After a long, sweaty day of auctions...

...you find yourself tooling home on your motorbike, your sidecar filled with the spoils of just-one-kopek-more: half a bottle of vodka, a revolver, and a giant turnip. You pull up to your modest wooden shack and are greeted by your betrothed, Ludmilla, who is overjoyed at the prospect of grinding some giant turnip cuisine on the morrow. The night is spent swilling vodka, loudly braying Imperial sea chanties while slickly red-faced and ends with clumsy love-making, the kind usually reserved for blue-blooded hunters returning to the gates of the summer lodge with a stag.

That night, your rival—The Spaniard—lifts the latch on your plywood door and enters your bed chamber/kitchen/pissoir in a not-particularly-quiet fashion, the thud of his club-footed limp covered by your snoring. Casting about for an appropriate tool he spies the giant turnip and proceeds to beat you in the head with it, long, overhand swings landing again and again, years of frustration and thwarting at every turn reduced to a blood pudding of tongue, teeth and clotted bedclothes. Winded, he staggers back from his gurgling victory only to trip over your drunken form! With horror he realizes he has slain the voluptuous Ludmilla, whose snoring he mistook for your own. Weeping and mumbling lisping curses he pulls the revolver free of your pantaloons and blows his brains out.

The next morning, you wake to a charnel house. The Magistrate does the math and no one believes you didn't kill them both in a drunken rage. Of course you knew, you had to know, that Ludmilla was enthusiastically greasing The Spaniard while you spent your days at the auctions? Everyone knew it! The revelation cuts the nuts off your defense and you resign yourself to silence.

Confused at how to execute a proper hanging, the townsfolk cut the rope too long and make the drop too far—the knot neatly snips your head off at the nadir, and your spurting body crashes into the offal pit where small children pelt it with rotten animeeples.

And now you know, dear reader, why no one will play Euros with me.

That's some theme right there. I played PUERTO RICO the other night and one player could not get past the fact that this island, for whatever reason, only has 10 barrels capable of holding corn.

The best thing I ever heard about PUERTO RICO was from a drunken onlooker. It was this totally ghetto fabulous girl that a friend of mine was chatting up. She watched pretty much the whole game. Finally, she cracked.

"This don't_make_no_goddamn_sense! How is this even a game? Corn barrels and all that shit..."

I completely agreed.

Let us all observe a moment of silence for Ludmilla.

Love the prose, it's like the product of an unholy writing team of Jack London and Edgar Allan Poe. Bravo!

Michael Barnes wrote:

"This don't_make_no_goddamn_sense! How is this even a game? Corn barrels and all that shit..."

They should put this text on the box, in a jaggy speech balloon. Coming out of a surprised colonist.

Juniper wrote:

Let us all observe a moment of silence for Ludmilla.

These things happen. The browner the game, the more blood in the mud.

Shellhead wrote:

Love the prose, it's like the product of an unholy writing team of Jack London and Edgar Allan Poe. Bravo!

Thanks, man! I really want to play in the FAT sandbox and do this kind of stuff for folks who'll appreciate it the most.

HiveGod wrote:

Thanks, man! I really want to play in the FAT sandbox and do this kind of stuff for folks who'll appreciate it the most.

You're more than welcome to play in our box anytime...hmm that didn't come out quite right.