BoardSpace.net

[admin]

For the record, Fanorona is pronounced something like fa-NOORN, as though it had two-and-a-half syllables.




Fanorona is in final preparation as the next game at Boardspace. I expect it will be popular because every game begins with a massacre: the board is initially full, and is rapidly reduced to a fraction of the original count. The rest of the game is a race to round up and capture the survivors of the initial carnage.

Fanorona is a classic abstract game; it has been played in its current form for hundreds of years. It's reputed to be the national game of Madagascar, though you would be hard pressed to prove that by searching the web.

On a related note; it's hard to find real boards. The board that is the model for the artwork at boardspace was obtained from http://oakgames.com/

[Mountain]

I have a real fanorona board ... I picked it up from http://www.gamesfromeverywhere.com.au/