Smitened.

A lovely afternoon spent in James' back garden watching our respective children 'debate' the turn order on the slide seemed an unlikely place to fit in a new game. Many moons ago James, Charlotte (James' wife) and I passed round Dave Gorman's book (Vs the world) on playing games. One of the stand out games he played was a garden game called Smite. James revealed that he obtained a copy called "Knock Down" but was essentially the same thing.

The bits

The rules, a thing of simplistic beauty. Throw a lump of wood at a clustered array of numbered pegs and score accordingly. If you knock down a single pin you score the amount on the pin, from one to twelve. However if you knock down more than one you score the total number of pins knocked down. One to Twelve not the cumulative point score. You need to score exactly 50 taking turns with your opponent, if you bust you start from 25. The best part of the game is that as the pins get knocked asunder they are positioned upright where they fall. This rule is the key element to its attraction. The dilemma of going for a high pin slightly on it's own over going for numbers in clustered pins can be agonising. Especially when you cock it up.

An athlete

In the first game we (Jacquie Ashton Ava Rose and I) bust 3 times whereas they (James Charlotte and Jimmy) made steady progress reaching an unbusted 49. An accurate throw to the stranded number 1 peg sealed the game for them. In the second and third games Jacquie and myself made highly unlikely throws on pegs 7 and 12 respectively to win them.

It's Jimmy's birthday next week. I'm hoping Smite might be set up in the corner for the dads to pretend they're not really competitive whilst wanging a stick around. Smite is a fiendishly addictive game which kids and adults can play together in their back garden. It's great!