That night, I invited a few friends over to my farm for a game night. These used to be bridge nights but we gradually came to a conclusion that we should explore another options. We are versatile crowd when it comes to the ultimate card game. Some are still processing the basic bridge bidding rules, while others are into discovering various complex bridge conventions well beyond the scope of an average rubber game. They say, in bridge beginners can compete with world-class players. It actually does happen in the tournaments (imagine that in soccer) but it is not enjoyable gamingwise for either party (even though playing two boards against Zia or - better yet - Warren Buffet - is a great story to tell). Anyone saying that is just marketing the game too hard.
Backgammon is our current choice. A classic board game with easy-to-understand rules also offers a fair shot at a shortterm win to the inferior player. The scientist gets his fascinating puzzles regardless of the opposition mistakes on the way towards the actual board position. And when you insist on playing your peers, it is much easier to match players for a 1-vs-1 gaming than bridge tables of four (if you ever have enough players to fill two in the first place).
This time, the evening took a detour. My son apparently decided to try the game and picked up the gaming equipment I set aside too early. Being too young to read the rules, he decided to seek help. Trusting his backyard buddies more than his parents, he took all the stuff to piggery. Not learning what he wanted, he left it there and moved on to being an airplane or whatever he just happened to have on the top of the to-do list.
When guests started showing up, it only took a short while to reconstruct the story. Reconstructing the gameset felt much tougher. All boards but one avoided destruction but picking up the checkers scattered all over the place was the dumbest agrotourism game I ever heard of (not to mention having to take part). Final score was fine with the checkers (although some are going for a weeklong water vacation now) but not a single dice was found. We only found out that while most pigs were disinterested, a couple approached us with hungry faces as we started to handle the boards.
We had a first round of beers, trying to digest the new situation. The consensus was that those picky bastards don't appreciate a quality checker but they are clearly feasting on dice.
The second round saw a couple attempts at creating temporary dice. Nothing worth the patent office clerk's time.
You should not be surprised that the third beer arrived in an unusually short timespan. The first vendetta remarks have been out already and halfway through the glass we went back to the piggery. God knows why we took the boards with us.
You already know that they initiated an action from the suspects. They came too close. The human reaction of a violent push turned the fastest villain on its back. New era was born.
"Let's use the **** for a dice, that should teach it."
Piggie made a frightened sound in the air but landed at all four legs safely.
Not everyone lives in the countryside. For the benefit of the town audience, pig does not resemble a cube as much as you might want. It usually lands on either side of the belly. Even with the fourth beer in hands we could see that rolling a three or a four was so dominant that it changed the conventional backgammon strategy way too far. Learning to carefully handle your suddenly-powerful 2-primes is not easy when everyone is in a playful mood. We decided we need something else.
I used to play a simple game with a common six sided dice. You roll and if it's not an ace, you decide to either keep the points or roll again. You can bank before any roll but once you roll one point, you lose everything from the running round and hand the dice over. Obviously, we had to renumber the poor piggy as it never landed on tail (for the record, a pig does not resemble a coin either). We didn't want Player 1 to win all times. To keep the traditional six sides, we had to split the facial hit and distinguish landing on the nose from the ultimate feat of landing on ears. We tried the passive game with the ace on the belly. We tried the wild gamble with the one-point on the nose. Finally, we settled for the middle road with one on the back, but I was crushing that particular variant because of my former experience and gradually everyone just fell on the ground to avoid further losses.
The hangover was a strong one but so was the experience. When I told another backgammon friend, he seemed fine with missing the action, giving a I-don't-play-single-dice-games fake excuse. So I made him play a two pig version. If they land on their bellies on different sides, you lose a turn (that is called a pigout). Same sides of the belly give you a point and generous bonuses for fancy landings (all the way to 60-multiplier Piggericks for a double-ears) keep the game interesting even when one player develops a sizable lead.
The game spread fast and one day an internet guy knocked on the door to buy the idea. I have sold a few pigs of mine for solid prices since but there are still some wannabes in my piggery. If you feel like tossing a pig (or two, yes, actually two of them), go to www.piggericks.com and tell the doorman you know jelly13 (I suggest whispering for drama). I believe you won't regret.
Fictional story. No animal has been harmed. The Piggericks game and my referral earnings actually exist.
Piggericks is a new game running on Hive blockchain. Please be patient if you come during off-hours. European evenings are currently the best time to play.