Play the game

From Cold War strategy and gold-mining to railway building and crop harvesting, board game aficionado Henry Ward recommends six classic eurogames to play long into the summer evenings

I have a guilty teenage past; a misspent youth. From the age of 10, I devoted my time to battling giants, exploring castles and seeking treasure. I played Dungeons & Dragons. I was geekily excited by the paraphernalia: I meticulously painted miniature models, painstakingly recorded my alter-ego’s character traits and covered my bedroom walls with maps of other worlds. I barely existed in the here and now. The collective name for gamers is a stink. And I think there’s good reason for this.

When I was 16, I discovered other things to be interested in; namely music, films and girls. I packed my dragons away. But 30 years later I find myself, once again, obsessed with board games. Not Monopoly and Cluedo. These are actually fairly shit. Games like Stone Age, in which a tribe of Neolithic people build a civilisation, breaking stones and washing their gold in the river. It comes complete with a leather cup that smells really nice. Power Grid, a game in which you build an infrastructure of power stations across Germany. Agricola, where you take on the role of a farmer struggling to feed his family in post-plague Europe. And my current favourite, Twilight Struggle, a faithful reenactment of the Cold War between 1945 and 1989, played out over four hours. Go on, give one of these classics a go...

Twilight Struggle
Ananda Gupta & Jason Matthews; £36.99
A strategic reenactment of the Cold War from the end of WWII to 1989. The game uses cards printed with historic events and a world map on which players place influence points as they try to secure victory. If it goes to 1989 you can be playing for four hours!

Ticket to Ride: Europe
Alan R Moon; £31.49
This game holds a distinct memory for me. We had a rainy family holiday in Yorkshire a few years ago and ended up playing Ticket to Ride for hours. The aim is to build rail routes across Europe – either to finish secret mission routes, which players have on cards dealt at the beginning, or be the builder of the longest railway. A great family game; it may well have inspired us to go Interrailing a few years down the line!

7 Wonders
Antoine Bauza; £28.99
A quick 20-minute game for 2-7 players, and yet fantastically rich thematically. Everyone plays simultaneously, so there’s no tiring waiting around for that one person who takes ages over a go. Each player attempts to build one of the original 7 Wonders and a civilisation to go with it. You can focus on building an army, creating an economy, constructing monuments or encouraging science. It sounds much more complex than it actually is. Well worth a go.

Agricola
Uwe Rosenberg; £42.99
Another ‘worker placement’ game where players start with a farm and two pieces to place on it. You can play solo or with up to 5 players. As the game progresses you develop your farm: creating fields and pastures, raising animals, planting and reaping crops. With each harvest you have to ensure there’s enough food to feed your growing family. It’s a game I return to time and time again. It looks frighteningly complicated but it is well worth it.

Lost Valley: the Yukon Goldrush 1896
Tobias, Roland & Johannes Goslar; £44.99
A recent acquisition, which was first published in 2004. Each player takes the role of a prospector. As you explore the valley by placing tiles, you choose to mine for gold, hunt for furs or gather clues to buried treasure. You can return to the general store to trade in nuggets for tools but you must watch out for the coming of winter, which ends the game.

Caylus
William Attia; £27.99
A wonderful example of a pure strategy game. It’s for 2-5 players but I like it as a 2-player chess-like battle. Players use their workers to build a castle and gather resources. One of my favourite gaming memories is spending hours playing this with my gaming buddy Joe on holiday in Wales. We sat outside and drank pints of Reverend James ale and ate pork scratchings. Gaming bliss.

Henry Ward is an artist, writer and educator based in London. He paints, draws, takes photographs, plays board games and attempts to make music on a growing collection of string instruments.

henryhward.com

 

 

 

You can read Henry's exploration of the psychology of board games in the third print issue of Ernest Journal, on sale now, or listen to his podcast at oddpodcast.com

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The Scott window

St Peter’s Church in Binton, Warwickshire, has a large stained-glass window commemorating Robert Falcon Scott’s fatal 1912 expedition to the South Pole. Scott was the brother-in-law of the Rector, Lloyd Bruce, who commissioned the window. It was designed by John Lisle, built by Charles Kempe & Co, and dedicated on 25 September 1915

Images: John Roberts

The window is not noticeable at first, perpendicular to the entrance. The rest of the church is fairly unremarkable, with few original features surviving a rebuild in 1875. We walked between gloomy pews holding empty biscuit tins, a giant teddy, and a frisbee saying ‘Jesus Loves You’, towards the altar, where we could turn and admire the window in full.

