Tabletop Gaming

Board games have always been a part of my life. Some of my earliest childhood memories are of games like Championship Show Jumping (we actually had it twice), Lose Your Shirt and the ubiquitous Monopoly.

Over the last six years my passion for board gaming has gone into overdrive to the point that this year alone we’ve either bought, been given or won over 30 new games. Of course, lockdown may have had something to do with that. With nowhere to spend our leisure pounds we turned to tabletop gaming, which has brought us hours of pleasure and helped fight off cabin fever.

It was a show at the Edinburgh Fringe hosted by James Cook which reignited our love of rolling dice and moving pieces. Always Be Rolling showed us there was more to life than Game of Life and Monopoly (all luck, no strategy) and introduced us to the world of Catan (aka Settlers of Catan) and Carcassonne, two of the biggest games of the past 25 years. (Ticket to Ride would probably make up a holy trinity with those two in terms of ‘gateway games’). James also showed us how to embrace the weird and wonderful cover artwork (random sheep and weird noblemen) which could easily put off the faint-hearted. We dived in with both feet and haven’t looked back.

The likes of Dungeons and Dragons isn’t really our thing. Anything with orcs, zombies or space doesn’t really appeal to us. We’re more at the light to medium-weight level of gaming. Concordia and Hamburgum are at the limits of our collection in terms of deep strategy (we’d rather play 5 one hour games than 1 five hour game). At the other end are the small and perfectly formed card games like Port Royal, Abandon All Artichokes, Point Salad and Sushi Go! We call these “elevenses” games because when we stop mid-morning for a cup of tea we usually have time for a quick game of one of the aforementioned fabulous four.

Recently we re-created the whole 2020 Tour de France utilising the cycling board game Flamme Rouge. To be more precise, someone on BGG (Board Game Geek) re-created the stages and we copied them. We also “pimped up” our stages with finish/mountain/sprint banners and advertising hoardings, again thanks to a file on BGG. We tweaked the fan-made version a little to suit us and played 21 versions of the game over three weeks. My wife was sure glad of the rest days when she didn’t have to play! I still love the game but I suspect we won’t play it again until the Grand Tour expansion comes out next year.

My love for tabletop gaming has now extended to watching reviews and playthrough videos of prospective new purchases, listening to board game podcasts and watching Facebook live game plays. (I’ll list some of my favourites below). Hell, we even backed our first game on Kickstarter. (Update: It got cancelled but we quickly moved on to back a different one, which has already met its target so definitely won’t be cancelled. Roll on August 2021).

Here’s some of our favourite games just now, in no particular order: Wingspan (plus European Expansion), Flamme Rouge, Calico, Mariposas, Point Salad, Port Royal, Tussie Mussie, Circle The Wagons, Abandon All Artichokes, Concordia, Ticket to Ride (various expansions), Taxi Board Game, Bruxelles 1897, Patchwork, Mapominoes, Isle of Skye, Ice Team, Flaggo, Century: Spice Road, Winner Winner Chicken Dinner, Sushi Go!, Labyrinth, Ravine, Forbidden Island, Love Letter, Colt Express, Catan. Carcassonne and quite a few more.

Occasionally, we bring out more “mainstream” games like Tension, Articulate, Scrabble etc but we have so much variety now in our collection that there’s also something to go to, depending on our mood.

FAVOURITE TABLETOP REVIEWERS/SHOPS

Dice Tower (You Tube) Great reviews from Tom Vasel (check out the hat-tie combos), Zee Garcia and Mike Delisio amongst others

Shut Up and Sit Down (You Tube/podcast/website – excellent and often hilarious video reviews from the UK)

Things Get Dicey (Paula Deming’s brilliant comedy sketches and songs about board gaming)

Watch It Played (Rodney Smith’s YouTube excellent tutorials on how to play the latest games).

Joe’s Average Gaming Podcast (Two guys – Tom and Joe in Sioux Falls, South Dakota – just chewing the fat about what they’ve played, bought, backed and anything else game related. Also contributions from listeners around the world, including yours truly. Usually weekly. They’re on Facebook too)

Board Game Geek – The Mecca of board gaming. A great place to start when looking at games. A tad US-centric at times.

AEG (Live plays on Facebook/Twitch etc of games like Tiny Towns, Santa Monica, Space Base)

Zatu Games – Online store who also do podcasts and live stuff on Facebook. Great prices.

Board Game Extras – Online store with excellent prices and service