CTS Croquet
May. 15th, 2006 03:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackOn saturday afternoon was Cambridge vs Oxford, Tolkien Society Croquet. Sorry to anyone who experienced faff of doom with me (which is probably too boring to try to explain). In the end we had a great lawn and a great picnic, and I think an enjoyable day.
The sides seemed fairly evenly matched, and everyone seemed to play quite well, including those who never played before, and those including me who'd played the winkers last year with no great distinction. I invoked Reevely powers to make two several-metre cross-bumpy-ground stick-in-hoop shots, and if I recall temporarily loaned them back to Mark to do a "put both of our balls through our hoop and send theirs to opposite ends of the pitch" shot special :)
The real problem was the evil hoop of doom. I think next time we house rule that we start there, or go through the other way, or ignore it, because half the game was spent fighting each other on a bumpy corner with a hoop fixed in. Because of the slope it's nearly impossible to stop the ball in front of the hoop, so to get through you need to find a flat edge and take a longish shot.
The first two balls (iirc) were finally got through when ours was lodged in the hoop, and their ball came back to try to touch it, and we all disagreed about if it had or not, so we compromised on that it had, but that they would knock both balls through the hoop rather than trying to knock ours out and start the whole thing again.
The sides seemed fairly evenly matched, and everyone seemed to play quite well, including those who never played before, and those including me who'd played the winkers last year with no great distinction. I invoked Reevely powers to make two several-metre cross-bumpy-ground stick-in-hoop shots, and if I recall temporarily loaned them back to Mark to do a "put both of our balls through our hoop and send theirs to opposite ends of the pitch" shot special :)
The real problem was the evil hoop of doom. I think next time we house rule that we start there, or go through the other way, or ignore it, because half the game was spent fighting each other on a bumpy corner with a hoop fixed in. Because of the slope it's nearly impossible to stop the ball in front of the hoop, so to get through you need to find a flat edge and take a longish shot.
The first two balls (iirc) were finally got through when ours was lodged in the hoop, and their ball came back to try to touch it, and we all disagreed about if it had or not, so we compromised on that it had, but that they would knock both balls through the hoop rather than trying to knock ours out and start the whole thing again.