Ancient forerunner to Backgammon, with a Christmas theme!

Author's note:

Ur is an ancient board game, a sort of forerunner to backgammon, unearthed by archeologists years ago near the city of Ur. Guess where the name comes from? They found the board, some counters, and some pyramid shapes with a coloured corner. But no rules. Later on some rules for a board game were found elsewhere on one of those cuneiform things, but they were a bit "flowery". The described being happy on some squares, unhappy on others and so on. Anyhow, the eggheads who know their history put two and two together and made a playable board game. So, if you haven't worked it out yet, there are no definitive "correct" rules, which means somebody like me can take the idea and run with it with no guilty feelings.

So, what is all this to do with this game? Well, the elves at the North Pole enjoy their breaks in the canteen. They also enjoy working for Santa. Hey, it's all for Christmas, after all! So, they enjoy a good race from the said canteen back to their workshop. It's a good way of burning off those extra pounds from the mince pies and keeping themselves fit and healthy. You get to run a team for a season, hopefully make the playoffs and win in the final!