Page 45 of The Little Board Game Café

‘Passing? It’s still a cul-de-sac.’

‘Okay, I wasn’t passing. I was hoping you’d be here.’

He was hoping she’d be here. She pressed her palms together then realised it looked as if she was praying, so put her hands on her thighs.

‘And if I hadn’t been?’

‘I’d have left a note.’

A note saying what? she wondered. Asking her out, perhaps?

She crossed her fingers under the table.

‘I was rather hoping you might do me a favour.’

*

It turned out that the Red Lion was double-booked on Friday evening – some local boy turning eighteen which would obviously prove a lot more lucrative for the landlord than eleven middle-aged men nursing one pint – each, not between them – for an entire evening as they pushed pieces round their boards.

‘We were wondering if we might play here?’ said Ludek. ‘Just for this week.’

‘Sure,’ Emily said. ‘Why not?’

Well, it was certainly one way of getting a few more customers through the door. Even if they sat nursing one mug of tea all evening and didn’t buy a single cake.

*

The Trainspotters arrived first, carrying an assortment of games boxes. All train-related, presumably. Just how many variations of building little railways across a map could there be?

The Dungeons and Dragons crowd were next. They nodded to the Trainspotters, then pushed two tables together and began to set up their board. Finally, Malcolm and Alan appeared.

‘We’re playing Agricola tonight,’ said Malcolm, placing a games box on the table. There was a sheep on the front, Emily noticed, and an old-fashioned house.

‘Is it food-themed?’ she asked.

Alan opened the box. ‘Well, there’s food in it, but it’s a bit complicated.’

‘I can manage complicated. Is Ludek not here yet?’

‘He’ll be here soon. Running late at work,’ said Alan.

‘As usual,’ added Malcolm.

Malcolm explained the rules whilst they were waiting. Alan hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d said complicated; Emily wasn’t sure she quite followed it, but it sounded intriguing. The game was all about farming. She was given two little wooden people – her ‘meeples’ Malcolm called them – and they lived in two rooms on her farm. Every round of the game, she would make one move with each of her meeples: ploughing a field to grow crops; fencing a pasture to breed animals; or playing one of the special cards she had in her hand, the point of which she hadn’t grasped yet. Her meeples could have a family, which would be advantageous because it would give her more moves each round, but only if she built extra rooms on her house, and for that, she had to collect wood using one of her moves. What’s more, every couple of rounds, she had to feed her meeples and their children, either by killing the animals that she’d bred or with the crops she was growing.

‘Can’t I just bake them a cake?’ she said.

Malcolm frowned. ‘You can bake bread, but not cakes.’

‘She’s joking, Malc,’ said Alan gently. ‘Now the important bit – point-scoring. At the end, you’ll score points for how many animals and crops you have left, for the size of your meeple family and for the number of fields you’ve ploughed or fenced.’

Emily wasn’t quite sure how she’d keep track of everything, but Malcolm assured her they’d help her through. She was just getting her head around it all and working out what she had to do, when Ludek arrived, slipping into the chair opposite her. She felt a flutter of excitement, but dismissed it. It was far too soon for her to be thinking about someone new, she reminded herself.

Wasn’t it?

‘Lovely to see you again,’ he said, his brown eyes meeting hers.

Her game plan was to collect as much wood as possible to extend her house and fence pastures for her animals, but it had all been taken by the time it was her turn. She took a sheep instead: it would have to live in the house with her meeples until she could build fences for it. On her second turn, there weren’t many options left, so she took some food tokens. If she didn’t have enough food tokens, animals or crops when it came to feeding time, she’d have to take a begging bowl which meant negative points at the end of the game.