Four tall rectangular panes show scenes from the 1912 Scott expedition – the explorers bidding their families farewell; their disappointment at discovering the flag of Amundsen’s rival expedition from Norway; Oates’ self-sacrifice, choosing to meet death in a blizzard rather than slow the others; the cairn erected over the tent that entombed Bowers, Wilson and Scott. In smaller panes below, biblical stories are depicted – Abraham about to kill his son Isaac; Moses in the rushes; David and Goliath.

This parallel is not accidental. Rendered in the religious aesthetics of stained glass and lead, the true significance of the Scott expedition is brought out. The final sheet in the information display below the window emphasises the scientific importance of the expedition – that it wasn’t really a race to the Pole, so mustn’t be understood as a failure – but to me this is missing the point.

Papers from the diary of the local primary school in the year of the expedition tell how the children fundraised to buy a husky for the sleds. They weren’t drawn to the expedition for its scientific usefulness. Nor are the hundreds of tourists who write with awe in the visitors book now. No, the story of Scott’s last expedition fascinates us because of its audacity – and its futility.

Through this strange window, we see our own insignificance. Gazing up from the aisle of this parish church in rural Warwickshire, we glimpse the all-powerful – Antarctica, God, the indifference of the natural world to human death.

Guy Lochhead is a primary school teacher living in Bristol. He is currently gathering resources via the British Whybrary and starting Bristol's first co-op gym.

Age of Reinvention: a cooking set

For the second phase of our #AgeOfReinvention competition, in collaboration with Pedlars, we challenged readers to submit designs to reinvent a pair of reclaimed wooden fireplace sides. We were so impressed with this beautifully considered spec from Sophie at Grain & Knot. Challenge accepted.

Sophie Sellu of Grain & Knot had this to say:

"For centuries the fireplace has been the heart of the home – a source of heat, light, used for drying clothes, cooking on and telling stories around.

I plan to turn these reclaimed oak fireplace sides into a cooking set that can be displayed for all to see. The set will comprise of a cooking spoon, spatula, salad servers and four eating spoons, the ends of which will be charred to represent the start of their journey. Each spoon will be threaded onto a block with cord and be hung onto the rack, and will each have a specific home. The spoon display rack will retain some of he original features of the fireplace sides. 

The cooking set will be intended for everyday use, to make family recipes with and to be passed down through generations."

Watch this space for updates and photos of Sophie of Grain & Knot working her magic to whittle up this cookery set. You'll be able to see the finished item at The Good Life Experience on 18-20 September.

We will be announcing the third item on offer to be reinvented very soon – again, watch this space. #AgeofReinvention

Grain & Knot was born from a love of nature, exploration and the need for purpose in creation. It is beautifully tactile, fully functional kitchenware; each item made from locally gathered logs and reclaimed timber.

Home brew

With this nifty bit of kit, which wouldn't look out of place in a Victorian chemistry lab, you could be sipping bottles of homemade beer within two weeks

Microbrewer one gallon kit, Box Brew Kits, £98

Last time Ernest brewed his own beer he found himself with enough condiment to scatter over his chips for three months. Perhaps he needed one of these splendid kits from Box Brew Kits duo Mike Langone and Matt Gorman. This one gallon kit is the smallest of their range and comes with everything you need, including a recipe book with over 25 recipes, to brew 8-10 bottles of hopefully awesome-tasting beer that will impress your friends/partner/father/chippy.

Microbrewer one gallon kit, Box Brew Kits, £98

Dans Le Noir

There is a restaurant in East London where mobile phones are outlawed, non-fussy eaters are welcome and trust in your waiter is key, as Abigail Whyte discovered

Dans Le Noir means ‘in the dark’. Put simply; a restaurant with no natural or artificial light, where you eat in pitch blackness, served by waiters who are blind or visually impaired. The idea is to intensify your other senses through limiting the sense of sight, to gain a new perspective of the food you eat while also raising awareness of visual impairment. This concept of ‘dark dining’ or ‘blind dining’ was founded in Paris in 2004, and since then other Dans Le Noirs have popped up in London, Barcelona, New York, St Petersberg and Kiev.

After hearing it praised by the illustrious Stephen Fry on an episode of QI (a source of most of my knowledge and trivia), I took a friend along one winter’s eve, excited and anxious at the prospect of entering a pitch dark room full of strangers and cutlery. We were greeted in the (lit) reception area by our blind waiter and guide Darren Paskell. We chose from four secret set menus – Surprise, Meat, Fish or Vegetarian – which gave no other indication of what we were going to be served later. I opted for the Surprise menu.

