PLATEAU VS SENET

Plateau is a two-player abstract strategy board game invented by Jim Albea. The game was developed over a two-year period culminating in its present form on May 12, 1986. The original name for the game was Pinnacle, but it was discovered that an older board/card game had that name, so around 1989 the name was changed to Plateau. From the 1980s through the 1990s Plateau was played at Science Fiction conventions mostly in the Southeastern United States. From the 1990s to the present, the game is played live at an online game site and via email. In 1997 a computer implementation of the game was created which facilitates email play and has a computer robot. Onboarding is adding one new piece to the play. This new piece can be placed anywhere that doesn't directly harm an opposing piece. For instance, you can onboard to any blank square or on top of any of your own pieces. The majority of Plateau moves are onboards. Instead of Onboarding or Moving, a player can choose to spend his turn exchanging prisoners. Prisoners are exchanged using the point values of the pieces. A simple value-for-value system is used. Since the pieces range in value from 1 point (for the mute) to 21 points (for the Ace) there are usually several combinations and options available for the players. The player initiating the exchange selects the pieces he wishes to exchange. These pieces will all add up to some point value. The responding player then has four options depending on the point values of the prisoners that he holds.

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Senet is a board game from ancient Egypt. The earliest representation of senet is dated to c. 2620 BCE from the Mastaba of Hesy-Re, while similar boards and hieroglyphic signs are found even earlier. The game fell out of use following the Roman periodand its original rules are the subject of conjecture. Senet is the oldest known board game. Fragmentary boards that could be senet have been found in First Dynasty burials in Egypt, c. 3100 BCE. The first unequivocal painting of this ancient game is from the Third Dynasty tomb of Hesy (c. 2686–2613 BCE). People are depicted playing senet in a painting in the tomb of Rashepes, as well as from other tombs of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties (c. 2500 BCE). The oldest intact senet boards date to the Middle Kingdom, but graffiti on Fifth and Sixth Dynasty monuments could date as early as the Old Kingdom. At least by the time of the New Kingdom in Egypt (1550–1077 BCE), senet was conceived as a representation of the journey of the ka (the vital spark) to the afterlife. This connection is made in the Great Game Text, which appears in a number of papyri, as well as the appearance of markings of religious significance on senet boards themselves. The game is also referred to in chapter XVII of the Book of the Dead. A study on a senet board in the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum, dating back to the early New Kingdom of Egypt, showed the evolution of the game from its secular origins into a more religious artifact. Senet also was played by people in neighboring cultures, and it probably came to those places through trade relationships between Egyptians and local peoples. It has been found in the Levant at sites such as Arad and Byblos, as well as in Cyprus. Because of the local practice of making games out of stone, there are more senet games that have been found in Cyprus than have been found in Egypt.

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