I Brought You This Piping To Show You My Love sends players roaming around the Cluedo mansion, trying to find the perfect gift to make their beloved’s heart melt. Rope? A candlestick? A nice sharp practical knife?

Players: 4-6
Requires: a Cluedo board, cards, pieces, pens and paper

Aim:
Each player has a beloved, and is trying to propose marriage to that beloved – and give them the perfect gift so that they just can’t say no. But be careful! If you propose with the wrong gift, they’ll spurn you, and you’ll be out of the game.

Each player also has someone who is in love with them.  Watch out – if they figure out what the perfect gift for you would be, and propose marriage, you won’t be able to turn them down.

Setup:
Each player picks a character, takes the appropriate pawn, and puts it on the board. Players also take the card showing their character, and place it face-up in front of themselves, so people can tell who’s who.

Take the weapons – I mean, the lovely gifts. Who doesn’t love a nice romantic rope, or a sexy candlestick? You’ll need the cards and the little figurines – if you have a new version of Cluedo, with nine weapons, just pick six and put the remaining three away, along with their cards.

Now shuffle the lovely gift cards, and deal out one to each player, face-down. You can look at yours – this is the thing you really really like, the gift that would melt your heart and render you unable to turn down a proposal.

Scatter the gifts randomly around the house, one in each room.

Now shuffle the room cards, and deal out one to each player – again, face-down, and again, you’re allowed to look at yours. This is a room that you really, really hate. If someone proposed to you in this room, you’d turn them down instantly – even if they had the perfect gift.

Now take the remaining gift and room cards (still face-down), and shuffle them together. Lay them out in rooms of the Cluedo mansion, no more than one to a room, face-down.

Getting  Started
Look at the person sitting to your left. Which character are they playing? Your character is desperately in love with theirs. You quite like everyone else, sure, but they, the person sitting to your left – Colonel Mustard, or Miss Scarlett, or Mrs Peacock, or whoever it may be – they’re the one you really want.

As established in the setup, you also really like the object on the implement card that’s been dealt to you; and hate the room on the room card that’s been dealt to you.

The youngest player starts, and then play proceeds to their left. On your first turn, you must move into one of the rooms to either side of you. On subsequent turns, you must move from the room you’re in to any room that’s next to it (including the room in the middle of the board). You cannot stay in the same room.

When you move from one room to another, you can bring any one gift that’s in the first room to the second. This gift doesn’t belong to you – anyone else can move it as well – you’ve just dragged it from one room to another.

When you arrive in a room, you can do one of the following things:

• If there’s a face-down card, you can peek at it.
• If your beloved is in the room, you can offer them one of the gifts whose little model is in that room, and propose marriage.
• If the person who is in love with you is in the room, you can ask them any question, and they have to answer truthfully (to the best of their knowledge) – but be careful; whatever they answer, everyone else will be able to hear.
• If someone you’re indifferent to is in the room (you’re not in love with them, and they’re not in love with you), you can propose trading questions – if they agree, they get to ask you a question that you have to answer truthfully, and then you get to ask them a question that they have to answer truthfully.

(You can’t ask your beloved questions – you’re far too tongue-tied.)

So what you want to do is figure out what gift your beloved wants, pick that gift up, get it to the same room as them (not the room they hate, though!) and propose marriage. To do this, you can collect information by looking at the face-down cards, asking questions, and taking notes when other people asks questions.

If you propose to someone, and you have the right gift and you aren’t in the room they hate, then congratulations! They’ll accept, and you win. Everyone else loses. Yes, even your beloved.

If you propose to someone but you have the wrong gift, or you’re in the room they hate, then they will turn you down. You’re broken-hearted; you no longer have a move, you just stay where you are, unless someone asks you a question or proposes to you, in which case you respond as if you were still playing.

The game is over as soon as a marriage proposal has been accepted.

More about the Boardgame Remix Kit: here.
Return to Valentine games: here.
Picture by Vassil Tzvetanov.

Divorce! is a  game for two grumpy players. Get through the three inevitable stages of a relationship – Wooing, Marriage and Divorce – and come out with more property than your ex. This is probably the heaviest-going of our Valentine remixes, so it’s best suited for more experienced boardgamers.

Players: 2
Requires: Monopoly board, pieces, cards, money

Summary
The aim of the game is to end up with the most property (and money, so that you can sue for your partner’s property). You get one point for each property you own at the end, or double points for properties in a full set (for example, if you own all the blues, or all the oranges). The value of the properties doesn’t matter – just how many you have.

