15 Questions About My Boardgaming Hobby

31st January 2023 (Tuesday)

Monthly Rambling: 15 Questions About My Boardgaming Hobby

I was watching a Jamey Stegmaier Sunday sit-down video where he sometimes covers boardgame adjacent topics and I thought I could repurpose the blog to have a monthly post of my take on some of these topics as well. To start this month off, I have taken the same 15 questions Jamey answered in his "15 Questions & Answers About My Hobby Habits" video and answered them here…

1. Favourite childhood boardgame?

Risk

Boardgames of Risk started as a weekly affair for me as the kids would congregate around the church’s donated copy to vie for world domination. To shorten our games, we would house rule that continents became impenetrable once a whole continent is occupied by one player. This of course led to Australia always being the first to be colonised at every game. I would then begin to request for Risk as my birthday gift each year and my relatives would very generously pander to my unending desire to own every edition of Risk possible. Even as a young child the collector’s gene had begun to manifest itself through my growing collection of Risk editions.

Titan

Whilst Risk may have been my most frequently played childhood boardgame, Titan was my absolute favourite boardgame in my early teen years. Introduced to me by an uncle in Singapore who I could only visit during the year end school break, the game shared many similarities with Risk but had a far more diverse army made up of fantastical creatures and various types of terrain to do battle in. Titan haunted me for both the epic battles it conjured as well as its inaccessibility to me at the time. I would strategize a year at a time and had to go back to the drawing board after tasting bitter defeat at the end of each year. It would take me years to finally reach a level where I could challenge my uncle on equal footing and finally earn my "well deserved" first win of the game. These days I finally have my own copy of Titan and have passed on the joy of the experience to Padawan Babygeek.

2. First game you purchased?

BANG! | Dominion: Intrigue | Race for the Galaxy | Hare & Tortoise

It took some digging through various messaging platforms but I finally found a conversation I had with a friend that indicated these were the first boardgames I bought together with my hard-earned salary. Of the four, Hare & Tortoise was bought as a Christmas gift for a cousin, BANG! and Dominion: Intrigue have left my collection. My brother & I had many late nights playing arguably the two greatest card games of their time and my bachelor’s night was 7 men sitting around a round table with pizza playing BANG! Boardgaming was and remained quite an integral part of my social and recreational life.

3. Your breakthrough game?

Through The Ages: A Story of Civilization

It is a bit tough to trace the boardgame that made me go all into the hobby but I suspect that it might have been this game. As I started to explore the new world of euro boardgaming, I began to follow a blog of a local boardgamer who would frequently play TTA with his wife. I loved playing Sid Meier’s Civilization and the thought that a boardgame could emulate the experience without a map was mind blowing. Whilst this was not one of my first purchases, Vlaada Chavtil’s next rules titan – Dungeon Lords became part of my collection and has never left. You could say I cut my teeth on some pretty heavy games but this was also my shortcut to games like Le Havre, Agricola, Hansa Teutonica and Glory To Rome without having gone through the traditional route of gateway games like Citadels, Dixit, For Sale and Bohnanza.

4. A theme that always draws you in?

Fantasy

35% of my boardgame collection would fall under one of these categories, indicating that theme is not the defining factor when I add a boardgame to my collection but it definitely ensures an in-depth checking it out when one of these boardgames comes across my path. Some of the titles under these categories that were must buys for me were: Dungeon Lords, Dungeon Petz, Dwellings of Eldervale, Gloomhaven, Roll Player and Titan. It doesn’t mean they were not all duds for me, some that managed to squeak in on theme but didn’t stay were: Aeon’s End, Belfort, Mage Knight and Shadow Hunters. But yes, fantasy especially lighter toned fantasy like Harbour and Flamecraft will always colour me interested.

5. A mechanism that always intrigues you?

Resource Conversion | Worker Placement

Growing up I loved management and resource collecting games like Caesar and Dungeon Keeper. Many resource gathering / conversion boardgames are synonymous with the worker placement mechanic and so I have grown to love them both. When I play worker placement games I tend to pre-set where my workers are going to go during my off turn so I do have a preference for worker placement boardgames that are not so restrictive by either allowing multiple players to occupy the space or have two worker placement spots for the same action. Basically doing this to get that to turn into this other thing so I can score these extra points makes me very, very happy.

6. Cooperative or competitive?

Competitive

Growing up in a family of four made us fairly competitive. I don’t disdain cooperative games but I obtain greater satisfaction when a winner can be declared at the end of a boardgame, especially if that winner is me. So much so that I was tracking my own plays and scores on excel sheets long before apps like Board Game Stats existed, simply because there were times when we actually wanted to know who has won the most or who has the highest score to date.

