Page 40 of The Little Board Game Café

‘Since when?’

‘I dunno. We used to play Monopoly and Cluedo sometimes when I was little.’ Okay, so it was limited to weekends in the Lake District when the weather was too wet to do anything else and Christmas Day once the Queen’s speech was over.

‘I don’t see any Monopoly or Cluedo,’ said Kate, looking at the tables.

Emily followed her gaze and realised she was right. No hotels on Mayfair or Professor Plums here.

‘You made it,’ came a familiar voice from behind.

They turned round to see Ludek wearing a t-shirt with a dragon on, but also an enormous smile.

That smile. There was something about that smile, Emily thought. Dungeons and Dragons? Bring ’em on.

‘Lead the way,’ she said.

As they wove a path through the room, Emily peered at the various game boards. She didn’t recognise a single one: not only was there no Cluedo or Monopoly, there was no Scrabble, no Pictionary and no Trivial Pursuit. At one table, four bearded men sat playing a game with dragons – she couldn’t see a dungeon – and on another, the players were constructing little railways across a map of America.

They looked up and said hello to Ludek.

‘Ticket to Ride,’ he whispered. ‘They always play train games.’

They reached their table where two beardless men were sitting: a tall, grey-haired man with kind eyes and a slightly younger man in his late forties wearing a Star Trek t-shirt.

‘Ludo!’ said Star Trek man, standing up and shaking the doctor’s hand.

‘My nickname,’ Ludek explained. ‘Since school. Because I’ve always loved board games and—’

‘And Ludo is a board game! Clever!’ Emily said. She decided to ignore Kate’s eye-rolling.

‘Alan and Malcolm,’ said Ludek, ‘meet Emily and…’

‘Kate,’ said Kate.

They sat down opposite Alan and Malcolm, with Ludek at the head of the table. He leaned over and whispered, ‘Don’t mention insurance,’ to Kate and Emily who looked at each other, baffled.

‘What sort of games do you two play?’ said Alan.

Kate said nothing.

‘Cluedo,’ said Emily. ‘Trivial Pursuit.’

It was obviously the wrong answer and his face fell.

‘We don’t have those,’ said Malcolm. ‘We’re into more serious games.’

Good job she hadn’t said Operation.

‘Serious?’ Kate rolled her eyes. ‘Aren’t games meant to be fun?’

‘Well, they’re not all serious,’ said Ludek. ‘Shall we start with Can’t Stop!?’

He took out a box, opened it and placed a diamond-shaped games board with columns numbered two to twelve. Seven was the middle column, and therefore the longest. On each turn, he explained, they’d roll four dice and advance their pieces up the columns according to the sum of the numbers on the dice.

‘It’s a push your luck game,’ Alan said. ‘You only have three pieces at a time, so if you’re trying to move up columns six, seven and eight but you can’t make any of those numbers with your dice, then you’re out and you lose all the progress you’ve made that turn. If you roll one of those numbers, then you move your piece up and you can choose either to roll again, or to stop and keep all your pieces where they are till next turn. It’s a game about taking risks.’

‘Em’ll hate it,’ said Kate. ‘She hates taking risks.’

It was true; Emily didn’t like taking risks. She made reasonable progress on her first turn, advancing her pieces half-way up columns five, seven and eight, but then couldn’t decide whether to stop or continue rolling.