Castle Panic – a game

LtoRl: Arta, Michael, Duncan

All Eights
78, 8, 18

I only know one person who likes board games less than me.

Ceilidh Johnson.

I know the reasons I don’t like board games. In the back of my mind is always the notion that I should be doing work. I think of jobs (folding clothes, mopping floors, putting away dishes, wiping counter tops).

I rate them as more important than sitting at the board game table although I know I am completely wrong in that. Making connections with loved ones by spending time with them trumps all of the above. Still, I keep thinking about work.

Yesterday Michael asked me to play a game. I was taking pity on him, since he asks many people to play. All of them are adults who have the same idea I have – “must get at the work that is staring me in the face instead of playing board games”.

I acquiesced and told him it would be the game of his choice. He picked Castle Panic and when we sat down to play, Duncan became a third player. Duncan knew the rules which leapfrogged us many minutes ahead. We played until there was only one wall of the castle left, and one side of the wall that surrounds the castle. But that is a win in this cooperative game. Tonight Bonnie said that when she plays the game with Joaquim and David they never beat the mythical hordes that come out of the forest to destroy the castle.

For Duncan, Michael and me it was easy. I am totally compliant to Duncan’s suggestions. Michael is less so until Duncan shows him a strategy that will save the day and then he is all in. .Total cooperation and then good rolls of the die.

So good to play a cooperative game where everybody wins. Even the woman who has left behind many jobs to do.

Arta