Board and card games have held a significant fascination for me throughout much of my life. Over the years, I have engaged with many board games, although I must confess that only a select few have truly resonated with me and maintained their appeal over time. While it is difficult to articulate precisely what draws me in, I believe the attraction lies from a combination of several factors I personally find compelling .
As a general rule, I find that each board game offers a blend of strategy, social interaction, and mental challenge that can be both thought-provoking and entertaining. The mechanics, depth, and the opportunity for creative problem-solving contribute to an experience that is enriching and at the same time enjoyable. As I shall elaborate further on, the reasons behind my lasting interest are multifaceted, encompassing elements of intellectual stimulation, community engagement as well as nostalgia.
Where it all started!
I can vividly recall my grandparents' rooftop on a warm spring day, table laid, with white shades raised to shield us from the sun, surrounded by smiling faces and laughter that only young minds can fully appreciate. The food was unforgettable, hearty, delicious, and abundant. The enticing aromas were a dizzying commensal invitation for the senses, but it was the shared experience and love that truly united us as a family around the table. It fed into my innocent self-centeredness we all share as children, blissfully unaware of life's harsh realities.
I still remember how, after the meal, plates were swiftly cleared away, and the dining table transformed into a gaming surface. We would bring out decks of Piatnik cards, carefully checking for defects or missing items, an activity often carried out by my maternal grandfather or uncle Carm, who made sure everything was in order and fit for play.
Once everyone settled around the table, we would choose a game. Rummy was a favourite, but we also played a game called Flash, a mix of Crazy Eights and Uno using a standard deck. Although the rules were often bent for fun or the occasional laugh, everyone enjoyed themselves.
Board games and Family time
Board games were also played on these occasions with Monopoly featuring as a family favourite. The games played were interminable, but somehow on those special days it did not matter in the least. We played on, prepared teas and passed biscuits and other munchies around as we played. Only now do I realise just how precious those moments truly were and how incredibly special those games were to me growing up.
At home the gaming situation was different in that my mother seldom joined in the games though she did fancy a game of rummy when the game was spread. She also happens to play the game instinctually, winning without really understanding the underlying logic she uses while playing. Fact remains she won, consistently and we were fine about it. Dad on his part did not play much of anything, though he did buy me some classic board games as I grew up, including Backgammon, Chess and Draughts. What games I played, I usually played with my sister and the competition was fierce.
My sister was a tremendously good player when it came to abstract strategy games. One game she used to ace with an astounding level of proficiency was “Connect 4”. Beating her at that game was extremely difficult with draws being a more common occurrence...when I even managed that! Still, it was those early interactions that helped nurture my passion for board games and card games and to carry that with me throughout my life.
Obviously as I grew, my focus switched to a deeper appreciation of board and card games. For a while I became absorbed by the history and development of the standard deck of cards. The history behind its early development and democratisation thanks mostly to the printing press is a fascinating topic.
Exploring the standard and
not-so-standard Card Decks
It was during that phase of my life that I started to look at the various regional decks of cards from around Europe but with specific focus on Italy. I learnt how these countries and regions adapted the decks to the games they favoured as well as the vast spread of diverse card games which grew around these decks. The Italian “Scopa” remains one of my all-time favourites and I still love playing this game when I get the opportunity. Some card enthusiasts look at Scopa as a kind of child’s game, but I still feel that it’s highly entertaining and comes with some interesting strategic choices if you even bother to consider them.
The Board Games of the 80ies and
Early 90ies
All along, my other passion, that is board games, never truly waned. My early purchases, aside from Monopoly, included games like Stratego and a kind of Rummy adaptation with Mahjong-style cards called Mhing. There wasn’t much to go by in terms of board game reviews and exposure though I did get to play an early version of Talisman (another long winded game if there ever was one), Hotel, Hero Quest, Cluedo as well as The Game of Life. Titles which at best epitomise the kind of mainstream games available back then.
It must be said that in the eighties and to an extent the early nineties, most board games I came across could be divided into two categories, commercial ”mass market” or party games.
