For Christmas this year I received the board game “Thud” from W’s parents. I played W last night (and got badly defeated), but still enjoyed it immensely. It’s probably difficult to describe the origins of the game myself, so I will rely on the words of Terry Pratchett…
In short, the clever dwarf who invented the game was asked by his king to name his reward. The answer was that he wanted his board filled with gold: One small gold piece on the first square, two pieces on the second, four pieces on the third, etc. Needless to say this is more than all the gold of the Disc (the world, in Discworld is “the Disc”) combined. The king then got angry and threatened to kill the dwarf who was ‘too drhg’hgin clever by half’. The inventor then hastily changed his reward to ‘as much gold as he could carry’, whereupon the king agreed and simply broke one of his arms.
The basic idea is that one side has lots of drawves, and the other side has trolls - and you try to knock the crap out of each other. There is a huge twist - you must play two games (once as dwarves and once as trolls), and aggregate the scores. I have to admit W defeated me in both games we played last night - but this is typical for me.
For some reason it takes me a long time to learn new things, but I am pretty dogmatic. I will usually persevere, and end up fairing better than the person who starts well but doesn’t get much better at something.
Anyway - it’s quite expensive to buy, but if you see a box of “Thud” in a store, think very seriously about buying it. It’s great fun.