Does Size Matter?

If you've played Kubb only once or twice, or if you always use the same set, you may have the impression that all Kubb sets are the same: that they are all a 'standard' size. You'd be wrong. 

Historically, the pieces would have been made by hand from whatever wood was available, and there would have been a pretty wide variation in size and weight. In the world of machine assisted manufacture, a lot of this variation within a set has gone, but it still leaves the question of what is the 'right' size. 

Most sets available in the UK have Kubbs that are around 55mm square, with batons around 30mm in diameter. If you search hard enough, you'll find 60mm square Kubbs in some sets, although often you won't know what you have until they arrive on your doorstep. 

Looking at the VMI Kubb (World Championship) rules seems to reveal a 'Gold Standard' to measure against:

So, 70mm is the World Championship standard. That's quite a chunk of wood, and certainly a lot bigger than the Kubbs in the set that I got from Amazon, with their puny girth of 55mm. The U.S. National Championship rule book (from which our own is adapted) suggests the same size: 70x70x150mm. You'll see that the batons are 44mm diameter, again, the same as for the US competition. That shouldn't really be a surprise, because the U.S. rules have been adapted from the VMI rule book. 

The difference between 30mm batons, like the ones in my retail set, and the 'standard'  44mm batons as used in the U.S. and World Championships, is immense: 30mm feels like a section of a broom handle, whereas 44mm feels like a section of a scaffolding pole! 

Anyway, it turns out that a 70mm Kubb set is pretty hard to get hold of in the UK. These guys sell a great looking set advertised as "World Championship Size" with 70mm Kubbs (yay!) but only 39mm batons (boo!), but I suspect that the shipping from Australia would have killed the deal for me. 

So, what does one do? One makes a set one's self. 

If only it was as simple as that. The U.S. rules also specify a weight range for the pieces:

Its worth pointing out that the U.S. guys basically looked at all the sets that they already had and then decided that, by definition, they were all within the right range. I like that practicality, and although the weight is only 'recommended' according to the U.S. rules, I want something to aim at. 

Just thinking about the Kubb for a moment, we have 7x7x15 cm³, weighing between 300g and 500g. That gives us a density of between 408kg/m³ and 680kg/m³ with a mid point of about 544kg/m³. Working out the density of the batons and the king comes to pretty much the same result. Phew! Sourcing different woods for each component would have been a bit of a pain.

So, we need to find some wood that has a density of .540 (ish). Hmm.

Googling a wood density chart (easy to find) gives a few surprises. Lots of hard woods like oak or beech, that you might have expected to be our friends,  are too heavy, and anyway, we are sort of restricted to what we can get hold of at a sensible price. My plan is to make a bunch of these sets, and I am working to a budget.

European Redwood is pretty easy to get in big pieces (remember we really need 90mm x 90mm for the king) is reasonably cheap, and turns out to be about the right density. Result! 

In my next article I'll relate my attempts at making a Kubb set equipped with a lot of optimism, almost no wood working skills, and very few tools.

Wish me luck! 

2015 US National Championships

The US National championships have been running in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, USA since 2007. The started with 15 teams and 35 players and now run a tournament over two days with over a hundred teams and almost 400 players from all round the United States and with the occasional foreign team joining in the festivities. Their ethos is the same as ours: Everyone is welcome, regardless of age, ability or experience. The US National Championship is the second largest Kubb Tournament in the world, with only the World Championships in Gotland Sweden slightly ahead. 

This year the tournament was held on the weekend of 11th and 12th July, with a separate Kid's tournament on the Friday before. It's true to say that the level of play is extremely high, and the teams at the top level are VERY competitive. 

