Random Thoughts: Playing Board Games with the Grands

Whenever grandson Neb explains the rules for a board game, it sounds something like this:

“There’s some goats, no wait, they’re sheep. Sheep. And there’s wood, and some tools...”

“And gold,” chimes in Little Sister Ness.

“And gold, and you have to go around the board and get territories, but only if you roll a six, or unless it adds up to eight, and then you don’t get another turn until you roll a nine three times in a row. And then, you need to draw a card, and the next player gets to take away all of your money.”

The instructions sound like a training manual in bullying to me, but who am I to judge? I glance at little Ness beside me, wondering how a wee five-year-old can take the cutthroat competition in such a complicated game.

Ness holds up one of the sheep and smiles at me mischievously. “Baaaaah,” she says.

I grin back. The sheep are cute. “Baaaaah,” I reply, marching my own sheep around on the tabletop.

I shall help her to play the game, I decide, to make it fair.

“Grandma, are you listening?” Neb chides me.

“Of course, dear,” I say. Reluctantly, I put down the sheep.

“You can get territories anywhere you like, except here, and here, and over here. And not anywhere that already has a player on it. Or a house. Or a homestead. Or a blue sorcerer. Or if you pull a card with a haystack.”

There seems to be an awful lot of rules. What were the game's creators trying to do, prepare children for living in a totalitarian regime? They should have stuck to plain old Snakes ‘n’ Ladders -- up and down, that's all you need to know.

The goal of this game, from what I can glean, is to get all the wealth for yourself by throwing your fellow settlers under the poverty bus. It’s basically Little House on the Prairie meets Wall Street.

“Oh, and then there’s the Gray Man,” Neb says, holding up a one-inch tall figurine dressed like a felon on the run.

I can hear the staccato sound of screeching violins as I look closely at his hard, plastic little face, his blank eyes staring into nothingness.

“What does he do?” I ask warily. After all, this isn’t my first time around the board-game block. After the kids go home, I know Gray Man will be lying in wait for me, perhaps under my bed, maybe in my closet, but most likely in the living room’s high-pile rug, his hard, pointy little noggin just waiting for my tender bare foot to come trodding his way.

Legos aren’t the only toy grandparents need to fear.

I scowl at Gray Man. He scowls back.

I'm so distracted by these thoughts that I’ve missed Neb’s entire explanation of Gray Man's role in the game. No matter. I’ll wing it. He’s clearly evil, so probably best to just avoid him.

Before we start, there’s some assembly required. No problem there. We’re an IKEA family. While Neb and Grandpa set up, Ness and I march our little sheep around the table, baaaahing at each other. Neb sighs. He reaches over and gently removes our wild and woolly friends from our hands, returning them to the herd.

The game begins.

I soon realize that Ness has tricked me. She knows full well how to play the game, and she is nothing but a cunning little capitalist. With every turn, I watch as more and more of my sheep, wood, gold and dignity disappear into her ruthless and grubby little hands.

Neb, however, is clearly in the lead. His houses and homesteads are popping up faster than Walmarts in a soccer-mom suburb.

Somehow, I am never in a position to build a house. If I have 25 sheep, I need 27, plus 14 piles of wood, 18 bags of gold, a lucky charm and a stuffed chicken.

I swear Neb is changing the rules as we go along.

Meanwhile, Gray Man stands arrogantly in the far corner of the board, watching me silently, but never coming into play. I wonder why he doesn’t make himself useful, and fire up some of those wood piles to make us some lovely mutton and lamb chops for dinner.

Ness, realizing she’s past the point where she has a chance of winning against her brother, has stopped marauding my supplies and is now focused on amassing all of the gold in our little board-game world.

Well played, my clever girl. Well played. She may not win this game, but she’s going to leave us all in the dust in the game of life.

With Ness's attention now turned away from my stockpile of supplies, I’m able to save up enough to buy my first house. Finally! I'm making some headway! But then my turn passes to Neb and the game ends abruptly, with Neb declaring himself the winner.

I’m told I’ve finished last.

The kids suggest playing another game that they've brought with them, but I suggest we do something more educational, like nap. We compromise by watching cartoons on TV, where I’m sure to doze off.

Ness snuggles up next to me on the couch, having probably remembered that the grandmother she just unmercifully trounced in the board game is the same grandmother who gets to choose her dessert.

As my eyes begin to close, my mind barely registers the soft thunk of Gray Man as he falls from the table, hits the floor, and rolls under the couch.