We were asked to put all bags, coats and other trip-up-ables in a locker along with our mobile phones and luminous watches. “It’s amazing how many diners are reluctant to give up their phone, “Darren told me. “But that’s the beauty of Dans Le Noir; you sit and eat with your friend or partner with absolutely no distractions, just each other.”

Darren then placed my hand on his shoulder; instructed my friend to do the same on my shoulder, then he led us from the lit world through two black curtains into the dark world.

“Has anyone ever freaked out at this bit?” I asked him as we passed through the first curtain.   “Yes, my mum,” he replied. “She’s very claustrophobic. We got past this first set of curtains and my mum just said “No, I can’t go any further.” I had to take her back to the lounge where she was kept happy with wine. My dad went in and had his meal, though.”

Into the darkness

After the second curtain, that was it – I couldn’t see. I waved my hand in front of my face. Nothing. The first thing that struck me was the noise. It was like walking into the London Stock Exchange with the lights turned off. I don’t know whether losing the power of sight instantly makes you elevate your voice but it was certainly the case in Dans Le Noir’s dining room, laid out before me like a black and noisy void. As we were led to our table I felt the draft off waiters walking past, heard the clattering of cutlery and exclamations of “Cous cous – that’s definitely cous cous”, “I’ve just spilled my water!” and “Sorry, that was my leg”.

Darren seated us at what felt like a marble table, and gently guided our hands to show us where our cutlery, wine glasses and other dining paraphernalia was. I asked him about the layout of the restaurant. “The restaurant seats 60 people altogether and the layout of the tables never changes, otherwise things could get very confusing,” Darren’s voice, just above my head, sounded louder and deeper, almost of a late-night radio DJ quality. “Each waiter carries a walkie-talkie so we’re all in constant contact with each other and the kitchen.”

He then explained some of the slick and efficient procedures put in place to ensure each diner is given the correct plate of food. “Most of the food is served on square plates but any special dietary requirements are served on round plates so the waiter doesn’t accidentally give it to someone else.”

A guessing game

My first plate of food arrived and I gingerly gave it a prod with my fingers. Some sort of raw fish on a mound of something herby and grainy. “Salmon,” I declared triumphantly, after a mouthful. “No, it’s tuna,” a voice piped up next to me. We were sat next to a couple on a blind date (a common thing for diners to try at Dans Le Noir), one of whom was eating the same starter as me. Before I knew it, a conversation about taste and texture and other madcap dining experiences was struck up with these faceless strangers, which I doubt would have happened so freely and easily if we were eating in a normal lit restaurant obstructed by social barriers and conventions.

My main course was the most puzzling to fathom – I couldn’t work out what meat I was chewing. It was beefy, so I left my guess at that. I discovered later, when our menus were revealed to us back in the lit lounge area, I was very wrong. I won’t tell you what the meat was as I don’t want to spoil the surprise. Let’s just say it’s a stripy animal often found on the savannahs of Africa.

Darren joined us for a drink after the meal and apologised for tripping over a chair next to me when he was serving my dessert course earlier. I hadn’t noticed at the time. “I think my spatial awareness is pretty outstanding, if you don’t mind me blowing my own trumpet. I’ve only ever spilled something over someone once, which wasn’t my fault or theirs. They unwittingly put a glass of water smack bang in the middle of the table.”

I asked him what he enjoyed most about working here. “The interaction. Having fully sighted people putting their faith and trust in you. In most restaurants the waiter is there to be seen and not heard – they’re expected to deliver the correct meal to the correct person and that’s about it. Here, we’re guides, not waiters. People open up and want to know more about us. In a normal situation you might come across a blind person walking along the pavement and that’s it – there’s no time or call for interaction.”

Stripping it back

While the food wasn’t exactly boundary pushing (although my main course was certainly a surprise), the experience of sightlessly pouring myself a glass of water and sharing a meal with an old friend with nothing but the sound of our voices was stripping social interaction back to its bare essentials. No phone. No visual distractions. No judging on appearance. Dans Le Noir is the perfect place to shed your skin and just be yourself, or perhaps even be someone else for the night if you wish.

As we were leaving, I spotted a couple sat at a candlelit table in the corner, looking rather engrossed with each other. I wondered if they were the blind date people I’d chatted to in the dark earlier. Maybe. I thought it best to leave it a mystery. 

Dans Le Noir, 30-31 Clerkenwell Green, London EC1R 0DU
london.danslenoir.com

This featured in our fifth digital edition of Ernest Journal, available to download now.