From Ludo to Ludicrous

Here was a strange sequence of bored gaming ...

Last night we were testing out some new apps on my new big screen tablet, and found a collection of two-player games that had a version of Ludo among other things.  Oddly, it ended when the a player got their first piece to the middle.  That was odd, we were each moving a bunch of pieces and had no idea that was going to happen.  I figure they were trying to keep things short.

Today, we dusted off that old "100 Classic Games" box because I knew there was a ludo board in there.  We played a game where again the first piece to reach the middle was the win, and it stripped the whole flow of the game.  We each just got onr or two pieces out and raced for it.

So we tried it again the classic way, where you have to get all four pieces to the middle, and that's how I remembered the game was supposed to feel.  Camp a piece or two right behind the other player's escape space.  Keep pieces tailing the other player and capture whenever possible.  But don't forget to actually bring your pieces home.

I then remembered having a whole folder full of research for Ludo variants that either had fun skins or themes, or used a deck of cards to drive the pieces.  I am putting that together for a future article.

After those quick no-brainer games, I looked at what else was in that rule book.  I had forgotten how many basic dice games it had.  We tried one called "Fifty" even though there wasn't anything to it: take turns rolling two dice, only score them if doubles (5 points each pair), BUT 6-6 is worth 25 and 3-3 clears your whole score.  So, it's just a variation of Piggy or Greedy Dice, or whatever name you call it.

It got funny when I flipped a board to use the Snakes & Ladders board as a simple scoring board.  Sure, any simple game with a max score of 100 or less can be scored by moving pawns on an old Snakes and Ladders board.  

After we put it away, I realized how funny it would be to include those snakes and ladders in that scoring system.  So maybe the dice would get you to 45, but from there a snake would drop you back down 12 ... talk about a wacky random element for otherwise dull scores.

From Ludo to ludicrous, indeed.