August 22 - Card | @jartylusmicrofics | wc: 615
Game nights have become relatively normal within the Potter-Black-Crouch household because all of them are incredibly competitive and don’t like to back down from a challenge, they’re also all the type of people to overthink games and become quickly hated by their friends when they’d play together because of that. Each of them have games that they’ve banned in the house through process of elimination: Monopoly, any of the Mario games, Settlers of Catan -- after a particularly heated competition between the three of them all on 8 or 9 points before James won, Barty flipped the entire board, and Regulus didn’t talk to them for the rest of the day -- Uno twice, among many others.
And they’ve decided, this game night, that card games were their best approach for the safety of their house, relationship, and sanity. The thing is, James isn’t the best at these games, they can admit that. They do well with the games that they do play, and they were also part of the reasons behind some of these games getting banned from their household, but there’s never been anything that they’ve banned because they were too good at it like Regulus with Monopoly.
Until they’re on their third card game, Regulus and Barty have only won thrice, collectively. James has won every. Other. Round. That they played. James has a track record of 16 out of 19 games.
“I’m going to kill you.” Barty mutters, looking James dead in the eye, “I swear to God if you win again, your body will not be found.”
“Okay,” Regulus hums, pushing Barty away from the table where, thankfully, James and Barty are sitting opposite each other, “I think card games are getting banned from game night, too.”
“We’re going to run out of games to play on game night soon.” James says, although they admittedly have a cocky smile on their face as they place down their hand, showing that they’ve won. Again. Barty nearly flips the table. Regulus gently takes the cards from both of their hands and cleans the ones on the table, putting them back in the box before walking over to the ‘banned’ shelf that they have and putting the pack on it.
“Running out of games or not,” Regulus states, “We’re done playing games tonight, I think we’re too high strung.” James agrees and goes to start making the three of them some hot chocolate to ease some of the tension that they’ve caused.
When they’re done and Regulus has calmed Barty from the edge of murder -- Barty asks him how he’s not upset at James winning constantly, and he is, but he’s calmer than Barty and therefore needs to calm him down -- and the three of them are settled down on the couch with a comfort show, Barty finally asks, “How are you so good at card games?”
James takes a second to answer, “My dad really liked playing card games when I was young, that was usually what we ended up playing and if you think that I’m good at card games, you should never play with my dad. It also became a thing that since Peter was good enough at chess, I could never beat him, so we’d start playing cards and he’d get frustrated then it was a back and forth of us going between chess and cards.”
“Which is why you two don’t play games together.”
James nods, “My dad is incredibly strategic and, to beat him, you had to learn how to best him in his own game.”
“Well, it’s just another banned game.” Regulus rolls his eyes, pressing a kiss to both of their lips as they fully settle down.
32 notes
·
View notes
people who don't follow chess I promise this post is really funny
63K notes
·
View notes
Sometimes having a reputation for being smart beats actually being smart.
I once beat my school’s chess champion in a game because he spent the entire match desperately trying to work out my strategy because I was “smart” and therefore good at chess.
We were playing with a Lord of the Rings chess set. I was moving the characters I liked best.
I’m terrible at chess.
52K notes
·
View notes
Hey guys, my opponent just fused their entire side of the board into a gestalt entity, which is currently dissecting and calcifying my pieces such that they fit into its twisted vision of an eternal, perfect state of the universe. What's the best counter in this situation?
26K notes
·
View notes
Lackadaisy Stratagem (Animated Short)
Just Mordecai and Viktor having a normal one.
Watch the full short here on YouTube!
----------------------
Clips here feature the animation and cleanup work of Sam Kessler (ENDO), Keaton Sapp, Julia Schoel, Carolina Senra, BMBrice, and Sam Staehler, with compositing by Matt Pichette!
11K notes
·
View notes
Last night I dreamed that someone invented a new version of chess called Rookmeo and Juliet where two rooks are in love and trying to run away together. To achieve this they have to make it to the other side of the board, but these rooks don't have any visible signs to differenciate them from the rest, just a small mark in their base. Neither of the players knows what rook from the other side is in love with their rook, so they have to play a regular game of chess, fully aware that they might unknowingly kill the lover of their rook. If they kill it, the game keeps going, but their rook betrays them, switches sides and turns into a second queen for the other player. People wrote a ton of essays about the symbolism and metaphors of that version of chess and the creator didn't have the heart to tell them that he simply invented it because he thought Rookmeo was a great pun
27K notes
·
View notes