Seti (game)

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Seti
Seti: Game representation of the game Seti-Aleph with Pharaoh, high priests and ships of the dead
Seti: Game representation of the game Seti-Aleph
with Pharaoh, high priests and ships of the dead
Game data
author Andreas Steiner ,
Hartmut Witt ,
Manuel A. Widmaier
graphic not specified
publishing company Butehorn games ,
hexagames
Publishing year 1979
Art Board game
Teammates 2
Duration 30 minutes
Age from 10 years on

Awards

Seti is a strategic board game for two people from 1979. The game was published by Bütehorn Spiele and was awarded the “Special Prize Beautiful Game” in 1979 by the jury of the Game of the Year . In 1986 the Hexagames publisher published a multilingual new edition of the game.

Theme and equipment

According to the description of the game, the game is an attempt to reconstruct a board game that has only been incompletely handed down from ancient Egypt .

In addition to the game instructions, the game material consists of:

  • a one-sided printed board with a grid of 5 by 10 fields
  • 18 two-colored pieces in three different shapes:
    • 4 pharaohs
    • 8 high priests
    • 6 death ships

Style of play

In Seti, the players try to reach the opposite side and thus the starting row of the opponent on a narrow playing field three or five fields wide and 10 fields long with at least one of their own pharaoh or a high priest figure. The two variants Seti-Aleph and Seti-Beth differ in the width of the playing field, the number of characters used and the use of the death ships as additional characters.

The game is played alternately starting with the white player, each player only has one turn. Pharaoh and high priest tokens are used in both games, and the way they move is the same in both variants. Like the king in chess , a pharaoh can move one square in any direction, even diagonally. The high priest can move two squares each in any direction, also diagonally, as well as in a knight jump according to the knight's movement in chess, one square horizontally or vertically and one square diagonally. In principle, he may skip his own and other pieces on his turn.

Seti-Aleph

Seti: Basic line-up of the Seti-Aleph game

Seti-Aleph is played on a narrow playing field only three fields wide and 10 fields long. Each player receives one pharaoh and two high priest tokens, which are placed in the starting row, as well as three death ship tokens each.

The aim of the game is to bring your own pharaoh or high priest token to the opponent's finish line. A player can draw a piece per turn, insert or remove a death ship tile from the playing field, or capture an opposing piece or death tile.

Pieces and dead ships are conquered when a piece reaches them exactly. Conquered tiles are turned over and then placed on your own starting line as your own tiles, and captured death ships are taken from your own supply. The death ship tiles protect against conquest if a token is on one of these tiles. They can be placed on a free field on the playing field or directly under your own token.

Seti-Beth

Seti: Basic line-up of the game Seti-Beth

Seti-Beth builds on Seti-Aleph, but is played on a wider playing field five fields wide and 10 fields long. The players each place two pharaohs and four high priests in their starting area, the goal of the game remains unchanged. The death ships are not used in this variant and conquered tiles are removed from the game.

Development and reception

Due to the way in which the pieces move, Seti contains borrowings from the game of chess ; the goal of the game with reaching the opposing starting line is reminiscent of checkers and halma . By conquering foreign stones, however, there are also parallels to the Japanese Shogi . The game was published in 1979 by the publisher Bütehorn Spiele and was awarded the “Special Prize Beautiful Game” by the Jury of the Game of the Year in the same year . This was the first special prize awarded for the beautiful game and it was awarded to the Seti game on behalf of the Buchholz Verlag (later Bütehorn) with its series in the square bookcase format for its efforts to create particularly beautiful and elaborate designs Awards for games overall. According to the Spiel des Jahres eV association, the jury highlighted it "because the conception was superbly implemented in this adaptation of an ancient Egyptian game."

“Here everything simply interlocks and ideally leads to the game. The layout on the cardboard gives it a dense atmosphere, it suits the game and its historical background. The game plan and the large, classically simple wooden pawns are ideal for the challenging, top-class strategic puzzle game, which goes back to an arrangement by Manuel A. Widmaier. "

- Statement of the jury for the game of the year

In 1986 the Hexagames publisher published a multilingual new edition of the game.

Seti recorded an average rating of 5.2 (out of 10) in the BoardGameGeek game database , although only 25 ratings are available (as of January 2017).

supporting documents

  1. a b c d e f Game Instructions Seti Hexagames Edition, 1986 (download from spielanleitung.com )
  2. a b c Seti on the website of the Spiel des Jahres eV ; accessed on February 5, 2017.
  3. Versions of Seti in the board game database BoardGameGeek (English); accessed on February 5, 2017.
  4. Ratings & Comments for Seti in the board game database BoardGameGeek (English); accessed on February 5, 2017.

Web links

Commons : Seti  - collection of images