Galloping Pigs
One of the things I have been seeking for a considerable time is a game I can use to introduce non-gamers to the hobby. Most of the games I really enjoy are either too complex to explain to someone who has expressed a casual interest, or are too large to carry on my travels. In both of these respects "Galloping Pigs" fits the bill very well, while giving a good introduction to the delights of "German style" games. I have played this game now on several continents and this is a brief description of the game and some of my experiences playing it.
I first came across Galloping Pigs at the Gulf Games convention in Pensacola, Florida in 2002 where it was being taught to one of the many attending children to the game. I was intrigued as it appeared to be similar to one of my favourite games, Reiner Knizia's "Honeybears", which is now sadly out of print. Like Honeybears, Galloping Pigs is a racing game where the players can move any of the animals in the race and also like Honeybear card management is crucial.
In Honeybears it is the cards left in the player's hand that gives them their score, whereas in Galloping Pigs your last card must move a pig to the front of the race in orders that you can score at all. I was intrigued by this little game and resolved to purchase a copy when I returned home, which fortunately at 5 Euros for the Abacus Spiele version in German was not going to break the bank.
I am fortunate in that I know a number of competent German speakers, (who probably regret ever letting that fact be known to me), so I was able to get the very straight-forwards rules translated. Galloping Pigs soon became a regular with our gaming group. It would be shortly after this that I found out about the first Dicecon in Glasgow and my joy at finding a gaming event in Scotland was increased by the fact that Galloping Pigs was going to be one of the competition games. Needless to say that after some frantic in house training our group was well prepared for the tournament and it was one of our number that won the inaugural tournament. That was despite the significant difference between the German version and the Rio Grande release that is used at Dicecon - for some reason the Rio Grande pigs are a lot bigger, why American pigs are larger than their European counterparts we can only conjecture! Perhaps this was a telling factor because at the second Dicecon our group could only managed a second and third place...
As this game fitted well into my criteria for a travelling game I made sure that I took it on a group holiday to Turkey. My attempts at getting people to going in game playing had previously not been too successful, but perhaps because of the novelty and the pure silliness of it I was able to get players to take part on two occasions.
Perhaps it was because I could impress people with the fact that I had been third in the UK championships, but both nights we had five players. Although it is only a four player game I find that it can accommodate 5 newcomers without affecting the play. I have found that people pick up the basic idea quickly and as it is a race game the objective is reasonably self evident. After a single race most of the nuances of the game are understood and people start developing tactics.
Buoyed by this success I also took Galloping Pigs on my recent holiday to Peru. As well as getting the people on my tour group to play I was also able to rope in a couple of the native children on Taquile islanders on Lake Titicaca. As the children spoke the local Quechuan language and a some Spanish, and I speak very little Spanish I had to rely on the better language skills of a couple of our party to get some of the finer points of the game across, but get across they did as one of the children won the game. At 12,400 feet above sea level I think this could claim an altitude record for the playing of Galloping Pigs too...
Ian Borthwick
20 April 2004