Australian neighbours

These are pictures I've been meaning to post for a while now, and I thought they seemed particularly appropriate considering the volume of the party next door at the moment.



I hate my neighbours.

The funny thing is, you'd think they'd try to be a little bit quieter after the deadly revenge I took last time.


All right, the water pistol's broken now. But that doesn't rule out the garden hose...

Schnufflehead

This is the most amazing board game you will ever play. It's a mixture of chess, ludo, pick up sticks and pure brilliance. And I am going to teach it to you. Prepare yourselves for an unbelievably long post.

The game is played with chess pieces on a ludo board. Some of them are named slightly differently:



The aim of the game is to capture all the bases on the ludo board (you can't capture someone's last base until you have the other three, so you have to have ALL FOUR). You start off with the pieces set up like this:



All of the other pieces start off in the Netherworld.

You capture a base by putting one castle on each of the 'start' squares (the ones with the castles on them on the special schnufflehead board - these can basically be any square as long as they're in roughly the same place). However, if an enemy prawn is on one of the surrounding squares (there can only be three surrounding squares. On this board the ones with the swords on them are the only ones that count) this forces the castle and the prawn to do battle.

You can do battle in a number of ways. It's actually quite flexible, so you can be creative with it. So far, the methods we have are: play pick up sticks with four sticks, and whoever gets the black stick first wins; and roll one die each and see who gets higher.



Whichever piece loses the battle goes to the Netherworld. On losing one of your pieces, it is necessary that you sing a soppy song to them to illustrate your grief.



If you have more than one prawn next to the start square, you keep going until one of the castles or all of the prawns have gone to the Netherworld, in which case the base is won. Pieces in the Netherworld can be summoned back to any of your bases by skipping a turn.

You can use draughts pieces or tiddlywinks or something similar to represent the bombs. You start with one bomb in the centre of the board, and can place one in a square of your choice whenever you capture a base. When a bomb goes off, all the pieces in the adjacent squares (including diagonals) are sent to the Netherworld.

If your King is defeated in battle, he does not go to the Netherworld. He DIES. If he doesn't have any heirs, you lose the game. However, if he is married and has children, one of his heirs becomes King instead. All your prawns and your Queen go to the Netherworld, but any other heirs he has come back as prawns. Remember to treat your Queen with sympathy if this happens, because she and the King have a very passionate relationship.




On your turn, you roll two dice. You move the number shown on the dice; you can distribute it between different pieces if you want (you can move diagonally and jump over pieces, but you can't go on the same square as another piece except castles on the start square).

Kings, Queens, Bishops and heirs (use ludo pieces or something similar) have to travel on horses. This means that only two of them can be travelling at the same time. The only reasons you need to move them to another base are if the base they're in base is captured, or because you can only have one baby in each base.

If the answer is even, you are allowed to initiate a battle between two pieces next to each other. If the answer is odd, you get to roll the *special die*.


The silly dance to win the Queen is a crucial part of the game. You have to be honest in your judgment of this; a dance that isn't silly enough just wouldn't impress the Queen in a real-life situation. Being an accomplished silly choraeographer myself, I'll share this piece with you as an example:



You need a bishop in the same base as you to marry the Queen and christen your heirs. Heirs don't count if they're not christened and you can't have children until you're married.

The only square through which you can access your base is the one immediately next to it (the coloured one on the special schnufflehead board).

Those are all the rules! If you want the special schnufflehead board, or if you don't have ludo, the board is here.

If you're weird/poor/cool enough not to have a chess set, here are all the schnufflehead pieces including bombs and heirs.