It’s the last week of the year, when Christmas is over, but real life has yet to begin again – a time when, if you’re like me, after your third or fourth half-watching of Tři oříšky pro Popelku, your third or fourth attempt to pretend to like vaječný likér, and your 30th or 40th Christmas cookie of the day (which ones are the ones with the rum in them, again?), you start to get a bit desperate for new ways to veg out and avoid doing anything productive until January.
This year, the Tourist Information Centre (TIC) has given us a very Brno way to while away these boring winter days – the board game (ha) which they’re calling Game of Brno.
Technically, this is a re-gifting – since it’s an English version of Hra o Brno, which came out a couple of years ago in Czech (and which I wrote about for the Brno Expat Centre blog). In that article, I praised the game and said they should make an English version. Well, I got my wish!
To see if the new English version holds up, I invited six friends to play it with me at Za Zrcadlem, one of the only pubs I know in Brno with a table big enough to hold the game board and all the other stuff you need in front of you (everyone’s money, the various game cards, wine glasses). Even with the biggest table in the place, we had trouble finding room for everything.
In my BEC article, I explained how the game works and what makes it unique – and none of that has changed from the original version. Yeah, basically, it’s like Monopoly – your goal is to buy up as many neighborhoods of Brno as you can, build things on them, and then charge rent to the unlucky players who land on your properties. The original Czech title, Hra o Brno, captures the consumerist ideology of the gameplay a bit better, since it could be translated as “Game for Brno” – but I can understand why they went with the less ambiguous “Game of Brno” in English.
The main Brno-centric twist to the game – and its real reason for being – is the “event cards.” At the start of each turn, you pick a card and follow your fate. Drawing a red card means you’ll have to pay money to the bank or to your opponents, while a blue card means you’ll earn some moolah. The justification for what happens to you comes in the form of little stories, all of which are based on real incidents in Brno’s history.
The event cards are the best aspect of the game, and my friends and I enjoyed reading these anecdotes out loud to each other as we played. The best ones dredge up delightfully obscure trivia from Brno’s past and turn them into ridiculous and darkly humorous consequences for the players.
Most of the event cards were written by Milan Vocílka (who I interviewed for the BEC article). Knowing how much his original cards rely on local context, irony, and old-fashioned Czech names and terms, I was curious to see whether the translation would live up to the challenge.
Happily, it does – the dry humor and Brno goofiness shine through, bringing into English the original game’s off-kilter clomp through thousands of years of the city’s history. But I was very disappointed to see no translator’s credit given in the game’s instruction pamphlet.
As it turns out, because we live in a big little village, I discovered that I know the translator, Aaron Collier. He told me he worked for a few weeks straight on translating the some 400 cards, trying hard “to balance being accurate (because the facts on the cards basically all happened) with being understandable (because people are invested in the game and want to know what the card is about).”
He did a fantastic job – so it’s a shame that he’s not credited in the game materials. Note to TIC: Please fix that in the next edition, ok?
While the English version of the game hasn’t lost any of the charm of the Czech version, because the gameplay is exactly the same, it also has exactly the same downsides as the original.
As with Monopoly, you really need more than two players to make the game fun – but on the other hand, if you have several players, it can take a long time to set the game up, explain the rules, and distribute the money. And then, since all the players have to make their way around the board (and through Brno) at least twice before the wheeling and dealing of properties and buildings begins in earnest, the opening rounds can be a bit of a slog.
My friends and I played for three hours at Za Zrcadlem and it felt like we were just getting started. None of us had managed to reach the game’s highest, cartoonish level of greed, where you move city landmarks (like Špilberk Castle) out to your neighborhoods and charge outrageous fees to bankrupt your friends. And we had only skimmed the top off the huge pile of event cards.
But hey, in a way, the game’s slow pace, and its ambivalent transition to capitalism, mimic some of the things we love most about Brno, right? So maybe it’s the version of Brnopoly we all deserve.
Anyway, these languid qualities of the game are exactly what make it perfect for the winter nights ahead, when we’ll be needing something to break the ice with family and friends – something to chuckle at while we pig out on snacks and watch low-budget pohádky out of the corners of our eyes.
Besides, the game’s bold colors, and Filip Hauser’s knockout designs for the board, the cards, and even the box itself, make the whole thing into a lovely work of art – so even if you buy the game just to have a cool conversation piece on your coffee table, I’d say it’s worth it.
You can order the game from the TIC website, or pick a copy up at their gift shops in town. I also saw a copy at Dobrovský bookstore on Česká on Monday. Martinus in Velký Špalíček had one on the shelves last weekend, but when I went back on Monday it was gone! I’m not sure how many copies they’ve made of the English version, so get yours soon.
