-
Anthony Boydell
United Kingdom
Unspecified
Unspecified
-
It was party time down at The White Lion in Ross-on-Wye last night, though you'd have been forgiven for thinking someone had DIED given the sombre, sour mood in the bar area when myself and middle son, Benedict (10), arrived for some jolly, joue-based japery.
Hard-bitten local types muttered into their ales as a fluffy Golden Retriever wet-nosed his rounds from knee-to-knee (big and brown of eye, waggy of tail) – despite the roaring, baking, deliciously cosy Winter fire burning in the hearth there was no joy burning in their eyes; just resignation.
Grumpy sods.
Still, when the Batesons arrived and suggested we move to the more private restaurant room across the entrance hall, I initially resisted (the lure of the roaring flame was strong) but further glimpses of les visages plus dour convinced me to up my sticky stickz…
…talking of which…
Expecting a few more, our petite group – also supplemented by Cidercon host John P – kicked off with a light, quick starter in anticipation of the influx: Sticky Stickz. This is a firm favourite in the Boydell household – incumbents and visiting rells alike – though it’s taken a bit of a hammering after some recent primary school level attention: I try not to be precious about games, but SS is hard to get hold of at the moment and I really MUST draw the line at orificular insertion. Still, the stickz were (mostly) intact and I think nearly all of the tiles were still present. It didn’t take long (however) for tentative prodding to descend into elbow-barging, sucker-slamming aggression!
Rule summary: Role three dice; they show a ‘number of faces’, one or two colours and a facial expression to look for. Use your sticky stick to spear tiles on top of stacks that match the criteria on the dice – keep going until nothing ‘revealed’ matches. Spear a mismatching tile and you pay a penalty.
Becky and myself shared the honours in the post-finale ‘sizing up of piles’ (that’s what it says in the rules, you know – you DON’T COUNT YOUR TILES, YOU MEASURE EACH-OTHERS LENGTH).
Next up, (still) just the five of us, Ben suggested Pit – a real classic to which I have never before been introduced (though I do have a thrift store-sourced edition gathering dust in one of my cupboards). John found a real seam of success here, slamming down a full set while the rest of us were always one or two off – time to root amongst the dead skin and furry particulate methinks.
Rule summary: there are number of commodities, in sets of 9, plus two ‘special’ cards (one is a nice wildcard, one is always bad and both count against you in the final reckoning for a round). All the cards are dealt out at random and then follows a free-for-all swapping of face-down cards – loud shouting positively encouraged! ‘Two? Two?’, ‘I’ll take two!’ etc. As soon as you have a full set of nine, or eight with the wildcard, you slam them down on the ‘special tile’. The first to do so scores points to the value of the commodity, they/other players will lose points if they have either of the special cards). Rinse, shout, repeat.
It was time to refill our glasses, so something quicker and less ‘hitting things’ was proposed: the wonderfully ‘why didn’t I think of that?’ Cubiko was next. I took an early lead to win a couple of rounds and take myself to 3 points out of the required five, but Becky pulled of a strong comeback with a double diagonal for 8 points and the laurels. Ben had enough trouble getting the ball onto the grid let alone scoring any points! He resorted to accusations of me tampering with the play area when I was merely straightening the table cloth…as he was bouncing the ball. Innocent until proven guilty and all that.
Rule summary: It’s noughts and crosses with a bouncy ball
Benedict, being a loyal and most favourite son*, suggested we play Bloody Legacy, an early but popular offering from the Tony Boydell design stable back when it was more of a chicken-wire coop. It was fun to see three people who had not seen the daft artwork or read the surreal titles (‘Shark-infested Duvet’ and ‘Doorway guillotine’ being personal favourites). As always, a slice of luck and a healthy dab of vindictiveness / ‘kicking them when they’re down’ saw me through to a satisfying, elephant-assisted victory over John P.
Rule summary: play a trap against someone else and there may follow a series of card-plays to move the trap about the place. Traps, when they settle, do damage or remove cards from your hand. Take too much damage or lose all your cards and you’re out of the round – minus one of your three ‘lives’. Last one standing is the winner.
Now was time to indulge one of Ben’s secret passions – Creationary. The Boydell household is not unknown to this plastic ambrosia (we have a play-room FULL of the stuff) so there was no trouble convincing the rest of us. Team Ben (Bateson and Boydell) got off to a flyer and were 6 points into the requisite 10 before Team Not Ben finally got in their groove – of particular note was Becky getting ‘toothbrush’ with but a second to spare on the timer and the following build (again from Becky) which is a work of genius:
{picky goes here)
…the subject to convey was ‘iceberg’ – do you see what she did there?
Rule summary: It’s Pictionary with Lego.
With the bar over the way now virtually deserted, the humbug-mumbling miserablists having departed into their po-faced night, we had just time for one more – this time ANOTHER classic: Beyond Balderdash. This proved a tense and competitive 60 minute affair with Tony and Ben scrumming, bluffing and psych-ing it out for ultimate triumph. A rum mis-interpretation of the scoring rules put Ben on the victory podium (temporarily) until I demanded a recount/retraction and we got one more round in – just enough for me to secure my rightful and just conquest. Ben managed a clean-sweep round (correct definition plus everyone else going for his definition), but ‘best definition’ MUST go to Boydell Juniors’ definition for why a particular gentleman was (in)famous: ‘He invented the electric fan and was killed by one’ – pure, bloody genius!
Rule Summary: Dixit with words
As you can see, this was an absolute riot of an evening – lots of variety, colour, noise and laughter (New Years Resolution: Play more Balderdash!). It was let down slightly by the absence of more players (some mysteriously and upsettingly missing) and the definitely un-Seasonal atmosphere in the pub – but, hey, what’s to moan about?
Good friends, good games, good times.
*whose name begins with ‘B’
|
|
