There were five of us for food, and after he’d had a vat of disappointingly watery tomato soup at home, Pine joined the group to make six.  Once everyone had finished eating, there was a brief intermission while we discussed Cheddar Goats (“What, goats made out of cheese?!?!”), and we had a little over an hour before the Quiz was due to start.  Blue and Burgundy were keen to play Bohnanza, but Pink and Pine fancied something different so Green suggested Pick Picknic a simple little “push your luck” game based on chickens eating corn.

– Image by boardGOATS

It has been a very long time since we’ve played Pick Picknic, but the rules are not difficult.  At the start of each round, the six coloured farm yards are seeded with a random corn (worth one, two or three points).  Players then simultaneously choose a card from their hand and play it.  If their card is the only card of that colour and is a chicken, it gets all the corn.  If there is more than one chicken of that colour, they can either come to an agreement to share the corn, or fight for it.  If there is a fox amongst the chickens, the fox has a good feed and the corn remains till the next round.  If someone plays a fox card and there are no chickens, the fox goes hungry.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pick Picknic is a game in a similar vein to the popular Om Nom Nom.  Both games are based round the food chain with people playing animal cards in an attempt to feed their critters without them becoming food themselves.  The principal difference between the games is that Om Nom Nom has three separate food chains, while Pick Picknic only involves foxes chickens and corn.  However, effectively Pick Picknic has six separate chains as there are six different colours.

– Image by boardGOATS

Further, in Om Nom Nom, everyone has a complete set of cards at the start and everyone plays through their deck during the game, whereas in Pick Picknic players have a hand of five cards drawn at random from a larger deck.  This makes the game slightly less deterministic, as players could hold any card in their hand.  Also, as players’ hands are constantly being replenished and the farm-yards are constantly being reseeded, the game feels more like it is constantly rolling onwards, reaching a point where people know some animals will inevitably go hungry.

– Image by boardGOATS

The random nature of the cards certainly showed themselves this time.  Pine had an endless string of foxes, most of which went hungry.  Blue ended up with some very fat chickens who took a lot of corn, and Pink played a handful of foxes, all of which turned out to be fantastic at stealing chicken from Farmer Boggis.  It didn’t take long to work through the bag of square corn, and then it was just the counting.  Blue had a huge pile of corn, but the only chicken she had caught was a “fleet fowl” which was actually worth minus two.

– Image by boardGOATS

That almost made the difference, as Blue and Pink were well clear of the others, but there was only three points in it, with Pink proving to be a very fantastic Mr. Fox.  There wasn’t long to think about it though as Charles came round early with the Quiz sheets.  Indeed we were one chip into a game of No Thanks!, when the picture round arrived, and then group had something even more important to worry about when the questions started.

– Image by boardGOATS

It was clear we were very rusty as we had an awful first round.  Things got much better from there though as we delightedly demonstrated out knowledge of as diverse subjects as Dr. Who, sport and what Angela Raynor allegedly called a Tory MP.  As the Quiz progressed, we slowly crawled our way up the rankings from eighth out of nine to finish second, just one point behind the eventual winners “Buggle’s Buddies”.  It was close and we were left to rue a couple of unfortunate errors.  Still, there’s always next month.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome:  Nobody likes the team that wins the quiz.