Naturally, as the pastime spread amongst the rank and file, soldiers began competing in an attempt to prove their mettle. After a while, soldiers moved on from hitting the bottom of upturned wine casks and started using cross-sectioned tree trunks as targets. At this point the game begged for a consolidation of a consistent rule set and the tree trunks natural structure allowed competitors to further demonstrate their skills by providing different sections on which to test their ability further. As it turns out, the tree trunks own growth rings, and radial cracks offered the first template for the sections that would eventually appear on the sports modern-day dart boards. Darts would progressively change over hundreds of years until the turn of the nineteenth century when it began to approximate the game we all know and love.