the Dalaverse

Whoa, flashback time. One of the other offices in the suite is holding a toy drive and there are stacks of toys in the conference room...including a pristine, plastic-wrapped edition of Herd Your Horses.

When I was a kid, my friends and I basically played three board games (when we didn't want to play outside and/or we weren't busy with War, Uno or B.S.) Monopoly was something everybody had in the house in varying states of readiness (losing the dog piece was a cause for scorn, but nobody would miss the shoe; homemade Get Out of Jail Free cards frequently stacked the Community Chest). It's a timeless game, but its greatest strength and its greatest flaw is that a single game can literally go on for weeks. We used to tag parents and siblings in, but much of the time we simply didn't have the will to start a game we might not finish. Then there was Clue. Clue is undeniably awesome because it's all about lying and deviousness, but it requires at least three players. For afternoons when Steph had gymnastics or Jessie was grounded, Clue had to be taken off the options list. (The new modernized Clue, btw, deserves to be buried in a construction site.)

Instead, Jessie and I made a damned career out of playing Herd Your Horses for hours upon hours upon hours.

For those of you not fortunate enough to have traveled this trail, I'll explain. The game actually has three variations, but we almost always played the first one. You choose one of four stallion pieces (one was named Black Bart) and get some mares for your herd. The mares are profiled on little cards with lovingly rendered paintings and a brief biography. Some of them have foals, which is a bonus because they count as two horses toward your herd total; a handful have twin foals, which is a total of three as well as being utterly adorable. There are also a few special cases like the lead mares, and the mule being smart enough to lead your herd to water although it doesn't count toward your total.

You start off with a set number of randomly selected mare cards, and then you have to lead your herd across the board to the big valley at the end. Along the way you run into dangers from other critters, the weather, ranchers, etc. Oh, and some cards/spots let you steal mares from your opponent, which is obviously the best part. Everybody has several favorite mares (and ugly ones you hated and got rid of at the first opportunity), and sometimes a deal could be brokered wherein you'd take these two but not this one; however, this was not a binding arrangement if somebdoy was feeling particularly cutthroat that day. The winner is the one who reaches the valley with the minimum of mares required (I think it's nine, and if you don't reach your quota you have to move around in circles near the valley in an effort to get more mares).

I don't even remember what the other variations were. I think you're a rancher in one of them - there are rival ranches scattered across the board, although they don't matter if you're a stallion leading a herd. I suppose it's supposed to be representative of an Old West mustang herd, but I'm pretty sure there were other breeds represented in the deck of mares. Anyway, I...don't really have a point to end on here, just got overwhelmed by nostalgia for the game. I still have it somewhere in the basement. It makes me happy to think horse-crazy little girls are still out there stealing mares and guiding their herds to safety.

And while I'm being nine again, I'd like to squee over the fact that they're making a 'Night at the Museum' sequel. I don't care how objectively stupid the first one is, I fucking loved every minute of it. And this new one IS SET AT THE SMITHSONIAN! And has Amy Adams as Amelia Earhart! Bill Hader as General Custer! Christopher Guest as Ivan the Terrible! The only way it could be any better is if it came out on my birthday instead of in May.

I wish one of my dragon eggs would hatch a unicorn. You don't know it's a mammal, it's a mythological creature and I can calls it what I wants!