7. Newest game in your collection?

The Castles of Burgundy

My first ever Stefan Feld boardgame in my collection! My boardgame spending habits tend to be either (a) the cult of the new that ticks all my checkboxes or (b) second hand copies of well rated boardgames at a steep discount. So when a BNIS copy of The Castles of Burgundy was on sale at 23% off, I said thank you very much, please take my money.

8. Favourite player count?

Anti AP

I don’t have a particular player count that I favour, as long as other players are taking their turns efficiently and within an acceptable time frame, I would happily even play a 7 player game of Caverna (I realize I might regret these words one day). I am not particularly fond of solo boardgaming although I have been dipping my toes in it recently. I also realize that the 2 player count tends to be hit or miss with many boardgames so if I had to pick a number then 3 or 4 players seems to be the sweet spot.

9. What player color do you use most often?

Purple

Purple is my jam but it rarely shows up as a player colour in most boardgames. Since I host most boardgame sessions, I usually end up just picking a leftover colour to get things to a rolling start. As a kid, I absolutely loved blueberry cake for my birthday, which strangely enough always turned out my purple than blue. It seems a silly thing but it is a small little personal call back to happy memories when my mother would "surprise" me with a blueberry cake for my birthday.

10. Read the rulebook or watch a how to play video?

Both

I usually start with a how to play video and when sufficiently intrigued, will pop by boardgamegeek to dive into the rulebook. I actually make my own A5 sized rules summaries for boardgames in my collection, so having a good rulebook is definitely one of the criteria to join my little shelf of happiness. I suppose the gold standard would be if I choose not to do a rules summary because the value of the work does not outweigh the time needed to do so. So far this achievement remains out of reach.

11. Favourite snack to eat while playing board games?

None

I generally don’t encourage eating or drinking at the boardgame table. There was that time with the beer and that time with the fried chicken so… Yup, generally no snacking at the table.

12. An unreleased game you are most looking forward to?

Andromeda’s Edge

There’s a lot of hype from Dwellings of Eldervale enthusiasts on its spiritual successor. Add to the fact that I am a big fan of Endless Space 2, a space 4X game with sci-fi/fantasy type races and I am actually quite pumped for Andromeda’s Edge that is launching on Gamefound tomorrow. Peter Vaughn from the publishing end also runs incredibly engaging and generous crowdfunding campaigns – free race for completing a puzzle, free copy of the game for completing all the puzzles, free copy of Dwellings of Eldervale just by being in the Facebook group? Completely bonkers. Can’t wait for this one.

13. Open and punch a game right when you get it or wait until you play it for the first time?

Quality control comes first

I don’t think I have ever left a game in shrink for longer than 3 days. I have this burning obsession to ensure that there’s nothing missing from my boardgame. The worst incident was probably with Ora et Labora where I had multiple punchboards missing, making the game wholly unplayable and then there was the misprints on ability cards of an unlockable character in Gloomhaven. Yup, I dug through every component of Gloomhaven, even the unlockable stuff, to make sure I had everything with me. I guess I’m OCD that way.

14. What is your favourite thing about the boardgame hobby?

Happy Memory Generator

There are so many great things about the hobby. How there’s something for every type of boardgamer, how accepting and generous boardgamers typically are, how the hobby is more passion than profit driven, but most of all my favourite part of the boardgame hobby is how it generates happy memories each time we gather at the table. Some of my happiest and funniest memories have come from boardgaming and that is despite the fact that I’m not a prolific boardgamer, having averaged a little over 3 days of boardgaming per year in the last 12 years. Just the songs alone are hilarious – BANG! "I Shot The Sheriff", Ark Nova "Let’s Go To The Zoo", Gloomhaven "My Precious by Gollum", Lost Ruins of Arnak "Indiana Jones Theme Song"… The quirky typical lines – "You never mentioned that in the rules teach", "Winner winner chicken dinner", "I brought my own dice today", "Mulligan seating positions", "Why does the board have to face that way", "Oh no!", "That can’t be right, let me see that" and then of course there is the "Everybody standing up on the last round". So good.

15. Any hobbies other than boardgames?

PC Gaming | Futsal

The next biggest time sink after boardgaming would probably be PC Gaming. I enjoy many of the same types of PC games as with boardgames as can be seen by some of the comparisons made above. And just for the sake of trying to justify my chairbound hobbies, I will say that I "occasionally" partake in sporting activities such as futsal. I’m not the player I used to be but there are moments that come flashing through, that and I hear exercise is good for you.

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I hope this monthly rambling was interesting and we will see if we can keep this going. Until next time, keep calm and play better.