This year's results were:

Gold Medal - Furor Celtica 
(Roscoe, IL/Fitchberg, WI/Des Moines, IA)

Silver Medal - Ringers (ft. Rekubblikanerna Stockholm) 
(Eau Claire, WI/Stockholm, Sweden)

Bronze Medal - Damage Incorporated 
(Des Moines, IA/Eau Claire, WI/Waukesha, WI)

4th Place - Kubbitz 
(Eau Claire, WI)

Joint 5th Place - 
King Pin (Chaska, MN)
Kubbsicles (Eau Claire, WI)
Team Ona Orth (Minneapolis, MN/Chicago, IL)
X-Kubbed (Chaska, MN)

The 2015 UK Kubb Championship

Black Rebel Motorcycle Kubb (South) winning the 2015 Final 

The 2015 Championship went ahead perfectly as planned on Saturday 11th July at the New Inn Farnborough. Thirty-two teams and over seventy players enjoyed a day in the sun with the eventual and very worthy winners being Black Rebel Motorcycle Kubb (South). My own team, 'Game of Throwns' came up against the Northern contingent of the same team, and I can only commend the entire squad on their skill, attitude, and very thoroughly consistent uniform.

Maybe we will get our revenge next year, although I hear that the Neil Wilson Allstars will be working hard to win the title on their first 'proper' run out. 

Bring on 2016!

Kubb has gone to SpecSavers!

September 2013 saw the inaugural Specsavers Forum6 Kubb tournament being played. 

The Forum6 building in Whiteley, Hampshire houses many of Specsavers UK based support staff (IT, HR etc). Following a conversation at a Sports and Social Team open forum, at which your correspondent found himself talking to someone who had actually heard of Kubb (courtesy of "Dave Gorman vs The Rest Of The World"), it was decided that the idea of a Kubb tournament should be progressed. 

The first challenge was to find some players - yours truly being the only person in the building to have actually played before. Starting small, I invited a few of my team mates to swap their usual lunchtime activities for the chance to stand in a field throwing lumps of wood around - it says a lot about their regular habits that they mostly jumped at the chance! Everyone who tried it quickly picked up on the tactical complexity that hides behind the game's superficial simplicity, and soon enough they were hooked. Word of mouth meant that others soon volunteered to give it a try so that within a few weeks there were 8 players who could no longer be called complete novices - and the competition was on! 

It was decided that the tournament should be contested by 8 teams of 2, each team comprising someone who had played before and a novice. Finding 8 volunteers to be novices was relatively easy, and the pairings were drawn. The format of the tournament was as follows: 

• two groups of 4 teams, each team playing one match against each other team in its group 
• each match to be the best of 3 Kubb games 
• three points awarded for a 2-0 victory, two points for 2-1 
• the winners of each group to play the runners up from the other group in a knock out semi-final 
• two semi-final winners to play in a knock out final 
• (I had hoped that the semi-finals and final might be played over best of five games but maybe that was too ambitious for year 1, so they too were best of 3) 

The matches were played at lunchtimes on a grassed area just outside the Forum6 building, and attracted quite a bit of interest from non-competitors within Specsavers (who could be seen watching from the windows), and also employees of other companies based on the same business park. The enthusiasm of the players involved meant that the 15 matches were completed inside 17 days, some sort of a record for Specsavers where similar competitions can sometimes drag on for months. For the record, the tournament was won by Kicking Urban Bad Boys (see what they did there?) who fought back to win the final 2 games to 1 having lost the first game when a wayward return of a field kubb knocked over the king. Those same Bad Boys put paid to my team's chances with a 2-0 semi-final rout!

The Sports and Social Team funded prizes for the winners - each player getting their own Kubb set and the team being awarded a winners trophy (being in true Kubb tradition a customised Kubb king!) 

Better still, two Kubb sets have been purchased for the ongoing use of Specsavers team members, so I think I am on fairly safe ground when I say this year's tournament will not be the last! Next year, starting earlier in the year, there is the possibility of the tournament going on for longer and therefore being bigger, and hopefully those who just watched this year can be persuaded to play. 

Other plans? Specsavers team(s) at the British Championship? Inter-office tournaments in Whiteley? Kubb in the Olympics? Who knows!

Kubb Olympic Qualifiers 2012

The 2012 Finalists.

