Good (Ritter) Sports

It was 1985 when mates would turn up at James’ house on a BMX. Almost three decades on, history was repeating itself as Chris arrived on his Raleigh Burner with his board games in a backpack. The games had been decided with little deliberation. Agricola, with Carcassonne for afters. Far more fretting went into choosing the night’s Ritter Sport flavour. Perhaps hoping to dull Chris’ game-playing focus, James fanned out four large-sized, hard-to-find blocks of Chris’ favourite chocolate, fingers crossed he’d soon be too euphoric to concentrate fully.

Abundance was to be the in-game theme too, as James’ hand contained the maid, the fruit tree and the animal pen. Soon, each remaining round card was stacked with a Vegas-style buffet to feed James’ farmers. That accomplished, what could he do to actually win? He’d never won before.

James says "balls" to the diet

Chris was snatching wood like a twelve year-old before Bonfire Night. And to befuddle James, Chris didn’t seem to be cultivating his usual crops. Instead, he was knocking up an array of pens and eying up the sheep. James didn’t know whether to cruelly release them into the wilderness before Chris bought them, but there were other things to be done. Once again, James was frightened near-to-death by the fast-approaching end of the game. How would he get everything ready?

Yet again, James fenced off his farm into one giant pasture to avoid penalties for unused spaces. Ho-hum. He added a sprinkling of finest cattle and did a touch of sowing, but concentrated on the bonus points his occupations and improvements would produce.

Chris had sheep, boar and cattle and stables; slaughtering the excess for food in his oven when his canoeist couldn’t bring back the goods. Watching James pick up the basketweavers major improvement at the end, already having a fair bit of leftover reed from his reed pond, Chris considered swiping the huge pile of reed that remained on the board to intercept the points. But with a whirring of brain cogs, he finished with an orgy of breeding, to end with five farmers for a huge 15 points!

They thought it would be close. It was. They thought there’d be regret. There was. With his card bonuses, his full farm-board and a few bonus points for the reed stacked up in his basketweavers’, James narrowly clinched victory. Chris had done well, but suffered from a misplaced stable, an unused square and from not pinching that reed from under James’ nose.

An Agricola win for James. More Ritter Sport next time.

James 35, Chris 34.

So Carcassonne was produced. The vanilla version that James prefers, though with the river addition to get things going. This was intended as a care-free distraction while they yapped about manly man-stuff. And BMXs. But soon the silence was thick with frustration as tiles hovered in shaking fingers and farmers lay prostrate on unconnected fields. Too many meeples were stuck in castles or on roads that refused to reach completion.

Cloisters always seem satisfying, but two came up and went down empty, all meeples otherwise engaged. James trapped one of Chris’ farmers in an empty field between roads and then called in a score of 48 when one huge castle was finally finished. Phew! Even so, he was concerned Chris’ farmers seemed to have the upper hand. They did, but it wasn’t quite enough to catch up. Very close again. And a long night. It was almost midnight when Chris launched out of James’ gate on his BMX. Like Street Hawk. Three decades late.

Now James wants a BMX.

James 97, Chris 94.