If you’ve heard my cries of anguish and terror that recur every Boxing Day, you’ll know I hate board games. Many years of Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit have taken their toll and at the mere suggestion of a board game, I wilt and attempt to run to the nearest exit.

(I exaggerate. A little. But only a little.)

However, I have so many friends that extol their virtues. Even talking of worlds beyond the hateful realms of Monopoly. And I have, off and on, been reading Shut Up & Sit Down, an entertaining blog hosted by Quinns (formerly of Rock, Paper, Shotgun), which is all about board games and their various forms. I was rather intrigued by Risk: Legacy, but I couldn’t drum up the interest needed for a continuous campaign that it called for. But, for Christmas, I bought one of my friends, Tammy, a board game. And last weekend, we played it.

Space Cadets is slightly different from the traditional board games we’ve known and hated with pure fury of beings beyond the veil, shot through with venom and insanityloved in that instead of working against each other to victory, it involves everybody working together to die in the endless void of spaceachieve success. The players control a starship and have to retrieve crystals and defeat xenos filthalien starships out to destroy us all.

Now, Space Cadets has a bit of a reputation of being a touch complicated. Each station on the ship has its own mini-game to play, and these mini-games (mostly) all take part at the same 30 second time period. There is chaos, confusion, and inevitably hilarious consequences, which almost always involve the death of the entire crew.

As I was the only person who had seen anybody play the game before, the task of Captain fell to me. The datacorders may judge my decision to place the fate of weapons and damage control in the hands of children, thus breaking all sorts of Federation child-labour laws, but I think they did quite well, all things considered. We even managed to pick up a crystal before the Nemesis blew out our shields, caused a warp core breach, and I explained the core breach repair game to a wide-eyed group of Cadets. Who then died in a torrent of warp-fire as we failed miserably, of course.

So yes, I had fun. Playing a board game. Shut up.

Meanwhile, in non-board game related news, I should be in Boston right now, but all flights to Logan seemed to end up cancelled by mid-afternoon. So I’m back here in Durham, waiting for the next flight out. Which might be Tuesday. On the bright side, I will miss the big snowstorm…