Sweet Use of Fishing28

It's been a weird November, with no Fall-In!, actually attending Mepacon, and trying in general to get my life back on track.  

I've been doing a lot of fishing.  

Namely Fishing28, a fun non-combat minis game, that's been perfect excuse to use some recently painted gnomes:

The concept is simple.  It can be solitaire play: a man and his boat move across the water, adjusting to the current, and the random move of a fish.  Catch all five fish and get them on shore during your move, you win!  If the boat drifts off the board, hits a rock, lands on the beach during the drift, you lose your fish  and the game.  

It's a simple concept, can be expanded for more players, and the challenges (Embuggerances!) like rocks in the water, aggressive larger fish, and even a large bird to steal your catch, one by one.  

Solo play is definitely there.  Re-playability with the Embuggerances is there.  And quenching a desire to play with Swedish fish?  Absolutely.  

As a simple free rules set, I'll need some more testing, maybe add a rule or two (adding rules is one of the rules of the game, brilliant!).  

I've pondered it long and hard, and Fishing28 is good enough to earn the coveted Gaming with the Gnomies' five gnomes out of five rating.

Heck, we're almost 15 years since my Battle of Yellowstone game, where there was shooting and conflict (and gnomes), but a good portion of that were herding, and rustling, and controlling forest fires.  This is just in the same vein.  I'm not sure it has a place in our Tropical Gnome Mega Game for Historicon, but I could see this in a smaller game, as a side quest.  It worked for the guy herding sheep illegally in Yellowstone's borders, it could work for a island of not-all cannibal gnomes.

The link for the rules for Fishing28, and a host of other cool rulesets, can be found here.