Introduction

Being from the northern Canadian prairies means I was culturally isolated for most of my youth. It didn’t even cross my mind that some people go their whole lives without seeing the northern lights (or, aurora borealis) on an almost nightly basis. That trees could stand taller than 12 feet tall, and had trunks with a diameter wider than both my hands put together. I also just assumed that everyone’s uncle had a Crokinole board in their basement, even if the rules for the game were hotly contested from house to house. Turns out, my lived experience is not universal, and not everyone has experienced the enduring excellence that is Crokinole.

How to Play

A Crokinole board is a large, waxed circle broken into 4 quadrants, with 3 circular scoring zones of decreasing size, but increasing point value, and a recessed centre pocket. Surrounding that smallest scoring circle are 8 pegs, that will become the bane of your existence.

Crokinole is played between two players, or four players in two teams. Each team has 12 discs of their colour, and alternate taking turns flicking their discs, putting them into play. If there are no opposing discs on the board, you must ‘play to centre’, which means your disc needs to be touching the line of, or within the smallest scoring zone when movement ceases. If there are opposing discs on the board, you must strike an opposing disc instead, either with the disc you’re flicking onto the board, or, by ricocheting off one of your discs remaining from a previous turn.

If your shot isn’t valid (either you failed to play to centre, or strike an opponent’s disc), then the disc you flicked into action this turn is removed, and if you happened to hit one of your own discs, that disc is removed as well. Once each team has shot their 12 discs, the scores are tallied. 5 points for each disc remaining in the largest circle, 10 for the next circle, 15 for the centre circle, and 20 points per disc that made its way into the recessed centre. The team with the higher total earns the difference as points. First to 100 wins.

On last rule that is just fun to stress. Once you sit in your chair, your chair cannot move and at least one “buttock” must be touching the chair at all times. That said, I play at such a beginner level, and not all of our tables are created equal, that this is a rule we often choose to omit.

Review

Nothing elicits strong emotions quite like sport. The team spirit, the joyous highs and crushing lows, the satisfaction of a game well played, and the tension of those critical plays that turn the tide, allowing you to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. It’s not something that shows up in my board game hobby very often, but I feel it in dexterity games.

There’s a running joke in my game group that we’re a bunch of guys whose hobby is to sit around a table with our heads in our hands for 2 hours in silence, then when the game ends, we look up, nod, and say “Oh I’ve won. Jolly good”. Many modern board games lack excitement, as games get more deterministic, the opportunities for true surprise get fewer and further between. There are dozens of great dexterity games available, from flicking wobbly penguins in Ice Cool to dexterously threading popsicle sticks over and under each other in Tokyo Highway, but Crokinole is the king of them all.

Normally I’d commend on the component quality of the game I’m reviewing, but the truth is that there are hundreds of ways to get a Crokinole board. The type of wood and finish will affect how the discs sail across the board. Some boards feature the classic wood grain, while others are painted to the 9’s, emblazoned with a favourite hockey team, or super hero logo. Searching the image archives on BGG will reveal as many different boards as there are personalities, and a custom Crokinole board is one of the few places where a board gamer gets to showcase their uniqueness, and because of it’s size, it’s not uncommon to see it mounted on the wall, where it becomes a family artifact or a work of art.

Crokinole is a simple pleasure, and the rule requiring that if your opponents have a disc anywhere on the board, you have to strike their disc forces interaction. This elevates the experience from just a pair of players shooting for the centre into a tit-for-tat battle. Discs that hit at an angle to hide behind a peg, the seemingly impossible shots that cause players to pump their fists when they hit it, or bemoan when they whiff a seemingly simple shot, there’s adrenaline in the air. When your opponents have 5 or 6 discs on the board, and you manage a shot that knocks out two discs AND lands in the 20 point pocket, you’re left with a moment that you’ll be talking about all night long.

Playing Crokinole is a delightful break for modern board gamers. There’s no randomness, no 40-page rulebook or hours spent punching cardboard tokens from their sprues, no sorting cards or explaining how to play. Crokinole is simply charming. You place the board on your table, divy up the pucks, and just start flicking. It’s so dead simple that anyone watching can intuit many of the rules. New players can find great fun in just firing off their pucks as hard as they can, but there’s also a high skill ceiling if players choose to invest the time in honing their skills. And yet the simplicity doesn’t mean the game is boring, quite the opposite. Every player can see what they should do on their turn, the only question that remains is if they can do it.

And answering that question, over and over again, is what makes Crokinole thrilling. It’s the simplicity of the task, the elegance of the challenge, and the visceral satisfaction of success that makes this game an enduring classic.