Board Games that Use Marbles
Historically, board games have had pieces in a great variety of shapes. From the pawns in "Sorry" to the plastic pie wedges of "Trivial Pursuit," nothing has been off-limits. One of the most common board game pieces, however, is the marble. Marbles are connected to old strategy games like Chinese Checkers to action games like "Hungry Hungry Hippos."
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Chinese Checkers
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Chinese Checkers is a centuries-old board game for two to six players. A Chinese Checker board is shaped like a Star of David with six points. Dimples on the face of the board hold the marbles in place. Players can only move a marble to an empty space over another marble. Smart players try to string together long jumps to get a marbles to the opposite-side star as quickly as possible. The winner is the first player to move all 10 of his marbles to the opposite side.
Aggravation
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"Aggravation" was first introduced in 1962. The object is to move all of your marbles around the board from start to home. Die tosses determine how many spaces a marble can move. Players are not allowed to pass their own marbles, and landing on another player's marble will cause them to return to the start. "Aggravation" could be played by up to six players.
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Mancala
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Mancala is a counting game consisting of a wooden game board with 12 shallow pits arranged like an egg carton and a large compartment at each end of the board. The object is to collect the most marbles in your compartment, and trick the opponent into losing his marbles first. Each player starts with three marbles. The starting player chooses a marble from his side and drops one into an empty pit. The player's exchange turns, with each trying to get his last marble to land in the mancala (the large compartment) or an empty spot on his side of the board.
Hungry Hungry Hippos
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The children's game "Hungry Hungry Hippos starts" with four players getting five marbles each. Each player controls a plastic "hippo" attached to a lever. Each player pushes the "tail" of her hippo to open its mouth and grab any marbles in the center of the game board. The player with the most marbles wins.
Which Witch?
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"Which Witch?" was an early-'70s era three-dimensional board game from Milton Bradley with a haunted house theme. The house was full of traps, and a player could draw a card that called for some bad deed by a witch to take place. One witch dropped a "whammy ball" that would wipe out anything in its path. The whammy ball was actually a marble, which had to be dropped down the chute of a chimney in the center of the house. Any player struck by this falling marble had to go back several spaces.
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