It’s a bit complicated, so if this is the first time you’re playing, you might want to skip the wooing stage, and instead just:

• Go through setup (below)
• Have each player deal three cards to themselves secretly, and keep these secret throughout
• Choose one player randomly to receive the top hat – this is a bit of an advantage, so perhaps choose the player with less boardgame experience
• Then proceed directly to marriage!

Setup

Take the property cards. Remove the Waterworks and Electricity, and shuffle all remaining property cards together.

Hold the deck coloured side down. Each player deals themselves five cards, and keeps those cards hidden from their opponent. Now deal four cards in a pile, trying not to see what they are, and add the waterworks card to these four. Shuffle the pile (four cards plus waterworks), and put them on the top of the property deck (still coloured-side-down).

Now turn the property deck over and place it coloured side up on the board. The waterworks card should be somewhere in the bottom five cards, but you won’t be sure exacly where.

Wooing

To woo your partner, you need to show that you’re worthy of them – that you’re not coming to the relationship empty-handed. You’ll need to let them see some of your property.

Take one, two or three of your property cards – it’s up to you – and conceal them in your hand. (The others are hidden away in your secret accounts, and nobody need ever know, at least until the divorce). On the count of three, you and your partner will both reveal the cards you’ve chosen – this is the property that you’re bringing into the marriage.

If you added the most cards to the marriage, you’re coming into it in a superior position – you’re going to get first pick of the properties come the divorce. Take the top hat and put it in front of you, to show that you brought more wealth to the union. (If you’ve both added the same number of cards, then add up their total purchase value; higher wins. If it’s still a tie, the player who added the single most expensive card wins. If it’s still a tie, roll a dice. )

Now take the cards you both added to the union, and lay them out to one side of the board. This is your joint property.

Marriage

Now you’re married! Congratulations, we hope you’ll be very happy. It’s time to take part in the primary purpose of marriage: increasing your joint assets while secretly squirreling something away for yourself.

Put a pawn on GO for each player, and take it in turn to take an action (with the top-hat-holder going first). Each turn, your action can be either of:

• ROLL THE DICE and move around the board. Roll both dice – you can move in either direction, using the total of both dice, or of either single dice (so if you roll a 1 and a 4, you can move 1, 4 or 5 in either direction); or
• ADD A PROPERTY to the marriage – take the property that’s on top of the property deck, and lay it out with the rest of your joint property

If you choose to ROLL THE DICE and move, usually nothing happens, but:

• If you land on Chance or Community Chest, take £50 and add it to your property. Your money should remain visible to your partner at all times.
• If you land on a property that you and your partner own – if it’s laid out in your joint property – then while you’re there you can fiddle the paperwork to have it transferred to your name. Lay it out in front of you (make sure your partner can still see it – don’t hide it away with your secret property.)
• If you land on a tax square, you must pay the tax as demanded. If you don’t have enough money to pay it yourself, then pay as much as you can and pay the rest from your partner’s money – you’re married, after all, your debts belong to both of you now.

If you ever finish a turn and there are no jointly-owned properties laid out, add one automatically; it doesn’t take an action.

The Marriage round, and your marriage itself, ends immediately as soon as the WATERWORKS are revealed.

Divorce

To start your Divorce, take it in turns to pick out properties from your jointly-owned assets. The player with the top hat in front of them chooses first, then you take it in turns until all properties are gone. Add the properties you’ve taken to the cards laid out in front of you.

Now take it in turns (again, starting with the holder of the top hat) to choose a property that the other player holds that you want to sue for. You can choose any of their visibly-held properties (not the secret ones tucked under the board – you still haven’t seen them). You each need to choose two properties to sue for. (Any uncontested properties remain yours.)

Lay out the contested properties on the board. Now, going through the properties (in the order they were chosen to be sued for), secretly decide how much you want to pay your lawyer to fight the contest. Put that much money in your hand (still secretly!), and then on the count of three, you and your opponent both reveal how much you’ve chosen to pay. You don’t get this money back – it’s gone for good.

Whoever paid their lawyer the most, gets to keep the property. If it’s a tie, the property gets caught up in the legal system and nobody gets it. Money serves no purpose other than paying lawyers, so you should intend to use yours all up during the divorce.

