by Tony Boydell
The rain rain-rain-rained on High Wycombe as Old Boddle, faithful manservant to Sir Carol of Conegra Hall, stumped up the leaf-bestrewn lane to the Kitchen door and let himself in. He had just finished laying man traps in the swing park by the Primary School – now that Term had begun again, the little blighters were in-and-out of the bark chippings cocky as-you-like.“Greuurrghhhh! Them liddle bloiters ‘em need lockin urp ‘n omisstake” he expectorated, hoiking up a thick ball of phlegm that he affixed behind his ear ‘for later’, “Them wons dissiplinnin’ – bear traps too good f’them!”
Crook, the Cook, sunny-morning of visage despite the obvious cloudy-outpourings and wetty deluge, was tossing crepes in a wide pan and whistling to himself. “Mornin’, Boddle”, he demurred, “Oi bin makin brekkie for ye – would you loik a nibble o’me buttery pancake? Or praps a mouthful o’me salty porridge? Wash yer ‘ands ferse, moind!”. “I already washed me ‘ands up against a tree earlier” the wrinkled retainer replied, removing his caked-boots, his biscuited sou’wester and his petit-foured over-trousers, “Nice n’warm onnis cole Wensdee”.
Cook resumed his intercourse: “You really should'n be setting traps up at the School – them kiddies gotta get exercoise, y’kno. S’good fer ‘em”.
“Oi givvem eggsersoize – tie a fox to ‘em and let the Master’s ‘ounds run ‘em up the meadow fern afternoon!” Boddle chuckled, hanging his sodden underpants from the copper pan railing and squatting over the great iron stove to give his unmentionables a good steaming. Just at that moment – Cook frantically whisking his batter across the formica, Old Boddle singeing his scrotum over the range – Moss, the Butler, peeped through the Serving Hatch with a look of wasp-swallowing scorn on his face: “The Master and Her Ladyship will be requiring their first course, if you would be so good!”
Old Boddle climbed into his razor-creased trousers, buttoned his over-starched shirt and picked up the breakfast tray. Unable to move his head or neck due to the rigid collar, he carried the entrées into the Dining Room. “Your breakfast, your Lordships!” fore-locked Boddle, laying Love Letter on to the enormous oaken table then retreating, all the while bowing so maniacally that he slammed his forehead into the parquet.
His Lordship, Sir Carol De Croque, and his wife Lady Antoinette, played two games of this (imported from the Far East) soufflé while remarking on the rule-book’s quote that it was ‘60% luck’. Sir Carol roundly (and squarely and rectangularly) beat his wife, much to her protestations vis-à-vis ‘chance’. She was saved from further humiliation by the arrival of the amuse-bouche of Doctor Who: The Card Game, delivered raw to the table by a head-bandaged Boddle; this took the Noble couple so long to unwrap and prepare that they set it to one side, un-played, when the next course – Among the Stars – was slopped into the place-settings along with their house guest for the day, Sir David Sunnydee.
Sir David’s coach and horses had been held up by a startled heifer on the A404 – the heifer made off with his silk gloves and watch*. The three upper crustians duly drafted, built and scored their way along the labyrinthine (and very annoying) VP track until Sir Carol had won after snatching all of the goals, somewhat unsportingly (as ‘host’) from the others. Lady Antoinette, clutching her heaving bosom and reaching for the smelling salts, observed that it all felt a little flat in the execution; one would select one’s card for the round based on robust end-game scoring criteria - and a pinch of reasonable denial to other players – and yet it boiled down to getting the right cards to get the ‘goals’, everything else being pretty equal. Sir David, also clutching Her Ladyship’s heaving bosom, seemed to playing to a specific plan (hoard money, build lots of power stations) to no avail.
Moss and Boddle returned, almost immediately, to sweep the grand mensa from bow to stern with grandiloquent brooms** while the toffs retired to the Library for a pre-dejeuner bowl of tobacco, a fortified wine and Ginkgopolis.
Ginkgopolis is a pleasingly-presented abstract with a city-building theme wallpaper-pasted on to the top – ultimately, it is an exercise in area majority scoring with quote a lot of fiddling and fart-arsing about along the way. Players draft a card from an available hand (passed clockwise) which will either allow the building of a tile outwards (on a building site labelled A thru to L) from an initial 3 x 3 tile grid OR build on top of an existing tile if you have the right number on the card (each tile is numbered 1 to 20, in three colours). Building out or up costs resources (your pool of player markers) and tiles, both of which you can get by ditching cards for non-placement instead. Building UP gives you ownership of the card upon which you have just built which, in turn, gives you either an in-game or end-game bonus/effect. Not all cards are in the draft deck to start, placement of tiles into the play area puts that tile number/colour card into the deck for ‘next time around’. The key is to stack up (pun intended) your in-game bonuses so that building refills your resources/tile pool THEN start taking majority control of tile regions of the same colour. Oh, but is it fiddly. Newly-constructed tiles need their ‘card’ adding to the draftable card pool, VPs and resources are passed back-and-forth, shuffling and tile-meddling abounds. On first play, this wheelbarrow-full load of distracting admin takes your attention AWAY from working out how and where you want/need to place tiles – unfortunately, you are also at the whim of the cards in the draft (some of which are discarded before the draft begins!) leading to the situation of knowing WHAT you need to DO but never seeing the cards to let you do it: pure frustration in a beautiful package.
Sir David, concerned that he may have introduced a foul turd into the soup tureen of their gaming, politely-awaited a ‘finisher before lunch’ suggestion from the Seat. Her Ladyship, however, had been enticed and intrigued by the large deck protruding from Sir David’s luggage, coquettishly-remarking that she “would be delighted to play with THAT for a while!”. Guildhall, from AEG and part of their new ‘World Of Tempest’ range, proved a satisfyingly-simple and wholly-interactive dessert with enough opportunities for shenanigans (most important a criterion, this) to please even the most jaded game-cynic. It is ‘set collection for VPs’, with the six role types affording a variety of escalating abilities based on how big your sets are at the time (when you play cards) – lots of fun in a clean package and one Her Ladyship is eager to get into her hands again in the near future.
Sir David’s departure (a prior appointment with a Tradesperson about a Canis lupus familiaris , apparently) was preceded by one more Love Letter for the road – this time, a panting and exhausted Lady Antoinette beating off both gentlemen to a communally-satisfying finish!
As the ornate barouche trip-trapped and crunch-crunched along the extended driveway, through the avenue of Cedars and half-buried poachers, Old Boddle – now tramping his way across the croquet lawn to throttle a brace of pigs for luncheon – could be seen merrily flicking the Vees as the first rays of sunshine peeped through the murky cumulus.
*bomp-tish!
** pompously