Been thinking today about a small game involving rubber "bathtub" ducks, as my girlfriend collects a variety of different themed ones.
Don't know if anything similar has been done before...I'd imagine kids would like the theme, and you could use the pieces as bath playthings when you were finished. I don't think anyone owns copyrights or anything on rubber ducks either.
Duck Pond (working title) 2-6 players.
Two boards: a big blue pond board with 11 schools of fish drawn on it, and numbered(2-11). a smaller blue sky board with 6 flocks of flying ducks drawn on it and numbered(1-6).
12 Rubber Ducks, each one different(my gf owns angel ducks, chef ducks, pirate ducks, etc.)
25 Fish Tokens(using 5c coins at present)
2 Six-sided dice
Players divide the ducks among themselves, leaving 2 ducks unused in a 5 player game.
Play alternates between the Pond board and the Sky board until all the Fish Tokens have been captured, or there is only one player left with any ducks.
Play goes around the board in circular fashion, rolling to see who goes first.
Pond Board
Players place ducks, one at a time, upon the numbered(2-12) schools of fish. Any number of ducks can be placed over the same school.
Fish Tokens are distributed onto the board by rolling 2D6 per token, to a maximum of 12. (late-game there will be <12 fish left)
Fish are then divided amongst the ducks feeding at that school. If there are more ducks than fish, then the fish gets away. If there are more fish than ducks, the ducks get all the fish, with any remainder getting away.
So 8 fish, 1 duck...the duck gets all 8 fish.
3 fish 5 ducks...1 fish each, 2 fish get away
2 fish 3 ducks...all the fish escape
Play then moves to the Sky Board
Sky Board
Players place their ducks, one at a time, upon the 6 different Flocks numbered 1-6. Any number of ducks can go with each flock.
Once all ducks are placed, roll 1D6. All the ducks with that flock are shot and are removed from the game.
Play then returns to the Pond Board
Victory Conditions
If a player is the only player with ducks still alive, they win.
When all the fish tokens are distributed, the player with the most fish tokens wins. If there is a tie, then the player with the most ducks among the tie-holders wins. If ducks AND fish are equal, then both players win.
Comments
I don't want the attrition rate too high, so a smaller number of fish tokens might work...17 or 19 perhaps.
Obviously a very luck-based game, with some gambling/playing-the-odds
involved both with fish-diving and being shot at. You could put all your eggs in one basket so to speak, but that could have dire consequences.
Any opinions/critiques? Or other ideas that could be used to implement a simple game using rubber ducks?
A Bambi moment, if ever there was one.
Might small kids find this sort of disturbing? Perhaps the ducks in that flock bed down for the night, or something.
This is true, though I was aiming for something that my girlfriend and I might play for some tres-light entertainment.
I could I suppose, have the best of both worlds and just say:
How strange! That flock of ducks never made it back from flying south. I wonder whatever happened to them?