The board game that has forged friendships for millennia

What is the Royal Game of Ur?

The Royal Game of Ur is one of the oldest board games in the world, with evidence of it being played by people who lived over 4500 years ago. That includes many play-urs enjoying the game today!

The Royal Game of Ur is a two-player race game where you and an opponent go to war! The first player to score all their pieces wins.

Games start friendly, but quickly grow fierce as pieces reach the middle of the board and the battle begins. You need a lot of skill, and a bit of luck, to get your pieces to the end of the board without them being captured. But it's worth it to secure victory! This battle has been going on for 4500 years in pubs and taverns around the world. And now it's your turn to take up the fight! Learn the rules of the Royal Game of Ur here.

The modern era of Ur began when Sir Leonard Woolley excavated four unique game boards from a royal tomb in Ur, ancient Mesopotamia, in the 1920's. This gave the game it's modern name, the Royal Game of Ur, and began it's modern revival. The game has also been called the Game of Twenty Squares, or Pack of Dogs.

The game is played with its unique board, 5 or 7 pieces per player, and three or four two-sided dice. The exact rules that were played thousands of years ago is hard to deduce (and likely changed over time!). However, academics have used ancient artifacts and the writing on old cuneiform tablets to discover several likely options. The rules that have become the most popular in this millenia are the ones presented in the 2017 YouTube video Tom Scott vs. Irving Finkel. These are the most commonly played rules on this site, although other rules are also available to try!

Join the Commun-ur-ty!

Whether you're a casual play-ur, a history buff, a researcher, or a pro player, everyone is welcome in our Royal Game of Ur Discord group! Many players find opponents in our group, discuss strategy, and we even conduct research about the game. We also have channels for discussing tournaments, DIY game boards, history, different rulesets, similar games, and even the development of this website! However, in my view, the best feature of our group is the community. I have made many friends from our group, and if you're interested in the Royal Game of Ur, I have no doubt you'll fit right in!

Real-Life Tournaments

The société internationale d'UR has run tournaments around the world at MIT, Harvard, Boston University, Brown, Imperial College London, and in New York City. If you are interested in keeping up-to-date with where they will run tournaments next so that you can take part, I recommend following their Instagram! These tournaments use a different, more challenging, set of rules called tournament engine. You can read more about tournament engine on our alternative rules page.

Buy Physical Boards

We are obviously big fans of playing board games online here at RoyalUr.net, but even we have to admit that there is something special about playing on a real, physical board. If you are looking to buy a physical board, we recommend that you check out Masters Traditional Games! I have personally met their founder, James Masters, and visited their warehouse in St Albans. James Masters' work as a games historian even led to the Masters ruleset here on RoyalUr.net! Purchases made by clicking a link from RoyalUr.net will also help to support our work. Click here to visit Masters Traditional Games.

Why was RoyalUr.net started?

Since then, we now boast over 1000 games played every day on RoyalUr.net, and we hope that number will continue to grow into the future with new members like you! We love this ancient game, and we believe that it should be played all around the world as a casual, fun, and history-rich game.

If you'd like to join us, we also have a rich Discord community of over 900 members where we discuss everything RGU. This community welcomes both serious and casual players, as well as academics, history aficionados, and board game lovers! You can join us by clicking this link.