By: Your friends at The Pawn <3

Are you on the hunt for a fun way to waste time? Never fear — The Pawn is here! After multiple months of testing, we’ve come up with the perfect game for you to play during the extraordinarily lengthy 10-minute break that you have between your 8:30 a.m. to 11:20 a.m. lecture in West Mall, and your 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. “seminar” (or should we say syrup-making session?) in Blusson Hall.

To make sure this game works perfectly, every current staff member of The Peak Pawn was invited to the office to play. Our preliminary testing determined that we didn’t have enough players to play the game properly, so we invited all our alumni to play as well. Only two of them showed up — Josh and Kelly, citing “concerned about the current direction of the newspaper.” So, we grabbed a couple of unnamed professors under the guise that we were going to discuss how to compile an armada of security for personal protection. After playing a few rounds, we determined that the game works with 38 players.

All you need to play the game is a deck of cards. Pretty simple, right? That’s what I thought about my degree, as well. Take the courses you need and graduate in four years, and then head off to the working world! Yeah, that didn’t happen. Apparently you still have to meet more requirements, like the B-Q-H-I-J-K breadth-width-peanut-butter-sandwich-whatever. There are always hidden conditions you need to meet in order to execute something properly. I was so naïve as a freshman — I miss those days. Now, I have to stretch my back out every time I sit for longer than two hours straight. Fuck those weird table-chair-contraption things in the AQ for giving me back problems.

Anyways, I know I said you need a deck of cards to play this game, but to be honest, I changed my mind. Put your cards away folks, because even though you came here specifically to play this game (and we may have even offered you a scholarship for it), we’ve decided that we’re not going to play anymore. Reminiscing about my innocent youthfulness has made me sad. Don’t you remember when you were younger? I do. I came to SFU to study because it’s such a prestigious school with amazing social justice values and a great sense of budgeting. Plus, they have a great system going on — nothing works, but the ones that do aren’t paid. I stumbled across Renaissance Coffee on one of my first days on the Burnaby campus and tried their shaken caramel espresso, and I haven’t been able to move on since. I’ve spent my family’s entire fortune on these things. Now we’re almost bankrupt, but I can’t stop buying them. Most of this instruction manual is a joke, but that drink is like an elixir. It’s gotten me through so many dark days during my degree.

Alright, fine. We’ll play the game. I know y’all came here because you wanted to waste time, so fine, I’ll give you what you asked for. Grab your deck of cards and your 37 other players. Maybe try playing this while waiting in line for the bus after Vancouver gets one inch of snow. Now that you’ve taken care of that, tell 30 of those people to hit the road. Surprise! You only need eight people. Maybe even less. 

Remember how I mentioned building armadas of security earlier? Guess what — that’s exactly what you’ll be doing. Think of this game as like Battleship, except with Uno’s rules. Also, you still need that deck of cards, so maybe it isn’t quite like Battleship. Although, it kind of is. Have you ever heard of this really rare game called Monopoly? It’s like that too, except each player takes three tokens each, and four different chess pieces. What you’re going to do — 

RING RING! 

— Sorry, I’m just getting a call. Let me take a look. 

. . . 

I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to cancel this game for the time being. I know, I’m sorry, but I’ll make it up to you. You want to know who’s calling? I’m surprised you even need to ask.