Comfortable Disorientation

Bygone Boardgames

My friend Claire suggested a trip to the Museum of Brands, Packaging & Advertising, I'm so glad she did, as we had an amazing afternoon - not least because we got to meet and send time with the collector, Robert Opie himself.  I'll record more of my visit over the next few days, once I've extracted the photos from my phone.  In the meantime here are some lovely board games that caught my eye while I was there (taken before my camera battery died): 

 

It's the "up to date" bit that gets me. It reminds me of the "new and accurate" claims on old maps.

A collection of games based around the wireless had Claire and I speculating what The Great Internet Game might involve: Get distracted reading blogs, lose three hours, perhaps?

I've wanted to go to Berlin for a while, but now I want a Rollicking Trip.

 

Never mind 'fun for all the family', board games should be a glamorous pursuit.  Actually, this one tickled me because you can sing the title to the Champion the Wonder Horse theme tune.

Christmas board game ideas

In case anyone was thinking about giving board games as Christmas presents, Yehuda has put together a nice list of suggestions. I'm pleased to see Boggle and Backgammon made it.

Board games round up

It's probably obvious, but I've really enjoyed my little foray into board games.  There's quite a few more that I would like to post about, but I've wasted more than enough time on this already.  To finish off, here are a few nice links I've found along the way.

The Board Game Company would be a nice place to visit should you find yourself in Newport Pagnell.  I bet the people who run it and work there are really nice.  They do a great line of vintage games, like these:

     

As Yehuda passionately points out, there's a whole world of modern games waiting to be found at boardgamegeek.  Yehuda's blogroll attests to the fact that there are a lot of people out there blogging about board games.

Finally, there's the International Society for Board Games Studies, a multi-disciplinary group dedicated to the study of these matters.  I haven't had much time to look at the work, but I like the fact it exists.

The Game Of Life

Pictures from boardgamegeek

From memory, The Game Of Life was a bit rubbish.  My motivation for posting is that for many years, my only half-decent scar story was my claim that I'd been scarred by the church in the game of life. In a moment of over-excitement I'd brought my wrist down on the plastic steeple.  In later versions of the game the church has a tower so perhaps I wasn't the only child who was injured.

The aim of the game was to drive through life ticking off milestones and accumulating money, until you reached the end.  Not death, but a (hopefully wealthy) retirement. 

It's interesting to look at how the game has evolved from its 1861 start point as The Checkered Game Of Life, to the latest version, last updated in the 1990's.  In summary, the game has become more complex over time. Wikipedia has a load of detail on this evolution, but I think the different names given to retirement options give a nice feel for it.

1860's: Happy Old Age

1960's: Millionnaire Acres or The Poor Farm

1980's: Millionnaire or Bankrupt

1990's: Millionnaire Estates or Countryside Acres

The Great Game of Britain

I've just realised that this is the first of my 'board games' that actually includes a board. Apologies if I've inadvertently bothered anyone's pedant sensibilities. Hopefully this fab double-sided board will help make amends.

The Great Game Of Britain is a lesser known gem in the sphere of board games. The basic idea is to race around the British rail network, visiting six destinations (3 x near, 3 x far) before returning to London. Of course racing around the British rail network isn't straightforward, so whenever you change lines, travel across London or need to switch to a ferry (for instance, to get to the Isle of Wight) you pick up a hazard. You also encounter signal failures - in the game you know, rather than suspect, that these are the work of malevolent forces hell-bent on frustrating you.

Other than selecting your route, and deciding how evil you want to be (trapping someone in Cornwall is generally a good ploy), there's not a lot of strategy involved. Most of the game depends on the luck of the draw and the roll of the dice - if you have to visit both Penzance and Stornoway you're most likely stuffed. But this makes it a good game to play as or with kids.

It's educational too. My geography leaves a lot to be desired, yet thanks to this game the location of certain UK towns and cities is indelibly imprinted in my mind. Each of the location cards provides a snippet of tourist info - just in case you were dubious of the value of visiting Peterborough for example.

The loveliest thing about this game is the double-sided board. You can choose whether to play on modern tracks or to go back to an age of steam. As children we shunned the charm of yesteryear, preferring the clean lines and recognisable counties of the modern board. In hindsight, it strikes me that this was great preparation for a career in qualitative research.

Sadly, I haven't managed to uncover any trivia on this one. It doesn't even rate a listing on wikipedia. All the great photos in this post have been taken from this ebay listing.

