Why does Machia look like the Bayeux Tapestry?
Because Rithmomachia and the tapestry come from the same century, and the tapestry tells its battle in thread.
Why a tapestry, when the game is Rithmomachia?
Machia is a revival of Rithmomachia, the game European scholars played for five centuries alongside chess. That is where the rules come from: pieces that carry numbers, and captures made by arithmetic. The look comes from somewhere else.
I first saw the Bayeux Tapestry at school. When I found that Rithmomachia was being played by the 1050s, it made me think of the tapestry and the Battle of Hastings in 1066. The first version of Machia was plain and modern, and it worked, but it had nothing of its own to look at. So I took the look from the tapestry: an embroidered cloth nearly 70 metres long that tells the story of the Norman conquest of England. It is a battle told in thread, and that felt like the right picture for a battle by numbers. From 10 September 2026 to 11 July 2027 it is on show in London, at the British Museum.
I did not want the game to look like a screen. I wanted a woven panel laid on a table. In the end that came down to colour, and colour is what this post is about.
Why is the page the colour of linen?
The page is linen. The board is the same cloth, one step warmer, so it reads as a panel laid on the page rather than a box drawn on it. Cards and the title plaque are a step lighter, and your pieces are the palest of all. Four linens, and nothing white.
- LinenThe page
- FieldThe board, one step warmer
- PlaqueCards and the title plaque
- PaleYour pieces
Where did the other colours come from?
Most of the other colours were picked from photographs of the tapestry. The blue of its thread became woad, the colour of their pieces. Its reds became burgundy, blood and madder. Its green became olive, for the cross-stitch at each corner of the frame. The dark outline stitching became the ink.
These were sampled from photographs, not from the cloth itself, so they are the colours of the pictures and not exact matches for the wool. Two of the names are the tapestry's own dyes: its wool was coloured with plants, woad for the blues and madder for the reds. Gold is the one colour the game had before the tapestry. The colours that carry words are checked for contrast against the linen.
- WoadTheir pieces and the machine's march
- UmberThe ink and the title band
- GoldThe leader's ring and crown
- BurgundyThe button, a link, a selected piece
- BloodA stained square
- MadderThe alarm when the machine is two turns away
- OliveThe cross-stitch at each corner
- SteelThe blade when a piece is taken
What do the colours mean?
Once the colours were on the board they needed a law, or the reds would have meant nothing. Three colours carry meaning, and nothing else may borrow them. Burgundy is what you can do: the button, a link, the ring around a selected piece. Blood is what it costs: a stained square, a capture. Gold is what it means: the leader, and victory. Gold is never decoration, and it is never an action.
- Burgundy. What you can do.
- Blood. What it costs.
- Gold. What it means.
All of it on one board
Every colour on the board is one of the twelve above. Nothing is white, nothing is black, and nothing is a gradient or a shadow. That is what makes a screen read as cloth.
What changes at night?
Everything above is the light look. There is a second one, called Night Woad, and the game has had it since August.
It is not the light look turned upside down. Measured on a dark ground, burgundy all but disappears, and so do the ink, blood and woad. Of the colours that carry meaning, only gold can still be read. Lighten burgundy and madder until they can be read too and they draw closer together, and the law needs them apart.
So the night look starts from woad instead of linen. The ground is woad itself, driven dark until it reads as slate. Your pieces stay pale and theirs stay woad, so nothing you have learned is turned inside out. The law holds, and one colour crosses over: what you can do goes from burgundy to a light blue. That leaves blood and madder as the only reds on the board. Gold keeps its meaning.
The game follows your device's light or dark setting. Settings lets you choose Light or Dark instead.
The game is Rithmomachia. The cloth is how I chose to show it. See how to play
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