Popular Games Tweaked by Santys Elves

20th Dec 2011

By now Santy has signed off on most Cork children’s presents as elves report on their varying levels of goodness and boldness through out the year and we are very confident that this county has the best smallies on the island and will, as usual, be rewarded for their behaviour with a sack loads of presents.

With the Dublin led collapse of the Irish economy Santy has one eye on Cork’s future though (he is from The Lough after all). Knowing that when Cork finally breaks away from the furious oppression of the Dublin dominated state to our north the man in red has been lashing out the calculators and abacuses over the last few years to make sure the next generation can do the sums a little better than the current breed.

EU Twister: It looked good until we tied ourselves up in knots. That said, if it collapses not everybody will be...disappointed.

He tried to give us the hint in the early naughties when many families received the board game Monopoly as an unexpected ‘surprise’ present. It seems the big man hoped that the notion of buying so much property and selling it to each other would seem ludicrously illogical.

Unfortunately that year the board games were confined to the sideboards while giant flat screen TV’s dominated living rooms.
 

This year Santy will try to be more direct. Many adults will receive presents that force them to pay a little more attention to the bottom line. We understand that Santy’s elves have been busy tweaking the setup and rules of traditional board games to teach the nation some economic principles.

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
Instead of answering easy trivia to win hundreds of thousands of euro while sitting on your arse, players will have to actually complete laborious tasks before they earn any money.

The game takes place over several years and each task involves going out and working to earn the money instead of going to a bank and getting hundreds of thousands of euro because you showed the bank manager a crumpled bus pass and your Xtra vision card.

Hungry Hippos now featuring Cowen, Harney, Healy Rae and Noel O'Flynn all chomping at the trough

Market Buckaroo

Loading sacks of sovereign debt onto a wild German horse is no easy feat so a rock steady hand and nerves of steel are the minimum requirement for this game.

At any moment however, the slightest sovereign sneeze or banking burp anywhere near the volatile market bucko could send your bond yields through the roof and your packages of debt tumbling into the air.

Go For Broke – Ireland Version

If there was a world championship of this famous board game Ireland would win it hands down. In fact the world record for the fastest game of Go For Broke was won by officials in the Department of Finance in Dublin in late 2008 and it is unlikely that anyone will ever beat their top score of €200 billion - completed in just a few weeks.

In the traditional version of this game you had to lose a million. There are people in Ireland who could do that for you by the time you reach the end of this sentence. The only solution is to, take lessons from those who know how to lose money best, crank the fund up to half a trillion and let’s see you lose that!
 

Ah sure nobody told us and don't be talkin' negative

Twister – EU Version

The masks of European leaders come with this traditional game of Twister so as the dial of death is spun you eventually end up in a tangled mess with other competitors until you eventually all fall over - together. The person who draws the David Cameron mask has to stay off the mat to ensure somebody can take photos of the collapse and then laugh and point.

Hungry Hippos
In this game four contestants use overweight hippopotamuses to gobble up as many property bubbles as they can as quickly as possible. There is no time limit though – the object is to selfishly consume as much as you can so you keep going crazy until every thing has been digested.

When it appears everyone’s balls are worth nothing anyway just fire them at the nearest gullible tax payer who will immediately pay you a princely sum.

Monopoly
Santy wants us to learn economics the hard way. In this property based classic the rules have changed slightly since the recession. Credit was never available in the traditional game so the banks were solid and robust – no threat of repossession if you overspent on a nice hotel so our financial education was limited.

This time the banks can lend money to players but if they bang out too much Monopoly moola and overstretch their liquidity – BANG! They crumble and go out of business while players carry on as normal and eventually set up their own banks.