Villages

Boxing day started with some sunshine, so we went out for a family walk. Plan was to follow a route in one of our books of walks, initially along the Devils Dyke (the Cambridgeshire one) from the village of Reach, south along the dyke, then two sides of a triangle back to the car.

It resolved to a walk along the dyke and back again as the farmer had all but obliterated the 'permitted path' to Swaffham Prior.

It was good to get some fresh air but very slippery and windy - and I'd managed to leave my camera at home in the slightly chaotic exit.

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In the early evening we played M's present to us, the game Village.

This is a mid-complexity game but it flows well and thus plays very easily for a couple of hours. It's a game where there are many different ways of scoring points, none having a clear advantage over any other, and I like that; even if I came last (but only just).

The big grey 'mark' on the box indicates it's this year's winner of the Spiel des Jahres 'Kennenspiel' category. This is the German 'Game of the Year' award - in the 'enthusiast's' class ('kennen-' maps best to 'connoisseur'), though I wouldn't say it was especially complex.

Most games with a red (as opposed to grey) 'poppel' mark are usually a good bet for a good better-but-not-too-complex game. Almost all come with either an English translation (as in this case), or are republished by an English-speaking publisher.

Interestingly, I'd found M a copy of Hare & Tortoise in a charity shop, which we played yesterday. That was the very first (1979) winner of the award.

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Lit the fire in the evening which was nice, and warm.