Me and Gaming

Board games wasn’t my original passion, in fact it took me a good while before I actually discovered there was anything out there outside of playing cards, kiddie games and infinite renditions of Monopoly and Trivia games. I was approaching the mid-20s and had just moved into a shared flat, and one of my new flatmates had a small collection of games, clearly passionate about board games, as she would buy new ones from Germany. I didn’t understand the appeal then, but thought to each their own. She invited me to join her and her friends to play one time, and that session opened up my eyes a bit to a new world. I don’t remember the title of every game, but I know that I was introduced to Ticket to Ride, Seafarers of Catan, Bohnanza and Elfenland through her and her group, and one Western themed game that might have been Bang, but I can’t say for sure as I haven’t played it again.

This was merely dipping a toe in the water for me, as I did wish for Ticket to Ride for Christmas, but I didn’t look much further into the world of board games. I got the Nordic Countries version (the one I wished for, since I had already played the original map), and during one of their visits; convinced my parents to join me for a game of it. What started as a much hesitant yes to one game, quickly turned into multiple games in a row, and my parents bought their own copy during that same visit, choosing the Europe map for themselves.

Again, I didn’t further pursue the hobby at that point. I wished for the original game map at a later birthday or Christmas, I can’t remember which, but that was it. However, a few years back, I found myself realising that I was in a way isolating myself from the world. I had a few close friends that I would spend time with, but I didn’t really have any social arena outside of this group. I’m not a party person, I detest going out on weekends, and most of my interests were more of the solitary type (playing video games, watching television shows, reading…).

I realised this needed to change, so I decided to investigate what was out there, and I came across a flyer for the local board gaming club. It intrigued me because I had already learned there were some interesting games out there, and looking up the club online the average age of members was said to be around 30, so I was confident that I would come across people at least roughly around my own age. I showed up for one of their game nights and was happy to see that this decent sized group was very welcoming of me and was in general very newbie friendly. They made sure someone who knew the rules of the games put on the table would join in if they were chosen, they gave descriptions of the games for those of us who weren’t that familiar with them, had a nice voting system laid out to help people decide on games quickly. I don’t remember what games I played that first day, just that I was happy to be there and was happy to go back a following week.

I have since then become a regular, I have and am discovering new games at an alarming rate, and I have really bad impulse control on acquiring games, so my collection is growing rapidly. I have found a second gaming group to game with in addition to the club and hosting my own game nights. My family has become more familiar with games through me, my parents alone have almost every Ticket to Ride map now, plus the main two expansions for Catan, and my mom at least enthusiastically joins me for games whenever either of us are visiting the other. I’m practically devouring what I can find of board gaming videos, which only helps fuel my acquisition disorder.

In fact, you could say writing this blog is an attempt to distract me from browsing too many gaming related web stores. I can’t say for sure what I will feature here, just that it will be my own contribution to the board gaming realm online. There was a past attempt at blogging back when I was relatively new to the hobby, where I intended to talk about games from a newcomer’s perspective, but it eventually turned into a chore as I forced myself to talk about every game I played and not necessarily which games out of the ones I played that I wanted to feature. I don’t want to do that to myself again, I don’t want to corner myself and force some kind of specific format just to have an ‘angle’, not only does it not do anything for me, but I don’t believe that is going to be a particular interesting read for anyone else.

However, there are some indicators I can give. For instance, I’m definitely a mechanism before theme type of gamer, and I’m more partial to Euro style game play. Typical mechanisms I especially enjoy are Worker Placement, Drafting, Tile Laying, Tableau Building, Dice Pools, and Resource Management, and I enjoy a game more the less emphasis it has on luck, though I’m not against a certain amount of luck being present in my games. Deck Building is something that tends to fall flat with me, though I will not write off the entire genre just because I found both Dominion and Thunderstone to be really dull. Though themes aren’t important to me, I tend to find many horror themed games to not be that interesting, probably because they tend to focus more on the theme than the mechanisms. I’m also more partial to a game if it has vibrant colours in its art and pieces, though again, it has to have engaging mechanisms in the first place.

Another thing I really love in gaming is to sort and organize everything in games. Every time I’m in a store that sells any kind of empty containers, I find myself evaluating whether they can be useful in any of my games. I’m actually not so fond of using the staple we call bags, as they generally just add time to both setting up and clearing away games. There’s probably a really big chance I will focus on this particular subject at least part of the time, both because it excites me, but also because it might be of use to others looking to keep things organized.

Other than that, I hope at least someone out there will find what I have to say at least a little bit interesting. I may not be a designer or publisher or even a reviewer, just a regular board gamer like most of you out there.