Kensington is a board game

Board game

A board game is a game which involves counters or pieces being moved on a pre-marked surface or "board", according to a set of rules. Games may be based on pure strategy, chance or a mixture of the two, and usually have a goal which a player aims to achieve...

 devised by Brian Taylor and Peter Forbes in 1979, named after an affluent borough

Kensington

Kensington is a district of west and central London, England within the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. An affluent and densely-populated area, its commercial heart is Kensington High Street, and it contains the well-known museum district of South Kensington.To the north, Kensington is...

 of London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

. It is played on a geometrical board based on the rhombitrihexagonal tiling pattern.

Game play

The two players, red and blue, alternately place pieces on the intersections of the board until each has placed fifteen. Thereafter they alternate turns sliding a single piece along a line to an adjacent vertex. The object is to place pieces on the six vertices of a white hexagon or a hexagon of one's own colour.

If a player forms a triangle, he is entitled to relocate one enemy piece. If a player forms a square, he may relocate two enemy pieces. Forming a triangle and a square simultaneously allows one to relocate only two enemy pieces.

Normally, whoever makes the first triangle or square is almost assured of being able to scatter the opposing pieces and win without difficulty. What depth the game does contain revolves around being first to begin scattering. The placing and movement of pieces is reminiscent of Nine Men's Morris

Nine Men's Morris

Nine Men's Morris is an abstract strategy board game for two players that emerged from the Roman Empire. The game is also known as Nine Man Morris, Mill, Mills, Merels, Merelles, and Merrills in English....

.

Packaging

A 1979 edition of the game was sold in a package resembling a double-LP album. The front part had a cut-out showing the centre of the one-piece non-folding game board which could be slid out of the sleeve like an LP. Rules were printed on the inside and the rear side showed the authors playing the game on the steps of the Albert Memorial

Albert Memorial

The Albert Memorial is situated in Kensington Gardens, London, England, directly to the north of the Royal Albert Hall. It was commissioned by Queen Victoria in memory of her beloved husband, Prince Albert who died of typhoid in 1861. The memorial was designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott in the...

.

Marketing

In a business venture parallel to Trivial Pursuit

Trivial Pursuit

Trivial Pursuit is a board game in which progress is determined by a player's ability to answer general knowledge and popular culture questions. The game was created in 1979 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, by Canadian Chris Haney, a photo editor for Montreal's The Gazette and Scott Abbott, a sports...

in Canada, the British inventors set up their own company to make and publish the game. This attracted a fair amount of press attention at the time and Kensington picked up a UK Game of the Year award. Attention for the game was short-lived and the game is now out of print.

In the rules of the 1979 edition the authors offered a prize of 10,000 pounds to the first person to find a position in which neither player of a two-player game could move.

External links

• Kensington game description at tragsnart.co.uk blog
• Lotus rules at mindsports.net