Kubb: The Greatest (Lawn) Game You've Never Played

Imagine a yard game involving wood that's used for an activity resembling a cross between bowling and horseshoes, with an occasional bug bite thrown in for good measure.

That, my friends is kubb.

Kubb is pronounced like "coob" (not "cube" or "cub") and is the lawn game of choice in our little Swedish community.  On Friday I mentioned that there was going to be a kubb tournament in our town this weekend as part of the Midsummer's festivities.

Remember that?

Remember how I said that Mr. Pihl and I most likely would not be joining in the tournament in the interest of not embarrassing ourselves from our lack of kubb experience?

Yeah... we forgot that part, too.

On Saturday morning we decided to meander over to the kubb registration area hoping to muster up the courage to nonchalantly ask, "Hey, you don't happen to need another (unregistered) team, do you?"

Well, we did ask.  And the answer couldn't have been more serendipitous.

"What?  Really?  We have 21 teams and we need 22!  Welcome aboard!"

Okay, "welcome aboard" probably wasn't among the actual dialogue, but you get the idea.

So, Mr. Pihl and I registered and came up with a team name of "The Rookies" because we like to be obvious and put all our cards on the table at once.  Other (genius) teams came up with pretty amazing names including:

• KUBBy Dooby Doo
• sKUBBa
• Got Wood?
• Blockheads
• Rubik's KUBB
• and my personal favorite - The KUBBan Missile Crisis

Har har!  Once a history major, always a history major.

So, our day consisted of five guaranteed rounds of kubb, each round featuring "best of three" matches against an assigned opponent.  

Mr. Pihl and I began the tournament by thoroughly embarrassing ourselves by only halfway knowing the rules, and possessing ZERO tidbits of strategy.

Good thing for us, we're quick learners.  Good thing for you, I found a link to the U.S. National Kubb Championship rules page.  They'll explain things much better than I ever could.  They even have videos posted!

So anywhoodle, there were 21 other teams.  We pleasantly surprised ourselves by performing relatively well and concluded the tournament in 8th place!  Woo!  

I attribute our novice success to extreme competitive perfectionism rather than actual skill (on my part) and just plain awesomeness and the piece of mind to observe other teams' habits (on Mr. Pihl's part).  

Through the course of the day, we ran into some pretty interesting characters.  Like this guy:

Or rather, his leg.  With a kubb tattoo.  Now that's hardcore, man.  

And these kids -

- whose team name was "KUBB Wars" and who were awesome sports.

Check out those uniforms!  Get it?  KUBB Wars?

It took me a minute (but I'm sorta slow.)  Basically, it's brilliant.

Here are some other tidbits from our day...

Mr. Pihl knocking down the King, FTW!

Teamwork works.

I have no idea what I'm doing here.

Random stalker picture of the day.

Putting sunscreen to the test.

Such a fun day!

In the end, though, it was all about this little gem of wisdom:

Kubb, on my friends.  Kubb on.