My Rekindled Love of Board Games

When I was four, I remember my parents letting me win in Candyland because they were afraid of my wrath when I lost.

When I was six, I was introduced to Sorry and Uno. I became quite obsessed with both, especially Sorry.

As I grew up, I greatly enjoyed playing games such as Life and Monopoly. When I was really young, I'd often just play games with my mom. I think Stone Groove was too busy reading the paper or listening to the latest Doug Sahm record to participate. Sometimes we'd have epic Monopoly games that would last for days.

My love of Monopoly lasted for years - in fact all the way through college. However, the last time I played it was many years ago. For some reason, I pissed off many a girlfriend while playing it. My opinion is that if you are going to play a four hour game, you should actually play to win it. The problems always arose because I think some of the people I was playing with would have rather been playing Pictionary.

Speaking of which, I've always hated those dumb party games - Pictionary being my least favorite. I suppose that I can deal with Balderdash but why should I?

I think I would have enjoyed Risk but I don't believe I've ever played. I've never been into word games like Scrabble.

I had a 7th and 8th grade love affair with Connect Four and Checkers. I, of course, never have really gotten over my APBA / Strat-O-Matic fixation. I still have no interest in the computer version of the game. In fact, I've never really gotten into the whole video game thing in general. I much prefer dice in my hand, cards on the table, and a board with stuff on it in front of me.

The past few years have been fairly quiet for me on the board game front. I just haven't had much interest in the old games anymore and not much interest in learning complicated new ones. Also Poker has pretty much supplanted playing board games with most of my friends. I enjoyed playing Eurorails about five years ago back during the infancy of Balgavy's board game obsession but not enough to become obsessed. And I still hated party games.

I did enjoy Balgavy's first Board Game Party last year but I thought that once a year was enough for me. This year's party was fun but I was too hungover from the previous night's We hate our neighbors dance party to really get into it.

But a funny thing has happened recently. I've become obsessed with board games. It all started innocently enough back in the late fall with a game of Cluzzle at Balgavy's. I always hated the party games where I had to draw stuff. At first, I was apprehensive about having to make things with clay. But when I realized that my terrible sculpting skills didn't necessarily kill me in the way that my terrible drawing skills did in Pictionary, I was hooked. In fact, my bad skills helped me a little because you don't want to have other people guess your sculpture too early.

A few weeks ago, a number of us played Apples to Apples at Skippy and Cortney's. While I'm not the biggest fan of that game, it was still a pleasant enough way to spend a few hours. And while I also enjoyed playing Werewolf on this night, I'm not quite sure if you can classify that as a board game.

But it wasn't until the past few weeks that I've really become obsessed. Ra and Ticket to Ride Europe are amazing! Both are a nice mix of strategy and luck. Both have a lot to them but neither are too bogged down in rules. I can't stop thinking about them. I want to play them all of the time. I love them. I really really love them. I love you Marc Balgavy.