Categories: random
Date: 15 February 2009 13:26:55
As we weren't able to drive to York for the weekend, we ended up joining with a crowd of friends in Edinburgh for a marathon board games session. We have a lot of friends who are really into games, so this is something that does get arranged every few months, but this is the first time we were ever able to go.
I'm not a big gamer myself - I enjoy them, but there's something about many games which just doesn't connect with how my brain works. I have, over the years, developed a bit of a reputation for spending the entire game not having a clue what is happening, but either a. winning anyway or b. winning for most of the way before being overtaken at the end. Either way, it's a bit of a running joke.
The game I ended up joining in with was called Trans-Europa, which involves building railway lines across a map of Europe to connect 5 cities (before the other people playing can connect their 5 cities). That's the kind of game I can cope with - I understood the rules and the point of the game, and it didn't involve lots of wheeler-dealing and strategising (which are the bits my brain doesn't do). I might put that game in my next letter to Father Christmas. The only games we have are the original Trivial Pursuit (which I love, but we only have the original questions and the first update, so they're all massively out of date), Bop-It (which was a wedding present, but is a bit noisy, although great fun especially after a couple of beers), Remy (which is basically Rummy, but with wooden pieces rather than playing cards), and a few of HD's, the only one of which I remember is called something like "the HD game" (where 'HD' is his real name, obviously), where you have cards with lots of famous HDs. That was quite fun actually, perhaps we should dig that out some time.
HD was playing a game which also involved building railway lines, but also involved speculating and buying shares and moving cargo and that sort of thing. I found it stressful just looking at it! Far too complicated. I think it's really funny that I can cope with a PhD, but if I see a game with more than basic rules my brain shuts down and I can't get beyond the "I can't do that!" feeling.