Bit of a board game day today, I lost the
rhythm on Thursday, and was running around Friday thinking should I do this,
should I finish that, what I'm I doing for Monday . . . and in the end I
thought "Fuckit I'll have a few 'days off'!" Anyway; we'll get back on track with a board-game fest!
I'm not sure how familiar you are with this
set, where you are - if you're not in the UK that is; for people nearer home it
will be as familiar as the proverbial bad penny . . . although is a penny ever
bad given that it’s better than no penny? Find a penny; pick it up, all day
long you'll have someone else's penny!
A perennial favourite of mixed auction-lots
(that box of shite which is 'offered' at a start-bid of five-pounds at the end
of the auction "Can I see a hand
please?" as people start wandering off to see if the refreshment
window is still open), charity shops, car-boot and jumble-sales, I wonder how
many have actually bothered to play it?
It's actually two games. Each of which
seems to have more bits and pieces than a whole game of - its sort of namesake
- Monopoly! First you have to play a two-dice Monopoly type game which leaves the
players with more, less or little money, provides their [leased] horse-flesh
with standing that may or may not help it in the final race, and establishes their
training credentials in some points system, while also buying veterinary
surgeries or feed wholesalers; or at least that what I got from a swift
speed-read of the rules . . .
. . . then you have a single-dice horse
race, with gambling (you can bet on your opponents horses!), on another board
(actually the reverse of the two boards) which appears equally complicated,
has as many 'chance' cards and can result in the best trained, richest, most
points-holding horse coming last!
I guess it is supposed to be called/pronounced
Toe-Top'poly (as in The Tote [based] Monopoly) rather than the ToT-op-oley I've
always used, but don't take my word for it!
Whatever its pronunciation and however
impossible it is to play, it seems to have sold well for many years, with the
result that the horses can be found in lead, die-cast Mazac and plastic, and as
such; regularly turn-up in mixed lots, bags, boxes or handful's of oddments,
usually incomplete.
To add to all the other elements,
mechanisms and compilations in play; the horses are weighted, with blacks most
likely to win, blues least likely to win!
So when I saw this set going cheap in a
charity-shop the other say, I grabbed the opportunity to have a complete run of
twelve, to add to all the part-sets I have in storage. And yes, the missing
black-leg is in the gluing queue!
We will return to this one day, just to
compare the various other versions, and indeed; all the other board-game
racing-horses, of which there are plenty!
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