A Thud Game Set Of My Very Own???

29.99

the site doesn;t sell the basic thud set. Amazon does and hence the prices are at their discression. it seems the current price of the set that the site links to has risen to 29.99 from the 25 that it was back when the node was first written. clearly it has not been updated. If you find a cheaper pair on amazon, good for you, seize the day and the thud set

Now I'm even more confused...there's lots of sets...

Is the new gaming set (£30) exactly the same as the old set (mostly unavailable but occasionally eBay or End-of-Line in stores)?

Why can't there ever be a definitive answer to these things...

Advices appreciated!

Fishtwig

as far as I kow it's like chess sets. All sets have 32 dwarves 8 trolls and a mobile thudstone and a board. maybe the colours and styles vary. Like the 100 pound really posh set the site advertises

Ok a brief history of Thud and the various sets IIRC see below if i don't please don't sue

Possibly in early double aught one a wandering games designer called Trevor who just happened to be in Wincanton with his wife on holiday spotted the Cunning Artificers shop and them both being readers of the great pTerry OBE went in and chatted with the proprietor Bernard the Cunning Artificer and as result Trevor started designing a game based on the idea of Koom Valley which had been mentioned in several of the books over the years, Bernard went to pTerry to ask permission if he could make and sell the sets and pTerry wanting any Discworld merchandise to be of a quality nature said to Bernard yes but all the pieces have to have an individual look to which Bernard agreed. When Trevor came back saying to make the game work he needed 41 pieces Bernard said a rude word but true to his agreement the first sets were made with each piece having an individual look. There is a rumour that the look of 7A of the dwarfs were based on Discworld fans who happened to pass thru the shop during the development process and that like the terracotta army to get 32 different ones the 7A were cloned 4 times and had different beards, moustaches and weapons added this became :-

The Old Bone set, which was used to first demonstrate the game to those who went to Wincanton Hogswatch 2001 and a sufficient number of us found it an interesting game play but this beautiful looking work of art of a set had a few disadvantages as a set for playing the game with :-

1) It was quite expensive tho there was obviously a market for the collectors amongst those gathered and i think the price of Granny's dropped sharply over the Xmas period
2) As they were cast from a kind of plaster and were very detailed bits of axes pikes etc could get knocked of during play.
3) There were some players and i wont name them, who had favourite pieces as each was individual and they distorted game play to defend their favourite piece.

Well after its initial reception Bernard decided to have a Thud theme to his March/April 2002 weekend and the first Thud tournament was played but this was with the first gaming sets which the Trolls and Dwarfs were all the same respectively and made out of Aluminium oxide embedded in some kind of resin these were much more robust and if you wished to buy one a lot cheaper than the Old Bone looking ones, also available at this event were the same sets finished to look like Polished Tusk and a limited edition hand painted version limited to 200 sets. The boards used in the tournament were hand made plywood with the squares burnt on by hand and then varnished. IIRC if you bought the gaming set you could either buy one of the wooden boards mentioned above or a leather board of printed ink squares on goat skin.

Pictures of the pieces in the polished tusk set

A picture of the painted set

A picture of the orig gaming set

Picture of the left hand side of the room where the first Thud Tournament was held back rooms of the Dolphin in Wincanton

Picture of the right hand side of the room where the first Thud Tournament was held back rooms of the Dolphin in Wincanton

Picture of original gaming pieces(light Grey) and 1st boxed set gaming pieces(Dark Grey) on goat skin board and 1st boxed set cardboard board

Close up of Original gaming pieces(light Grey) and 1st boxed set gaming pieces(Dark Grey)

The prizes for the first tournament were made of casts of 3 of the pieces from the first bone look set but these were given a plinth and bronzed up.

1st prize pic

2nd prize pic

3rd prize pic

To get the game even more affordable its production was licensed out to produce a boxed set and the gaming piece moulds were used but the way they were produced made them slightly smaller than the gaming sets produced by Bernard and the board that comes with the boxed set is folded cardboard.

At the 2002 Discworld convention the first international thud tournement was held with the first prize being a silver plated gaming set.

Picture of the silver plated set

When pTerry was writing the book Thud a few years later Trevor was asked to see if he could come up with a version of Thud that could be played quicker as people like me were sometimes taking over 3 hours for half a game of Traditional Thud and the people who were marketing the boxed set relaunching it due to the book being released with the same title coming out thought that in certain markets a game that could be played quicker was needed. So Trevor came up with Koom Valley Thud where the Thudstone could be either a sleeping Troll or a Dwarf Device this is why the second version of the gaming box set has 42 pieces as it has 2 Thudstones one for playing traditional Thud and one for Koom Valley Thud.