Backgammon

Picture of medieval players from Wikipedia

As with many of my favourite things, backgammon is deceptively simple.  Like chess and draughts, it carries an ancient aura.  When playing backgammon, you feel locked in a timeless battle, that somehow more is at stake than just who counts off all their checkers first.  However, in backgammon, unlike the other two, lady luck is a significant player at the table.  For me, this is the secret of its appeal.

Backgammon presents its players with a series of decisions.  What levels of risk are you willing to take in search of glory? Should you run to the finish, or hang around trying to frustrate your opponent? There's plenty of scope for strategy, especially if you play multi-game tournaments, and use the doubling cube.  Yet with a big dollop of luck, a beginner can beat a pro.

I was taught the rules of backgammon by an older girl I met on holiday.  She enchanted me with her maturity, I was baffled but thrilled by her willingness to hang out with me.  She proved worthy of hero-worship when she revealed the secrets of backgammon to me, patiently explaining the best opening moves and some of the lingo. It felt like an initiation of sorts, I was handed a set of skills that became mine to sharpen over time.

I am particular about my backgammon sets.  They need to be covetable, which means they must be substantial and leather-bound.  I have owned more than one over time.  At university, Tom, Gemma and I went trough a period of backgammon obsession, using the game to determine weighty matters, such as which of us would make tea, or take the trip to the shop.  Curiously, when we packed up to go home at the end of our second year, my backgammon set was found in Tom's room, minus all the red checkers.  None of us can fathom what became of them.

        Backgammon Trivia

• Backgammon is the oldest recorded game in history.  It is believed to have originated in Persian Mesopotamia - Iran, Iraq, and Syria today. (Source Gammoned.com)
• Famous historical backgammon players include Lewis Carroll and Thomas Jefferson.  Among today's celebrities Tobey Maguire, Joaquin Phoenix and Kylie Minogue are reported to be fans. (Source: Backgammon Galore! forums)

Boggle

Scrabble is obviously the daddy when it comes to word games.  To my mind, this makes Boggle a tempestuous teenage son. 

Boggle is boistrous, impatiant and frantic. Whole games can be played and won in the time it sometimes takes a player to take a single turn in Scrabble.  In two-player games, Boggle mocks grand displays of lexical cleverness, all letters are equal and speed reaps greater reward than length. Even if you effortlessly find long words, the satisfaction derived soon pales if your opponent has nipped in with lots of simple but deadly 3-4 letter words. It pays to learn anagrams, to know that if you have tea, you also have eat and ate.  Oh, and never forget the words ion and eon - in my experience, a surprising number of games are won and lost on these two blighters.

In my teens, I thought I was a Boggle master. But at university I met my match in Gemma. I can't beat my husband either, his wins are usually slight but the consistency of them pains me.  To make matters worse, he claims he has never beaten his older brother.  So clearly I'm quite average at Boggle after all.

      Boggle Trivia

• Despite there only being 16 cubes, 17 letter words such as Inconsequentially, Quadricentennials, and Sesquicentennials are theoretically possible as Q and U are on the same one (Source: Wikipedia)
• The words Baby and Back are impossible as the only cube containing a B also contains the only K (Source: the geekily cool A Computer Analysis of Boggle by Craig S. Kaplan)

Board games

Gemma (pictured, filming somewhere cold) thinks I should write more posts about board games. The more I think about it, the more I like this idea. I'm going to do a mini series of them this week before I go on holiday.

I'm a massive fan of board games. I like the way you can demonstrate and develop skills while enjoying fun interactions with others. I love how people get all competitive over something so ultimately pointless, people reveal a lot about themselves when they play board games. A well designed game offers a perfect balance of several key elements: skill, strategy, knowledge, luck, risk, silliness, speed, psychology, creativity. Oh yes, I like board games a lot. I'm feeling really inspired by this.

I think I'm going to start with Boggle.

Cluedo Nostalgia Edition

Isn't it fabulous? One of my colleagues bought one of these in
Woolworths today. It has the original board design and wooden playing
pieces, so they feel 'real' rather than plastic!

It transports me back to being a child playing Cluedo with my brother
in my grandparent's house using the set my father and his brother played
with as kids. A pretty powerful evocation!

Classic games like Cluedo offer parents a way to relive their own
childhood whilst connecting with their kids, the game becomes a vessel
for passing an experience down through generations. This Nostalgia
Edition neatly capitalises on this.