It's not easy being Geek....

I learned about a game today, a very intriguing game. The name of the game (according to my friends)  is 'Fuck this game" or 'this game sucks'. There's islands and forests and graveyards in the game, which, I think, all have different colors. Graveyards suck, and so do human wizards. Them's a nasty bunch, because 'Fuck This Game!'

There is also a thing called 'the Black Lotus', which apparently is worth thousands of dollars. We're not talking about ladies from the ancient Orient here, we're just talking humble playing cards.

This game does not even have a board, like with Catan! No sheep to obtain, no villages to raid. There's cards with creatures though, and cards for brainstorming, and mountains which have a color, different from swamps or forests or graveyards.

They're playing this game on an enlarged mouse pad of sorts. One of the guys playing won it. If he would not have won it, he would have counted out ten euro's for it, the enlarged mouse pad (which has the name of the game on it though, and an angry man waving about with a ball of fire. Looks pretty cool).

Did I mention that I don't get this game? There's two huge stacks of cards the table, two players, and each player is supposed to know his stack by heart. There's druids, and swamps (again with the swamp!), creatures, green creatures, elves, forests, but no meadows, because the meadows are still swamps due to lack of technology (I assume the game is set some time in the middle ages, in a parallel universe).

The goal of the game is a it unclear to me. My friends play and practice on a 'quality deck' they found on the world wide web and then printed and photocopied. Buying the whole stack would take too damn long, and would cost too damn much (you can either by packs, or buy single cards from the internet, and those prices tend to be steep).

So, by copying decks from people who know how to play, who have acquired the right cards, you hope to gain enough experience to play in a tournament somewhere and win a load of cash (or, and over sized mouse pad), which you then can flip into more cards. Really good and/or rare cards go for thousands of dollars sometimes on Ebay (the game got invented about 20 years ago, many cards are not being made anymore).

The essential goal of the game? I still don't know. To eventually beat the dude (I think this more of a game for dudes) who got his hands on an original black lotus. However, it does not make for a cosy night of fun and whimsy around a campfire, unfortunately.