Cribbage Board - Not the scoring kind

My wife's family is big into card games, and their mainstay game is a Cribbage variant that uses a board with a 5x5 grid on it that you play cards onto. Once the board is full, you count up points cribbage style, one player scoring rows, the other scoring columns. The middle of each is reserved for the owning player. Anyway, they have various boards they've made out of cheap wood panels and a Sharpie, which works well for them.

My father-in-law's birthday is coming up, so I decided to make him a nice board as a gift. I've wanted to try my hand at inlay work, and decided this was the perfect project for it. Here's what I ended up with:

(Lighting of the photos isn't great)

Here is prior to sizing and finish:

Prior to finish:

The colors aren't really complementary, but I was going more for function over aesthetics. Also I didn't have a lot of options at the wood store and I was short on time. For the curious, the main board is red oak, the vertical strip is wenge, and the horizontal strip is walnut. I used a Natural color Danish Oil for the finish.

I'd estimate it is about 20 hours of work. There are a number of gaps and some minor mistakes, but it was my first attempt, so whatever. Also, he wont notice the flaws, so it's all good.

Now if I could just get a proper work space and the proper tools, I could get really creative for some other unnecessary board game related accessories. And despite having never played, maybe I'll try my hand at a Crokinole board...

Exceptional work Disgustipater.

I play a bit of cribbage but never thought of playing the cards on a grid, neat idea.

DukeofChutney wrote: I play a bit of cribbage but never thought of playing the cards on a grid, neat idea.

Yeah, I had never played Cribbage prior to being introduced to this, but it's pretty fun. If you're curious about the specific rules:

Both players get dealt 12 cards face down (no looking), or 6 cards if in teams of 2, along with a card placed in the center of the board. Starting with the player to the left of the dealer, they draw their top card and place it in a space. Then the second player plays a card, etc. You are trying to make good cribbage hands in your rows/columns while trying to block your opponent by putting garbage cards in the rows/columns they are building on. Usually you want to save your center row/column for the best score chance (e.g. 6/7/8) since your opponent can't block you. It obviously depends on the starting center card though. If nothing great comes up, we just hold out for the last cards you have to be placed there. Once it's full you count up points in column/row 1, then 2, etc. You then clear the board and do it again and again until someone gets the standard 121 points. Near the end, it becomes important to place your best combinations in the earlier scoring areas since you want to get those last points as soon as possible. It's simple but has a decent amount of strategy and I find it pretty fun.