Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 8th January, at the Horse and Jockey pub in Stanford-in-the-Vale. As usual, we will be playing shorter games from 7.30pm as people arrive, until 8pm when we will start something a little longer.
This week the “Feature Game” will be Hare & Tortoise, an older game that was the first ever winner of the Spiel des Jahres award in 1979. It is a cunningly designed race where the farther a player moves, the more fuel (carrots) they have to spend. Thus, the winner will be the player who uses their carrots most efficiently, but they must also have got rid of any lettuce cards and make sure they don’t have a surfeit of carrots as they cross the finish line…
![]() |
– Image by boardGOATS |
And talking of the hare and the tortoise…
Jeff the hare loved running, but he also loved winning. One sunny day, he saw a tortoise peacefully minding his own business in a field, so he asked him if he fancied a race. After some discussion, they eventually agreed to race to the nearest tree. It wasn’t far, but the hare was easily there first.
“Not fair!” said the tortoise, “My legs are only little and take a while to warm up, please can we try again?”
The hare had enjoyed his win, so was happy give the tortoise another chance; this time they raced to the river. The hare was off first, and again, won by a huge margin.
“Just once more, I’m sure I can do it this time,” the tortoise pleaded.
While the hare liked winning, winning is no fun without a credible challenger, but he could see it mattered to the tortoise so he reluctantly agreed.
“Oh alright then, but this will be the last one, and then I have to go home,” said the hare.
“Well, let’s just have a race to see who gets home first then,” suggested the tortoise.
The hare agreed and they got ready to race.
“3…. 2… 1… GO!” said the hare, and paused to give the tortoise just a little head start.
The tortoise retreated into its shell.
“I win.”