May will likely long remain a month where my mind turns to Friday nights at the Cornerstone Raceway in Yorkton watching standardbreds.
The race season used to start in May, a sort of racing herald of the good times of spring, summer and fall ahead.
Of course that was before the Saskatchewan Party decided it was worth more to them to make a token gesture at saving money, and cut the $100,000 grant which had been the lifeblood of the sport for years and years.
The savings, one which wouldn’t pave a quarter of a kilometre of highway, was enough to keep a sport alive, boost the local economy of Yorkton and the province as horsemen spent money, and created a place for horses to still race. (I wonder how many of those horses are now in glue sticks courtesy the government choice?)
So what has my little trip down memory lane have to do with board gaming?
Well it was a chance to once again reflect on a bad discussion by the government and acted as a segue into this week’s game; Cribb Derby.
It may not be live horse racing, but it does have a horse racing them.
As you might have guessed from the name, the game if one of a rather large group of games out there which use cribbage as a base. In the past I have written about baseball, golf and car racing all using cribbage as a base mechanic, and have toyed with a ruleset for a game of escaping the zombie horde using cribbage.
Cribbage remains one of my favourite games, easily my most played game in a given year, as in the winter months the better half and I duel over a crib board three or four days a week, usually plowing through a best-of-three over afternoon coffee.
In the case of Cribb Derby you of course overlay the idea of a horse race.
To start the board is elaborate, brightly coloured, and well made, especially given the game dates back to a 1995 release from JK Games.
Since the game launched nearly a quarter of a century ago, it is not something you find on a store shelf, so if you want one you will need to watch for it on a yard sale table, on a thrift store shelf, or go searching on ebay.com (as I wrote this I did a quick search, and found three copies listed.)
Overall, designer Ken S. Slaker does a rather good job of blending the idea of a thoroughbred horse race with cribbage as the race mechanic.
However, the horse race theme is so thickly applied you need to be rather deeply into being a fan of the sport to want to invest the time into learning the intricacies of Cribb Derby.
There are rules for Derby races, maidens, allowances, and claiming, with various race lengths, futures, stakes, ways to handicap a race and even how to run a Triple Crown.
As you might expect, your horse moves by pegging via regular crib hands. Land in areas coloured to match your horse and you get to move a few additional spots, which is the strategy of the game, and rather well mimics a jockey maneuvering their horse through a field on the track.
If that all seems a bit thick in terms of theme, plainly put it is.
For cribbage fans looking to broaden their play experience there are options more focused on the core rules of crib than this one.
But if you have some friends that you gather with to watch events such as the Kentucky Derby or Preakness, and you play cards too, this would be a great addition to both experiences.
This is a game of somewhat specific audience, diehard horse racing fans, with an equal love of cribbage, but that is the great thing about boardgames there is one for just about every interest out there.
