I’m succeeding slowly in getting the kids interested in playing board games. We started some time ago with Monopoly, and we played Sorry! recently and then my mom’s family Christmas present arrived for us yesterday: CLUE! The kids and I played last night, and I won just to show them how it was done. Then we all played tonight, after we got home from Anders’ nephew’s birthday party, at which Martin talked to me non-stop about CLUE and the characters and the rooms and the weapons and asked me a million questions until my head was about to explode, and then to add insult to injury he WON THE GAME.
I asked for CLUE for Christmas because we recently pitched my old classic version: it went into the recycling bins, and now I’m regretting it because Martin wants to compare the board and the character cards and the weapons to the version we have now, which is quite different. The old one had only 6 weapons (rope, blunderbuss, wrench, lead pipe, candlestick, dagger) and this version has NINE: they updated the pistol and the dagger kept the rope and the candlestick, removed the wrench and the lead pipe, and added a trophy (most people apparently don’t keep lead pipes around the house anymore for bashing people’s heads in), poison, an ax and a dumbbell. Good heavy stuff for bludgeoning!
The characters have all been updated, too, much to my dismay: Mustard is no longer a colonel, Plum is no longer a Professor. My version was from 1979…the game has been around since 1949! Now Plum is a self-made video game designer. Updating for the new generation of kids, is my guess. I did find a flickr set of the cards so I’ll have to satisfy Martin’s curiosity with it since I didn’t save anything.
Even the rooms have been updated, since in addition to not having lead pipes handy, most people nowadays don’t build their family mansions with ballrooms, conservatories, billiards rooms, libraries, lounges, or studies. We still have the ubiquitous kitchen, hall and dining room, but now our fancy abode contains a spa, an observatory, a theater, a patio, a POOL (in the center, handy for drowning people in), and a guest house.
There are other additions to the rules, which make the game quite a bit more exciting and give it some more action, both necessary things in this age of fast-paced video gaming, I suppose. Still, it’s as fun to play as I remember, and I look forward to more sessions of trying to figure out whodunnit!