeit of the game if you don’t make the announcement!
In Smess rules, you can ‘promote’ an Archer (yes, the pieces have different names in Smess, but I’m sticking with All the King’s Men terminology for simplicity) when it reaches the other side of the board, replacing it with a previously captured Knight.
Conclusion
Is it worth playing? I have to admit I’m not sure. Basing movement on board location is certainly interesting, and something that could lead to a lot of deep thinking—and therein lies the rub: it’s not a casual game that you’ll find particularly fulfilling on first, or even tenth play. You need to put in time and effort to develop your strategy to fully enjoy it. I’ve got as far as ‘aim for control of the centre and work outwards’ and that’s it—there are so many other games on my to-be-played list that I’m not sure I’ll want to put the time in to get better.
I’ve not come across other games that use this movement mechanism, though Trippples looks like it could be close. I wonder if this is something that could put in an appearance in new games, or if it’s been deemed insufficiently interesting to be resurrected.
For all its apparent simplicity, it is quite an attractive game, with nicely moulded playing pieces.
As far as I can tell, the last English version was published in 1979, so this game is one you can only find in flea markets and eBay (same thing, I guess), or have it handed down across the generations, which is where this copy came from. Having said that, there’s not much to the game, and plenty of pictures of the board can be found on the web, so a homebrew version wouldn’t be very difficult to create.
Should you want to experiment with it without going to even that much effort, https://www.chessvariants.com/other.dir/smess.html contains an interactive Smess board on.
Should you want to experiment with it without going to even that much effort, https://www.chessvariants.com/other.dir/smess.html contains an interactive Smess board on which you can move the pieces.
About the author
When not playing boardgames or blogging about them, L.N. Hunter keeps himself occupied writing fiction: a comic fantasy novel, The Feather and the Lamp, sits alongside close to 100 short stories in various magazines and anthologies, and on websites and podcasts (see https://linktr.ee/L.N.Hunter for a full list). L.N. occasionally masquerades as a software developer or can be found unwinding in a disorganised home in Carlisle, UK, along with two cats and a soulmate.
