Board Games

I love playing board games.

When The Playwright and I were first dating, we played fiercely competitive trivia games on his PlayStation — You Don’t Know Jack and Jeopardy. Eventually we moved on to Scrabble and Rummikub and Qwirkle. Several of our friends are huge board game collectors, and they’ve introduced us to a host of new games. Ticket to Ride Europe is probably my favorite, but we got 10 Days in Asia for Christmas and I love it and want all the versions. We also just played Bananagrams for the first time ever (how is this possible, word geeks like us?) and promptly bought it and now I’m in love. I killed The Playwright at it last night, which is huge because he is wicked smart and usually much better than me at games.

You may notice from the games I listed above that I tend to prefer fast-paced games that are word or trivia-based, or games where you are playing directly against other people, rather than cooperative “save the world” type games. (I do love cooperative guess-the-word games like Taboo though!) My friends looove Arkham Horror, and I’m up for it sometimes on a winter afternoon with lots of tea, but sometimes I get bored because it takes forever and it’s so complicated. Also, let’s be honest, I like to beat people. I want to play against The Playwright and kill him dead, not work together. I am not competitive in most ways but in board games, yes.

Anyway, one of my New Year’s goals is to make more time for this, because it’s fun (and educational: I am totally learning geography from 10 Days in Asia! Now I can tell you where the Maldives are! And East Timor!) and because it is time away from my computer and publishing and with real people like the one I am married to, which is healthy.

What about you? Do you like board games or card games or…? What’s your favorite?