After six years of organising the Kubb tournament, you have to admit I certainly know how to pick the date. Avoid the Glastonbury festival, don't have it during exam season, keep well away from the Wimbledon final and, last but not least, make damned sure you choose the single most miserably damp Saturday you can manage. But as usual, the weather did not deter our hardcore players. Many old players returned, along with plenty of new ones, including a very pleasant party of 12 and a half from north Bristol and another group who brought with them a small fluffy dog that Bill Bryson would refer to as 'a burly hamster'. It was probably a Chihuahua, but whatever it was, its sh1ts look like wormcasts. Unfortunately at one point I think I saw someone absentmindedly use it to dry off a baton, but even then it was impeccably behaved.

Before we started, there were two popular topics of conversation amongst the old hands. Firstly, the playing surface, which in horse racing parlance would be best described as 'soft'. It must have been ignored for so long by the New Inn groundsmen that it wouldn't have surprised me to find a crop circle in it. If they ever get round to cutting it, they'll need a combine harvester, not a mower. Secondly, the Germans, and were they coming again. Many will recall the very pleasant family who flew over especially last year to teach us all how to play - they left with another victory under the belt and one of the worst trophies I ever managed, the now legendary mug tree. I suspect that secretly most players did not want them to return [after all, you can only cope with having your arse so soundly whupped once in a lifetime] and they were not disappointed. We tried to fool ourselves that Team GupfelSturmer were probably running scared, but it's more likely that they were extremely unimpressed. I'd even made a wooden gun as a first prize for them, just to see how they coped with it on their return through Customs. But that's not to say we didn't have an international field. No. We had two players from Wales who came as an advance recce party and who have promised to return next year in force. To welcome them, I think I might set up a toll gate at the pub entrance, in retaliation for the Severn crossing fees I've suffered over the years. 

And so once the 30 teams had assembled to hear my embarrassingly ill-prepared welcoming speech, during which even I got bored, we began proceedings and I actually got to play in a proper team for the first time, just to make up the numbers, you understand. Despite the fact that 'The Neil Wilson All-Star Kubb Dynamos' was formed mere minutes before the start and consisted of myself, 10 year old Charlotte [who insisted on being captain, otherwise she was going home, thank you] and Laurence [let down badly by his Mother [I don't mean throughout his life in general, just on the day when she was stuck in traffic], we did really well, winning three out of three. That put us in the semi-final against Joe and Rich, an epic match of nearly an hour, during which Charlotte had to leave [I think she had a party to go to, or a similar better offer]. The match flowed back and forth and the crowd were suitable enthralled, particularly those who had come mostly to heckle. I can't describe the level of abuse as being of John Terry standard, but at one stage I was referred to as being 'really quite disappointing' and 'somewhat poor on the whole'. Did it put me off ? Not a bit, it'll take more than that level of puerile b******* from b******s like those f****** to spoil my concentration levels. But we were beaten after a minor fracas with a baton, and deservedly so.

The final, between Joe and Rich and Ben's team, was pretty quick, Ben and co taking the title. For their troubles, they won a Kubbuteo set, which they received with a look of dismay, bordering on disappointment. They should have known better not to expect too much. Actually, I believe they were secretly thrilled with it - I base this on the fact that they didn't dump it in a hedge whilst leaving the pub afterwards.

What else can I say ? Thanks to Ian for helping set up beforehand but please, please, PLEASE - no string next year ! Thanks also to Jane and Ellie for scoring and organising - another fine job that allowed me to get on out there and mingle. Thanks to Jesse and Corrine for all their help - hopefully next year they won't get stuck in a Gay Pride march through central Bristol, unless that's preferable, of course. But finally thanks to all you players, who have to suffer both bad weather and me - 4 hours of either is more than enough for most people and your attendance and continued support is much appreciated.

As is now becoming tradition, we ended the afternoon with a quick 'shall we do it all again next year ?' which resulted [as is also tradition] in a resounding 'not bothered. ok, yes'. And to cap it all, there's even talks of another tournament being organised. You can be sure that I'll be going to the 'Kubb UK regional qualifier : Cambridgeshire and district' - I'm itching to see what a proper trophy looks like.