Yeah, we totally forgot to take photos of a draughts game when the Lady and I were in Hydra.
This speaks to how much Draughts left us both nonplussed. The Lady had never played it – which I don’t believe for a second, but let’s believe it while eye rolling in exactly the same way teenage boys do when girl peers claim to never masturbate. Yeah. Like, yeah. I played it, but not since being a pre-pubescent. If I was on a checked board, I would try and push people towards chess – and besides, it was a game my brother always excelled at, and I didn’t really see the reason why.
(Not that he didn’t excel at chess either, but I had more fun fighting uphill there…)
Which kind of point. Neither of us enjoyed the game of Draughts. This makes an interesting compare and contrast with Chinese Checkers, a game neither of us knew at all, and had a right giggle with. The reasons were threefold.
1) We fucked up the rules. I thought I knew the rules of draughts – move up the board, jumping over enemies to take them, get to the end and become a HYPERDRAUGHTSPIECE, kick ass. For some reason I’d forgotten about the huffing rules – in fact, I’m not even sure my pre-teen mind ever played with huffing rules. Actually, googling around reveals that what the printed rules in the magical 7-in-1 set said were Huffing weren’t actually what is huffing. Without getting into the details, it’s a case of if there’s a move where you can take something and you choose to do something else, the other person can force you to do that move (though the rules gave the option of either ignoring it or wiping out the taking piece). Anyway – we didn’t play with that when I was a kid, and we were into the game before I glanced at the rules and noticed it. We decided to carry on playing the way we were, which immediately made the Lady’s tactic of not moving with her back row ever brutally dominant.
Perhaps tellingly, she didn’t enjoy this tactical advantage she gained. She also didn’t like the forced move rule. It seemed to be cheap and… well, she didn’t use the word “unrealistic” but that’s the sense of it. An unnatural rule in a videogame, necessary for balance reasons normally exposes a weakness in the actual game. They’re the ones which you see why they exist, but don’t seem to naturally flow from the game concept. For a sports example, look at Football (Or soccer for all your checkers players). The Offside rule is after the fact nonsense, the one piece of over-ornate filigree in one of the most agreeably simple sports in the world. Equally, that games are little but the rules that make them, the second you add one of these rules to the game, you change its character. Mastering the core rules of the game provokes nothing but admiration. Mastering these patch-up rules provokes nothing but eye-rolling at your metagamery. In football, no-one likes the foul-diver, the Off-side trap-meister. And over in videogame, any time you’ve shouted CHEAP! you’re fairly likely to have found one of these.
The point being, an “unnatural” rule divorces you from the game and makes it less satisfactory. The sadder fact is that without the unnatural rule, the game is worse – and possibly unplayable.
2) We dug Chinese Checkers, because while our tactics were weak, we grasped the motivational end of getting to the other end of the board. We had trouble with Draughts as… well, we got the tactics – certainly far more than Chinese Checkers – but were never sure we were getting nearer to our goal or not, except in the indirect way of taking pieces. Its aim felt foggy – in which case, why wasn’t the same in Chess? I think this comes back to Chess’ embracing of an actual real-world situation, no matter how iconically rendered. In chess, it’s analagous to battle-lines. You can see the piece you’re meant to protect. It is, in a real way, despite being more complicated than draughts, a clearer game.
3) It shared a poor endgame with Chinese Checkers. However, rather than one being divorced from the other and not actually playing against one another, it was a case of one side having such a determined advantage over the other. Yes, I got a fair few pieces in the final section – I had freedom of movement, and reduced complexity of pieces to worry about to allow greater concentration on what I did – but it was never really in doubt. It was directly analagous to the RTS game ending where one side can steamroller another, in a way which Chinese Checkers wasn’t. Which reveals a way which the latter’s design choices are interesting. By removing the ability to actually take pieces, it means that throughout the game both players have the same number of physical toys to kick around. Last time I talked about how what we often considered were rage-quitting was actually boredom quitting in a shitty endgame… but Draughts make me think it’s not that simple. RTS – with the magnification of pleasure caused by their beautiful, intricate pieces – become exponentially less interesting because those toys are taken away from you. It’s like dumped while your best mate continues to get off with a hottie. It’s annoying. There was a flicker of this in Draughts, and it’s only going to be worse with an actual videogame.
All of which left Draughts as the game the Lady and I enjoyed least. But it’s not the worst game. That’s next.
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Add a vote for the new board game section from my side!
Nice link, Kieron, though it did everything to remind me why I hate Monopoly (mostly because there are so many other games out there that are so much better but hardly any-one has heard of) and less to persuade me of its merits. Heck, I’d rather play Settlers. And as a regular on BoardGameGeek I will never rescind my position.
So, yeah still… Fucking Monopoly.
i agree with the sane majority, without huffing there is no point to draughts. i find it bizarre that you condem this rule after you’ve mentioned your opponent left all her pieces on the back row.. without huffing you couldn’t possibly get these pieces or therefore get a king. maybe by assuming a lack of complexity you missed the point of the game? looking for sneaky huff moves that opened up chain-takes for you is the most fun draughts can provide imo.
also, why does an american also show up bitching about this site being written by the english on almost every single post?!
There’s a “Monopoly Express” boardless variant which is played entirely with dice in about 20 minutes.
I rather like it. All the underhandedness and dirty dealing of Monopoly, but over in a fraction of the time.
@Lewis
But the rule add depth not complexity.
A subtle difference for sure but a difference none the less.
The new versions of monopoly come with an extra “speed die” too which makes stuff faster. Off the top of my head there’s a 1, 2 and 3 which let you optionally add that much to the roll, a couple of sides have a symbol that lets you move to the nearest unpurchased property and there’s something else too, can’t remember what.
Monopoly is okay, but people that put money on Free Parking should be shot. Fucking people what put money on Free Parking.
Want to have some real fun, play some backgammon. Download one of the fun and challenging games at:
http://bestbackgammon.com
@david – clearly spam!
Rab Florence is an actual legend.
Just thought I should add that.
Tut tut. Kieron, imagine Garry Kasparov reviewing Half-Life 2 and saying it’s no good cos it’s all just flashy lights and impossible to master.
Spend a week or so playing draughts once a day and all those little nuances you claim not to notice will come out of the woodwork. The fact that you were regularly trounced by your brother should be the clue. Also, huffing is there for a reason. Yes, it’s a kludge, but as you said yourself, better to suspend your disbelief than to remove it and then moan that the game doesn’t go anywhere.
And as for the endgame, for casual games things get boring. When you can both see a few moves ahead it’s far less random.
Ben: But as I proved elsewhere, Chess has good graphics.
KG