Scoring

Reveal your secret properties and add them to the rest of your cards. Now count up your properties – you get one point for each property you own, or two points if they’re part of a complete set (all the properties of a colour, or all the railways). The player with the most points wins.

More about the Boardgame Remix Kit: here.
Return to Valentine games: here.
Picture by Johnny Jet.

ROFDLT is a game of acronyms that may well lead to lewdness.
Players: 2, preferably in a relationship.
Requires: a bag of Scrabble tiles, a timer (30 seconds)

You play this game with a partner, rather than against them – you’re trying to work together to get the highest score you can, out of a maximum of 100.

Take it in turn to draw five Scrabble tiles out of a bag; let’s say you get W, P, K, F, and T. Once you’ve drawn out the tiles, you have to make them into an acronym describing something you can do to your partner (in the way that ROFL means Rolls On Floor Laughing). You can move the letters around as much as you like, and use as many or as few of them as you want to.

Once you’ve thought of your action, take the tiles you’re using and put them in the right order – any that you’re not using go in a discard pile. Then set the timer going and start doing the action you’ve come up with. Your partner has thirty seconds to work out what it is! They can make as many guesses as they like.

So for the example letters, you might (depending on the equipment available to you) Pat Knee, or Touch Foot With Pinkie, or Fondle Penis Whimsically, or Prod With Toblerone.

If your partner guesses what you’re doing within the time limit, you get as many points as there were tiles in the acronym – congratulations! If they don’t guess, put the tiles in the discard pile. Either way, it’s now your partner’s turn to pull out some letters and think of an action to perform.

The game ends when you run out of tiles – the absolute maximum score you can get (assuming you haven’t lost any tiles) is 100.

Notes:

• To get a high score, you want your acronyms to be longer – but of course, that might make them harder to guess.
• If you get a blank, you can use it as whatever letter you like – but you can’t tell your partner what letter it stands for, so be careful; it could make things more difficult rather than easier…

More about the Boardgame Remix Kit: here.
Return to Valentine games: here.
Picture by Robert S Donovan.

WLTM Humpty Dumpty is a quick, silly fill-in-the-blanks trivia game. Build up your very own personals ad using answers from the Trivial Pursuit questions. I’m a decepticon who’s into Charles Dickens.
Players: 2 or more
Requires: Trivial Pursuit cards, pens, paper

To start, each player is going to need at least one personal ad with lots of blank spaces. You can write your own (make sure everyone’s is the same, though!) or print out our pdf from the Boardgame Remix website.

An example might be:

Single [----------] WLTM [----------] for [----------]. Must enjoy [----------] and [----------]. No [----------]s please.

Now, each player takes a pile of Trivial Pursuit cards and puts them on the table in front of them, question side up.

You’re going to use the answers on these cards to fill in the blank spaces in your personal ad, taking it in turn to decide which colour answer you’re using. So the first player looks at the pile of cards, reads the questions, and chooses a colour – say, brown. No looking at the answers before you choose! You have to go entirely by the questions.

That player takes the top card from their pile; and everyone else looks at their own card. Everyone reads their own brown answer to themselves (not aloud!), and writes it into one of the gaps in any of their ads – wherever they think it fits best.

Now it’s the next player’s turn to choose a colour – and just like before, everyone has to take a card, and use that colour’s answer to fill in one of the gaps.

If you ever get an answer that really doesn’t fit anywhere, you can skip it and put a little cross in the corner of your paper – but you can only do this three times, so be careful!

Keep going – taking it in turns to pick a colour – until everyone’s filled in all their gaps. (This might take some players longer than others, since some players will skip more words than others).

When you’ve finished, read your ads aloud to the other players.

(Of course, there’s no reason it has to be personal ads – you can play the same game with limericks, movie listings, menus, catalogue descriptions or anything you like.)

Winning

If you want a competitive game, there are a couple of things you can do:

Put the ads in the newspaper and see who gets the most responses
Before you start playing, everyone writes down the name of a friend or a fictional character you all know. At the end of the game, players vote on who would be the best date for each of the named friends – the winner is the player who created the most dateable ads.

Notes

• Once you’ve written a word in, that’s it – no moving things around!
• If you’re writing your own ad to use, make sure most of the blanks are places where a noun would fit – these are the easiest to fill.
• If it’s not your turn to choose a colour, feel free to pick up your top card and read through the questions and answers while you’re waiting.

More about the Boardgame Remix Kit: here.
Return to Valentine games: here.
Picture from Sludgegulper.