Doktor Harmon and Darkaardvark proudly present:

THE VERSATILE EXTENSIBLE EDIBLE BOARD GAME SYSTEM

(We call it VEEBGS for short.)


Many board games require a few basic things: two distinct sets of undifferentiated pieces, other special pieces for other functions, and a board that can be assembled out of simple lines. As it happens, candy is the answer. Many candies, from life savers to lemon drops (and even gummies!), provide excellent pawns, while boards can be drawn out of licorice rope.

Darkaardvark and Doktor Harmon met at Peavey Plaza to test this as a method of playing board games.

Darkaardvark: As usual, studious ignorance was the order of the day from the general public. Two people did stop and ask what we were doing, though.

Doktor Harmon: This task was prompted by the realization that we each had a game to teach the other. Darkaardvark did not know how to play Go, whereas I did not know how to play backgammon. So those two were part of the day's entertainment.

We started with Go.



I played as the lemon drops, while Darkaardvark enlisted the famed strategic skills of the gummies. Alas, gummy apartheid is such a strong part of their culture that the bears chose not to cooperate when they were placed without regard for team membership, and as a result they suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the lemon drops.



While we had a nine line by nine line go board set up, we decided to play a game in the spaces as well - so we switched to checkers. The red team volunteered to restore the honor of gummykind by taking on the hated lemon drops.



The lemon drop forces were aggressive and got off to a strong start, punching through the wall of valiant red gummies with ease. Soon they were employing the dreaded Creme Savers to serve as their kings.



The green team, however, recognized the threat to gummyland's honor and stepped in to assist their red team allies by serving as kings - and delivered a dramatic victory over the forces of inanimate sweetmeats. Well before the end of the game, only five members of the green team remained - but against them stood only a pair of Creme Savers. Victory was only a matter of time - and not all that much of it. Soon the gummies surrounded the last embattled soldier of their inanimate foe.



And then Darkaardvark taught me the joys of backgammon, for which purpose we used only gummies on a Twizzler board. The red team took on the white team for this one.



Both teams helped advise their respective Occasionally Benevolent Human Overlords, and soon gummies were mounting their offensives as they prepared to reach the endgame.



And it wasn't long at all before the White Team, whose human general had experience at the game and was more prepared to recognize good strategic advice when his food offered it, began to bear off.



Having suffered defeat, the Red Team chose to honorably fall on their own swords, as it were, and offered themselves up for nomming.



DA: At this point, it must be pointed out that Dok and I used Alternative Dice during our Backgammon game. Unsatisfied with having to resort to non-edible solutions for our dice-rolling needs, we converted creme savers into a passable way to generate 1d6. A single creme saver was flipped- the front meant even, the back meant odd.



Then, we drew (and then put back) a single creme saver from a bag that contained equal amounts of each flavor- Strawberry cheesecake meant 1 or 2, depending the draw was even or odd, Cinnamon bun meant 3 or 4, and Apple Pie meant 5 or 6.




Dok: We then advanced to our final game of the day. To demonstrate the extreme flexibility of VEEBGS, the gummies themselves agreed to form a board and allow us to place Twizzler pieces on them in a large and delicious game of dots and boxes.



The game progressed quickly to the point where I had to offer Darkaardvark (represented by lemon drops) a chance to take the first box. Things got intense after that, particularly when a useful move proved to have been overlooked - but we rolled with the new turn of events. Ultimately, Darkaardvark (represented by the lemon drops) defeated me handily.



Final game tally: I won Go, but DA won checkers, backgammon, and dots and boxes. The interlude in the middle of the more serious strategizing was a tie.