With mass market I mean games that were marketed aggressively over the media of the time and which, with few exceptions, tended to be targeted at a younger audience. Games like Hungry Hippo, Operation, Simon Says, Twister and Bop-it were dexterity games or ones that rewarded reflexes over mostly anything else. Others like Mastermind, Othello, Connect Four, Battleships, Stratego, Cluedo and Risk were significantly more cerebral by comparison but had been around for a while and went through several iterations by the early nineties.
It must be said that most, if not all, mass market games out there at the time were intended to sell and so production companies tended to cut a few corners when it came to quality. At times this showed mostly in the outer box but there were instances where even the components could only be described as shoddy at best. When you’re young and you don’t know any better it does not affect you much, but things change when you start to develop an appreciation for these things.
The other category of games, party games, was a genre I never really enjoyed. I used to find them to be mostly loud, a bit on the obnoxious side or tended to reward raucous behaviour. Not my cup of tea! For this reason I seldom if ever willingly participated in such games and when I did I never felt engaged in any way. I am thinking here of games like Outburst, Taboo, Cranium, Scattergories and others of that ilk.
Growing up, I tended to gravitate towards titles or games with a fantasy or science fiction theme. This was why, while it was relatively hard to come by, I particularly enjoyed my first ever games of Talisman or Hero Quest when the opportunity arose.
Before proceeding, I must note that, for reasons largely rooted in the cultural context of the time, some of the more “serious” games were expected to take longer to complete. There was an unspoken consensus that a quality game required a significant investment of time to be deemed worthy of the label “grown-up entertainment.” Games like Talisman and Risk, for instance, were known for their lengthy play sessions, and participants were well aware of what they were signing up for.
Additionally, many of those early games relied heavily on player elimination. It was common for games to eliminate players at certain points, which often left the affected participants watching idly or drifting away from the gaming table as the game progressed. This dynamic shifted with the emergence of a new wave of games from Germany, termed Euro games, that emphasised point scoring and end-of-game tallies rather than player elimination.
The Euro Game Epiphany
In the early 2000s, I finally experienced a true Euro game, which was a significant moment for me. The first Euro game I played was Settlers of Catan, and it felt like a revelation. The concept of having a unique board layout for each game was groundbreaking, providing genuine replayability since no two games started in the same way. Additionally, the gameplay kept all players engaged from start to finish, with scoring occurring only at the end. This meant that even if you realised you weren't winning, there were still actions to take and turns to enjoy. I was also fascinated by the "robber" mechanic, which rendered certain areas of the board unplayable until the robber was moved elsewhere.
As things turned out, Euro games and the whole table top gaming hobby experienced a radical epiphany over the past twenty-five years or so. The number of noteworthy titles grew exponentially taking the gaming industry in all new directions. I have gone into a lot of detail in other blogs posted to this website so I will not repeat myself. Still I invite you to have a look at my other postings should you wish to go deeper into the subject.
Board games the “swiss army
knives” of social gatherings
Throughout my whole experience to date, I have realised that my fascination with these creations is not in the gaming itself but rather with exertion of the mind and the satisfaction derived when the presented puzzles are resolved. I am also keenly fascinated with the kind of democratic egalitarianism that pervades these games. There is often a streak of luck, an unknown that acts as an equaliser of sorts, bringing diverse players with varying degrees of mental skill to the same table. Indeed once a puzzle is cracked or at least substantially unravelled, winning becomes a more frequent event, yet it is never guaranteed. This is what I find so tantalising.
Also, playing a board game can serve the purpose of a social crutch like no other. They can help fill in awkward silences when words fail us, and they do so by appealing to the mere execution of play. This universal paradigm is one that enjoins us all as mammals, primates and human beings. Games and board games by inference can ignite the mind by appealing to our innate sense of the fantastical or whimsical, allowing our thoughts to travel deep into the extraordinary beyond the mundanity of life.
Are Board Games a mirror of life?
For me, a good game tells a story. They can be a kind of interactive book that uses diverse media, and a mix of components and rules to tell a tale. The rules define the universe where the game’s story will take place and the components coupled with good rule execution bring the game to life.
