Has it been a consistent hobby since childhood or was there a single game, a mechanism, theme or social situation which hooked you in?
Sadly, the first board game I played was Monopoly at ~10, and that drove me away. Then I rediscovered them in uni with Settlers of Catan and Risk.
I’d always liked board games, but the wife and I never had anything beyond the ‘classics’, which were fun but kind of been there done that sort of vibe. Then one day a couple years ago we went down to our friend’s house and they showed us Unstable Unicorns, Dixit, and Munchkin and our minds were blown. We immediately started buying the games we’d played and a couple more that had cool art and as we played more with friends and by ourselves we kept buying more and more, even being able to show our friends games they hadn’t heard of. And now we have too many 🤣
Tell me about it, they’re so hard to resist, especially when you’ve got a gaming partner. I love the nature themes like Meadow, Wingspan, etc.
I took Cascadia over to a mate’s, who expected something like monopoly, and he was blown away.
Playing Wingspan as we speak!! I was a huge bird nut growing up so that one was an instant pickup when I heard about it. I still even have a box of a ton of bird statues and pictures in storage.
I’ve been meaning to check out Cascadia, and I’ll have to add Meadow to the list of potentials as well. Parks is another pretty fun nature one that we have, really cool art.
I do really enjoy Wingspan now, the artwork and production quality is a huge appeal, I also use the Wingsong app when my son’s around, as he enjoys hearing the birds.
I love Cascadia, it’s not deep and I feel I’ve maxed out my strategy, but it’s such a pleasure to play, especially with non gamers.
I was looking at Parks last week, do you have either expansion? Was hoping for a big box, but there aren’t any plans.
A college buddy introduced me to Settlers of Catan, and the rest was history.
I’ve still not played Catan, but I’ve converted a few friends with Cascadia. Catan is the most controversial game I’ve come across, plenty of lovers and haters in equal measure
I’ve never really encountered anybody that hates the game itself, just… certain people who don’t play it well together…
Catan is the Monopoly of adult board games. The first half is fun, then you figure out who’s going to win, and the second half is just going through motions with no fun.
Family always played Scrabble and I did not like it… In college my friends frequently played Dominion but I always opted out because I thought I didn’t like board games. Eventually I tried it and fell down a rabbit hole
Been playing board games of one stripe or another since I was 4-5yrs old and my dad taught me how to play chess, backgammon, checkers, Monopoly etc. Early teens brought more complex games like Shogun, Catan and Roborally (I am HORRENDOUSLY bad at games with move programming like Roborally) along with CCG’s and RPG’s into the mix.
Jeez! Now I feel really old realizing I’ve been gaming for nearly 40yrs.
