My Journey to Board Games

I am the Cardboard King. The Baron of Board Games. The Duke of Dice. The King of Cards. The Monarch of Meeples.

Well, to my group of friends.

...

Anyway, I am a big fan of games. Board games in particular. There is something so satisfying about the way dice feel tumbling out of my hand or the beautiful ‘clink’ metal coins make when I fidget with them.

It’s incredible how much emotion an assortment of cardboard and plastic pieces can bring to the table.

So, let’s talk about how my relationship with board games started. I’ll guide you through my experiences with two of the most influential games that helped me get to board games.

I’ll start off with Yu-Gi-Oh. I remember having cards and playing back in the early 2000s. That was child’s play (literally) compared to how invested I become when it made its comeback around 2011. Suddenly, the silly little card game made its comeback.

Well, within MY circle of friends at least, but that’s what matters.

All of a sudden we were playing before class, during class, after class. Eventually, I ended up hosting several game days at my house (and yeah in case you’re still wondering, I did say during class). The game was great, but I mostly remember enjoying the friendly competition and goofing around with friends. Nothing was too serious between any of us, it was all about the fun.

Everyone’s deck of cards was unique and personalized. Looking back at it, everyone had put a piece of themselves when they constructed their deck. You could tell who was playing by looking at the game and not the players. That was part of the fun, everything had a different way of approaching the game.

Some of us wanted to start playing outside our circle of friends. That’s when things started getting serious. We started attending local shops and playing against decks that we didn’t even know existed. We also got beat pretty badly. Not physically! I mean sure we were nerds, but we were playing against other nerds so physical confrontation was out of the question. Point is we just lost pretty badly. That’s when we found out (the hard way) how competitive the game could actually be and how behind we were.

So we decided to update our decks to keep up with some of the more competitive decks we were facing. These trips to the shops were how we learned a lot more about the game. We encountered more cards, rules, interactions between cards, etc. The game had more depth than what I first had imagined.

It also started to become a bit more expensive. The state of the game constantly shifted and new cards and rules were coming out faster than I had expected. This started to wear me out. I still enjoyed the game, but it started to become too much.

It was time to find something else.

So, I started to explore the shelves of the shops. My eyes landed on a red box with a name I had heard of before: Dungeons and Dragons. All I knew about it was that it was for nerds, but that didn’t bother me (I was spending most of my time playing a nerdy card game anyway). So I decided to do some research. I found some videos of people playing the game. They were telling these wacky stories and having a good time.

It looked fun.

Really fun.

I wanted to have that fun.

So I did more research…

I kept watching the group play through their campaign and I also found out that I could play online. This was both great and terrifying because I was going to learn to play BUT with total strangers. In the end, my desire to learn/play overpowered my fear of playing with strangers. I eventually found a group that was willing to teach a newbie. It was there that I learned how to play.

I played with them for a couple of months and was having a great time, but I felt that something was missing. I wanted to share the experience with my friends. So, I decided to become a Dungeon Master (DM) myself; that way I could introduce my friends to the game. All I had to do was find friends who were willing to play.

That ended up being easier than I had expected.

Within no time I had a nice sized group of friends who were interested in playing. After a few weeks of getting schedules in order, we had found a location (which is very relevant). After that, the routine was simple: pick up the crew, grab a bite to eat, then play some D&D until the sun goes down. It took a couple of sessions to get the rules down and create characters; things clicked for everyone and we were playing. It was a new experience. Sure, I had played before, but this was different; I was a DM for the first time, I was playing with my friends, and it wasn't online. The storytelling is what captivated me. Sure, I had played video games that were focused on telling a story, but crafting this was much more immersive. Seeing my friends disappear into their characters and then allowing me to unfold a journey for them was amazing.

This type of gaming was different to me. It wasn't like video games, the board games I knew about at the time, or even Yu-Gi-Oh. It was something else. I was happy to be able to share the experience with my friends. Something that I now think is exclusive to the world of tabletop gaming.

Now, remember how I said the location was relevant in parenthesis? Here's why. Our game days ended up being in a comic book shop. It had tables for open gaming, rows of comics, and (most importantly) shelves full of board games. I was immediately caught off guard by all the games that I had never heard of (which was pretty much all of them at the time).

The sheer amount of games was overwhelming so I decided to do some more research about board games. I found videos of people playing board games and was immediately interested. They were so different from the more popular board games I had played and they seemed even more fun. Plus, last time I checked something out based on videos I had seen online turned out to be good. So why not give something else a shot.

Every time we took our breaks at the shop I would look around at the games and start to recognize more of the names. I picked up the boxes, looked at the art, gave them a little sniff. You know standard stuff. There were so many options that I really wanted to make sure I make a pretty good choice to start with so I kept doing some research. This time it was more than just videos, I stumbled upon boardgamegeek.com (BGG). There were lists of the top games, forums, and reviews. It was, and still is, a great resource for board game enthusiasts.

My interest in board games started as our D&D campaign was slowly coming to an end. My studies were in full swing and scheduling conflicts were popping up more often. I was still in contact with my friends; we played video games pretty regularly and we still goofed around a lot.

But something was missing again.

The sensations of chucking dice, moving minis, and shuffling cards were gone.

And that’s when I found a very interesting niche of board gaming: solo games.

You can play games solo? What?!?! My mind was blown… What happened after that is a story for another day.

My journey to my board game kingdom was at its end. I had arrived. I was reaching for the cardboard doorknob and was about to learn what was on the other side. It was time for me to claim my rightful place at the throne.