Sandra the Discworlds Seamstress with a needle has under the terms of fan art as in pTerry knows about it made a few handmade portable Thudsets out of material which have drawstrings that turn the boards into a bag that carries the pieces. She still has a few for sale at £30 plus postage and packaging email her thru the site for more details if interested she can also make a washable replacement board out of material if your gaming sets cardboard board is the worse for wear for £25 plus postage and packaging.

My Patrician portable Thudset made by Sandra

Bernard does a portable set made from metal for £35 these are actually heavier than the gaming set but if you are playing in a car or on a train can resist significant jolts i think from they way its made.

This site sells a nice limited edition Thud set for £199

And finally the Marc Boeren's ThudBoard application can be downloaded for free and is useful for playing forum games here on this site and you can download example played games from http://www.oograhboike.com/index.html to study and learn from in it.

KLASH was one of the idea variants developed that could have been the Koom Valley Thud version that Trevor has kindly allowed me to publish the rules for on this site.

If anybody knows of any version of the Thud set i have missed can they pm me and i will add it.

I only have one thudstone [upset]
any who, so i have a thudstone and identical pieces and a cardboardboard...does anyone know what the pieces are made out of? cos its a really cool material. is it Al oxide?

Thank you SA, that's comprehensive beyond anything I could have expected!

So which set do I buy?

OK joke.

But...am I better to spend £30 on the gaming set (cardboard board) or £35 on the travel set (one thudstone or two?)

And...oh yeah...

where do I find people ITRW to play Thud with?

Thanks

Fishtwig

i am happy owner of a gaming set (with two thud stones). i saw the travel set in bernard's shop and have to admit, whilst it being lovely and wonderfully made, i find that it's easier to play with black and white squares. on the travel set all squares look the same and it's really small. it already gives me a headache whenever i don't get the proper graphics on the live and i start trying to move to places where i can't move to, so i personally prefer the gaming set.
i agree with the sarge, the material of the pieces is cool. it looks like stone, but is way too light... :-S

I have set with 1 stone and yellow/black quares on a fold out cardborad board with cool peices. I like it, does the job, no complaints

I think Ratdeath may have a point about the colour of the board until you have got used to the long diagonals a board that differentiates the colours might be better i quite like the tactile feel of the gaming sets and you could always make your own wooden board or even a leather one i think one fan had one made out of a piece of granite but i have not seen it.

The 2 Thudstones are not necessary as you can play Koom Valley Thud with the original Thudstone the 2nd one in the newer gaming sets was to fit in with the look of a dwarf device as mentioned in Thud the book but could also be a sleeping Troll.

I think that most of the games i have played have been in the virtual world of the net here on this site and its predecessors you can play both live traditional thud in the Play Thud online area or in the Forums you can play thud against others in the manner of postal chess but updated for our online times.

And in the real world it is often played at Discworld events like the Hogswatch event in Wincanton or Discworld conventions which have been held in the UK, Australia, Germany and i think one is being planned for the USA in 2009. Tho some would argue that Discworld events are not technically part of the real world

Where are we going and why am i in this handbasket?...
...Oh! always try to look on the bright side...
... Um anybody got any marshmellows.?

Bump i have edited my orig post in this thread to contain links to pictures of the various Thudsets and i have also now got it extracted from the spam bin apparently if a post contains more than 7 links on this site it is auto put in the spam bin.

Presumably this is genuine then?

Anyone considering bidding?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Discworld-RARE-Thud-Game-First-Edition_W0QQitemZ190194342519QQihZ009QQcategoryZ69761QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Da Curious Fish

wow, not that I'd bid but nice nonetheless

It looks like the painted set version of the original pieces so i would say its genuine tho the details about the pieces seem a bit mixed up as it was the stone/bone (a sort of yellow white ) ones that were made first iirc and the polished tusk and painted versions were made after that using the same moulds the slate coloured ones of the first gaming sets came even later.

I dont have the pennys to bid at the moment and even if i did i actually prefer the look of the bone and polished tusk sets tho if some one bought me it for xmas i would give it house room

As the one responsible for posting it on ebay (and also its original purchaser and current owner), I can confirm it is definitely genuine. My wife and I were at the launch event in November 2001 and ordered it on the spot; it was Bernard himself who told me that it would be edition no. 6, as we were the first to place an order. Unique? Doesn't begin to describe it!

I don't remember when it was delivered to us, but we did also get a slate set at pretty much the same time.

Probably a bit late for Christmas now But, of the editions I've seen it does look the best; the main reason for that is the variety, as every single piece is different. One of the dwarfs is even modelled directly on Bernard ... I'll leave it to others to work out which one!

It's a fabulous set, we're gutted to part with it but we need the space.

Hi and welcome to the Thud site

We might have met i was at the first event also.

I think some of the other Dwarfs are based on fans that had been thru Bernard's shop while it was a work in progress. And i agree its a wonderful set with all the pieces being individual its just i prefer the Polished Tusk version of it.