Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Drugs of Plastic and Cardboard
I played Memoir '44 this past weekend with a guy I met at my summer job. Really, an amazing game. I love games like this that are exceedingly simple to learn, but still have tactical depth and a really great theme (in this case, World War II). It's a magic balance, an almost paradoxical combination.
Before I had purchased the game I had spent plenty of hours researchng it to make sure it would be a good purchase, most of said research being conducted at BoardGaemGeek, positively the best resource for anyone who is interested in discovering games beyond Monopoly and Taboo. They have great pages for most every game, including Memoir '44. I finally bought the game after meeting this fellow from work and learning of his love for Risk and his interest in history. Utter success.
I don't know what attracts anyone to board games like these--it's like a calling, like a bothersome interest that pushes one to impossibly geeky tasks like hours of research on a single game, downloading rules, and finely balancing the games we would love to have with the games we know would have a chance at actually seeing playtime. Months ago, sometime shortly before the wedding, I had gone through some sort of insane buying frenzy, essentially jump-starting my board game collection after months of pondering and plotting. I stacked it with a good variety of two-player games, since mostly if I have a chance to play a game it's with Susanne, and sprinkled in some games that are good with groups. My collection, in BoardGameGeek standards, is relatively limited--many members have dozens and dozens of games, even hundreds (!)--but it's still more than most people have on their shelves, and definitely more than I play regularly. For months many of the games sat there unplayed, and while we're now starting to get to the bottom of the list I still have a few that I have not yet played.
If you take a look at my collection you'll see I have as yet three unplayed games. But I already have my next Thought Hammer order picked out, so chances are pretty good that I'll add a couple to that unplayed list by November. This is something of an addiction.
But can one have a worse addiction? When playing a board game you get to use your brain AND socially interact with your friends. They're almost the perfect thing for entertaining visitors for just that reason--how many activities allow you to sit around the same table, eat, talk, laugh, and have fun while you're doing something together? You don't even need to plug the darned things into the wall! Imagine!
Before I had purchased the game I had spent plenty of hours researchng it to make sure it would be a good purchase, most of said research being conducted at BoardGaemGeek, positively the best resource for anyone who is interested in discovering games beyond Monopoly and Taboo. They have great pages for most every game, including Memoir '44. I finally bought the game after meeting this fellow from work and learning of his love for Risk and his interest in history. Utter success.
I don't know what attracts anyone to board games like these--it's like a calling, like a bothersome interest that pushes one to impossibly geeky tasks like hours of research on a single game, downloading rules, and finely balancing the games we would love to have with the games we know would have a chance at actually seeing playtime. Months ago, sometime shortly before the wedding, I had gone through some sort of insane buying frenzy, essentially jump-starting my board game collection after months of pondering and plotting. I stacked it with a good variety of two-player games, since mostly if I have a chance to play a game it's with Susanne, and sprinkled in some games that are good with groups. My collection, in BoardGameGeek standards, is relatively limited--many members have dozens and dozens of games, even hundreds (!)--but it's still more than most people have on their shelves, and definitely more than I play regularly. For months many of the games sat there unplayed, and while we're now starting to get to the bottom of the list I still have a few that I have not yet played.
If you take a look at my collection you'll see I have as yet three unplayed games. But I already have my next Thought Hammer order picked out, so chances are pretty good that I'll add a couple to that unplayed list by November. This is something of an addiction.
But can one have a worse addiction? When playing a board game you get to use your brain AND socially interact with your friends. They're almost the perfect thing for entertaining visitors for just that reason--how many activities allow you to sit around the same table, eat, talk, laugh, and have fun while you're doing something together? You don't even need to plug the darned things into the wall! Imagine!
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