The Capercaillie’s courtship dance

Board game: The Capercaillie’s courtship dance - A game for 2 to 5 players

When the spring arrives, the capercaillie’s courtship dance begins in the woods. With the campaign, the colleagues of the Slovenia Forest Service in cooperation with the LIFE-IP NATURA.SI project partners contribute to improving the knowledge and understanding of this exceptional Natura 2000 animal species’ role for nature and people. 

The first thematic polygon for children in Slovenia - The Capercaillie’s courtship dance is developed in accordance with the principles of forest pedagogy. You can try it at The Vrbovec Museum, a museum of forestry and timber in the Municipality of Nazarje.

The Capercaillie’s courtship dance is a board game to learn how the capercaillie’s and human lives are connected. By playing the game, we learn how small steps can improve capercaillie’s living conditions in our forests.

You can play the board game also at your home. 

Instructions to compose the board game

Needed materials to compose the board game:

• colour printer, 
• 8 sheets of A4 paper,
• scissors,
• glue,
• dice,
• playing pieces (coloured stones, buttons, coloured corks…).

Print and cut along the marked dotted line all the necessary board game parts:

• game board,
• playing cards and
• board game rules.

How to set up the game board: 

Glue together individual parts of the game board as follows:

1. Step

Take the first two cut parts.

Apply glue along the marked line _ _ _ _ _ _ (number 1) and glue them together.

2. Step

Take the other two cut parts.

Apply glue along the marked line _ _ _ _ _ _  (number 2) and glue them together.

3. Step

The last step is to glue both halves of the game board.

Apply glue along the marked line _ _ _ _ _ _ (number 3) and glue them both together.

How to prepare the playing cards

Cut the playing cards along the marked dotted line.

Game rules for playing The Capercaillie’s courtship dance

In this game, we play as the capercaillie and try our best to get from START to FINISH (CILJ) as fast as possible. The yellow spaces represent the track where the players advance. Orange, green and blue spaces represent the special fields.

You shuffle the cards and put them on the marked space on the game board (back side up). Every player receives one (1) playing piece. The players place their pieces on the starting space. At the beginning of the game, every player throws the dice. Whoever throws the highest number starts. The other players follow in clockwise order.

The game

The player who has the turn throws the dice and moves the piece based on the number that was thrown. If the player would have to place the piece on a space already occupied by a piece of another player’s piece, the first moves one more space.
When a player arrives on a special field (orange, green or blue), follow the rules for special fields (see below).

The winner of the game is the player who arrives at the finish line first. To arrive at the finish, you have to throw the exact number to get there.
 
Special fields

ORANGE field: if a player moves to the orange field, the player has to draw a playing card. The player reads the card aloud and follows the card’s instructions. After the card has been used, the player places it at the bottom of the card’s pile.
GREEN field: the player moves forward following the green path.
BLUE field: the player moves back, following the blue path.

We hope you enjoy and learn about the capercaillie through our game.

Author: Gregor Štancar, Slovenia Forest Service