If you’re reading this, you’ve probably done a few google searches with the word “kubb” in the past. I’m not exactly sure when I became aware that there was a group of Kubb players here in the Twin Cities who were throwing their own tournaments and playing by different rules than what I was used to, but I found their website a couple years ago:

I’d heard that some of the Kubb players I knew had come across and spoken a little with people from this group, but I’m fairly certain I had not contacted them before a few weeks ago.

As I was talking about how our Winter Tournament had gone with some friends, they said they’d been beaten by “Midwest Kubb Killers” and I made the connection to Midwest Kubb Association. This brought me back to their site to realize that MKA was throwing a tournament on Lake Harriet (just south of Lake Calhoun where we held our tourney) next weekend. I decided I’d just try and contact them through a contact form on the site and see if they’d let me and a few friends play.

John Sather at MKA responded via email and said we were welcome to play, provided us with a brief explanation of their rules, and asked for the names for his list.

So we’re in, and excited to play a different version of Kubb with a fresh new group of people.

Before I get in to more details I want to explain that the way these guys play Kubb is actually very similar to the way that many of my friends and I learned to play when we first heard about Kubb. We must have played this way for an entire summer and it became our favorite backyard game. Over the winter or in that next spring we decided that we wanted to go play at the biggest tournament in the country and they had different rules based on what the international tournament was doing. We switched and prefer the US National Championship rules, but still occasionally played like this for a change of pace or nostalgic reasons.

Alright, this is what I understand to be the the differences in the way the Midwest Kubb Associations plays:

UPDATE: Some of these assumptions turned out to be wrong. Check the Planet Kubb Wiki page for the real info.

They are eliminating downed field kubbs from the game after they’ve been inkast and knocked over once.
They seem to be willing to stack a kubb on top of any other kubb (baseline, or field kubb) that it touches when inkast, but may have a limit of 3 to a stack.
I assume “field advantage” exists because it happens so rarely with kubbs getting eliminated.
In the video I’ve seen on their site, I’ve only seen them place penalty kubbs behind kings, although that may be optional.
When all your opponents kubbs are down, you only get one shot per turn at the king, but you don’t need “one in the clip” to take the shot.
Their pitches are all sprayed or chalked in so its clear when kubbs are on or out. If they are touching the middle or baseline they are out, but the sideline is all in.

I think that covers rules, but the tournament is run differently than any tournament I’ve played in as well:

Each player pays a fee to get in.
Players are paired randomly (which should help us get to know these guys).
The championship match is best two out of three, but everyone else plays single games.
There are some scoring and tiebreaking rules that seem different, but I’m not even sure they get used regularly and won’t go in to detail.

So this is what we’re in for next weekend. It’s sure to be fun and I’d guess it will have more of a poker tournament feel than we’re used to.

We practiced this way yesterday and we’re sure these rules speed things up considerably. Eight meter shots are the most important in every version of kubb you’ll play, but more so with this ruleset than the way we usually use. I’m looking forward to a much shorter, compact tournament that’s a little over a mile from my house, starts close to noon and has me home in time for dinner.

If anyone wants to come check it out, let me know and I can try and get you more details.

Back in August I posed this question to Ask Planet Kubb:

DOES ANYONE KNOW THE BEST WAY TO MAKE A KING OUT OF ICE?

A few weeks ago, realizing the tournament was fast approaching and there was plenty of cold to help me freeze ice in my backyard, I gave this idea an admittedly half-assed shot:

(Side Note: The wooden king you see in the following pictures is the king from my set, which is the longest running set amongst any of my friends in Minneapolis and played a major role in making the Tad Kubbler guys and most of the rest of us the players we are today. I need to purchase some wood glue so I can throw out the duct tape and patch it properly.)

So I went in my basement and found a box that fairly close to King sized: 13 x 11 x 4 inches. I cut in it half.

I took the other half of the box and used a box cutter to make it sort of a liner so the size was closer to correct and the sides of the king wouldn’t have creases. I also tried to shorten the interior a bit.

Then I found a plastic bag. The bag pictured here leaked and had to be replaced the next day, but you can see that it got filled with water and I could stick my hand in the water and kind of try to flatten out the folds, but I didn’t do that great of a job of that.

Here we are two or three days later and as you can see, the bag froze in to the ice. This pink bag also wasn’t big enough, which is why the top isn’t square.

On the plus side, I proved that I could freeze a block of ice that was about the right proportions and although it doesn’t look like much here, I think it would have looked pretty cool if I had carefully tried to get the rest of the bag off using warm water. Also, It may be easier to create a hollow ice king which is closer to regulation weight than you’d anticipate because as the block freezes you can see how much unfrozen water is inside and potentially drill a few holes to drain that excess water/weight.

This was just my first try and with a temperature drop in the forecast, I think I might give it another go.

That said, the main reason I wrote this post is to encourage anyone with the motivation to build a wood frame or something more elaborate. If a really nice looking Ice King shows up at the tournament, and the final teams are willing to use it, I’m certain Eric G will allow it. If you make on and no one else wants to play with it, you can definitely put it in play against my team.