I feel disappointed when what could be a great game is accompanied by a sub-standard ruleset that lacks clarity and is difficult to understand. It is like encountering a poorly crafted story; even if the underlying plot is intriguing, the journey to grasp it becomes tangled in unclear language and a confusing order of presentation.
In a way, the act of engaging in any sort of play does reflect life to some degree. In order to illustrate this idea I would like you to imagine life itself as being a game of backgammon. Backgammon is an intriguing game which comes down to us from earlier ancestors played as far back as 5000 years ago in Mesopotamia and Persia.
Modern Backgammon is a game of strategy but also a game of luck. Players take their turns to roll dice and move their pieces around a board towards their respective home areas. Once all pieces reach their respective home area, the player may then proceed to bear them off using precise dice rolls. The first player to bear off all their gaming pieces wins.
Yet there are so many aspects to this game. To begin with, the modern distribution of the 15 identical game pieces is quite specific with two of the pieces starting off deep within the opponent’s home area. This in itself poses one of the games main challenges. Backgammon is also a game of many faces and many stages as we shall now see.
At the start of a match, it is a game of waiting and weighing opportunities. Players will contend for key spots (or points as they are also called) around the board. The actions taken may be simple blocking tactics at first but they could well evolve into well executed tactical strikes aimed at knocking an opponent’s pieces temporarily off the board. The closer opposing pieces get, toward the middling part of the game, the more the blocks and strikes will become, as either player seeks the path that will lead all his or her pieces home and off the board.
So what we end up looking at is a game that evolves as it progresses from patient observation and calculation, to tentative or tactical blocking and striking to ultimately optimising the end game which in most cases can be construed as a race to the finish.
Is this not the essence of most of our endeavours in life? We establish objectives and allocate resources, carefully observing the context in which we operate before taking action. In a subsequent phase, we progress toward our goals, jockeying to secure advantageous positions that may ensure our success while eliminating any circumstances that could impede our advancement.
As we approach our ultimate objective, having addressed all obstacles and secured a favourable starting position, we proceed with our plan, maintaining focus on the final goal. Once we execute the tail end of our strategy, it is typically time to reset the board and embark on the process anew. Although the goals and means to achieve them may differ, the fundamental nature of each endeavour undertaken remains unchanged.
Facing off with reality
So for a person like me, that sees so much value in board games, I find it quintessentially difficult to comprehend why others may not share this same passion to some degree. It is not that I expect any person who falls under the banner of “board gamer” to like all the board games they come across or to hold an appreciation for the diversity that we are now presented with. Yet I do expect them to at least understand the spirit that attracts us to this hobby.
There are certain board games that have achieved an unparalleled level of prestige over time, and modern chess is one of them. This game has experienced significant transformations throughout its history, beginning as the Indian game Chaturanga and evolving to include the powerful Queen piece, a hybrid of the Rook and Bishop, during the 15th century. Chess represents a distilled form of strategic play, characterised by its symmetry, especially in the opening phases. It is a game of complete information, and its rules have been universally embraced across the globe.
I wanted to highlight chess because, despite its rich history and widespread recognition, some people still view it as a trivial pastime—something to engage in only when there’s nothing else to do. This perspective is unfortunate!
Life presents us with various stressors, whether at work or at home. Taking the time to step back, slow down, and enjoy a few hours of chess (or any other board game for that matter) can be incredibly beneficial. The advantages of disconnecting for a while far outweigh any potential downsides of taking that break.
As far as I am concerned, board games serve as a profound source of mental rejuvenation, tranquillity, as well as a connection to a community of like-minded individuals. They provide not only entertainment but also a sanctuary where I can escape the stresses of daily life. Whenever I find myself feeling disheartened or directionless, I am reassured by the knowledge that engaging in a few rounds of my favourite board games will uplift my spirits.
The intricate mechanics and thoughtful strategies involved in gameplay often lead to unexpected moments of inspiration. As I engage with the carefully crafted turns of play, I may discover a spark of creativity or an innovative solution to a lingering problem, emerging from the depths of my own psyche. Ultimately, board games are much more than just another hobby; I believe that they are vital tools for personal growth and emotional well-being.
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