Blog #1 - Embracing the cardboard

First few games I got after getting into the hobby

Board games have never been a big part of my life. Of course, I've played the usual Monopoly, Snakes and Ladders, Scrabble and Uno, and at one point was very invested into chess (I would still enjoy a good game of chess, but don't really get many opportunities to play), but, as far as I knew, that was all the hobby had to offer and the experiences provided by video games were much more down my alley.

However, despite all that, over the last year or so, I would occasionally find myself eyeing the board game section in some hobby shop I happened to have wandered into, admiring the art work and thinking that maybe it'd be pretty cool to get one of those beautiful looking boxes. I would always chase that thought away though with arguments like 'There will be no one to play this with' or 'It will take up too much room' and the obvious 'Is it really worth paying that much for it?'. And, since the experiences I had with the games I mentioned at the beginning were all pretty boring, those arguments were enough to convince me.

That all changed a few months ago (February 2019 if this post is ever discovered by a civilisation to come after ours), when I stumbled onto a big box covered with gorgeous artwork of Mechs among Eastern European backgrounds and was completely enthralled by it. If for nothing else, I wanted to have it just for the art, but it was like £60 so, for once, I made the reasonable choice, resisted the impulse buy and went home to do some research.

I must have spent that whole evening looking up stuff on Scythe - I watched every single review I could find on it, then, when I ran out of those, I discovered BoardGameGeek and read all the popular reviews on there. Some of those have been very positive and some were much less so, but, despite what seemed like valid drawbacks, I couldn't deny that, at the end of the day, I still really wanted this game so I gave into temptation and bought it the next day.

I read the rules, set up the board, sat my brother and girlfriend down and off we went. The box says it should take about 2 hours to play this, I think it must have taken us double that on our first go and we got at least a few of the rules wrong, but the experience we had with Scythe was one of the most memorable ones I had in gaming (both video and board games) up to that point.

And, honestly, one memorable evening was all it took to get me into the hobby. I have spent the last few months researching other games, buying the ones that seem interesting, going to meet ups to play with other people and having more fun than I've ever had with any of my other hobbies.

I suppose that's all for my first ever blog post, but, if you're reading this, I would be interested to find out how did you get into Board Games? Was one good game all it took? Did you go out and get a game yourself or did a friend introduce you to the hobby? I can only imagine how exciting all these stories must be!