Boardgames world
I've been trying to write this one for some time now, but it seems that life always gets in the way. Regardless of the delay or the procrastination, here it is my opinion about boardgames.
I started playing boardgames since I was a child, and I clearly remember it was one of my favourite gaming activities, that integrated both reasoning skills but also brought up a very important social component of my personality. However, I did not had access to boardgames (neither videogames) in my own house. I had to find friends that had them and play in their houses, or go to the public library and find a group to play boardgames. The accessibility was rather limited when compared with today. Looking with a proper distance (late 80's early 90's), at the time it seem rather less competitive industry for children's attention.
The games that dominated the market at the time were Monopoly, Cluedo, and Risk. I recall I was the youngest of the group, so clearly I had a big intelectual disadvantage despite the huge contribution of randomness in these specific games.
Notwithstanding, these games were important for my childhood, and sometimes they were the only "good excuse" to go late to bed, since the "..game was not finished yet!", but also allowed to develop many reasoning and social skills.
For several reasons, such as the overall distraction as a teen combined with a full schedule of various sports, I disconnected from this activity during several years until the begging of my PhD. Thus, loosing significant advances in the boardgames industry as also new mechanics developed later that decade, that we much less related with luck, and more with strategy.
Around 2009, I got acquainted with a whole new reality that emerged from two new working colleagues and a new expanded friendship network, allowing me to try games such as Dominion, Age of Empires (which I only knew from videogames), and the first game I ever bought Tzolk'in the Mayan calendar. In the meanwhile I lost the launch and success of many other, such as Carcassone, Ticket to Ride, or even The Settlers of Catan. In this phase I got to know two significantly important game mechanics such as deck-building and and worker placement type of games.
Since then I've been playing and expanding my game collection with time, whereas Game of Thrones and Nations are beyond any doubt on the top list of my favourite games, bringing me back to a specific time of my life surrounded by nerds ("totós") in which being a gamer was well accepted. Over the last 10 years I already integrated several boardgame groups, and was responsible by the official creation of two others, without loosing any bit of the enthusiasm with time. I already attended the biggest convention for boardgames in Essen back in 2019, and I absolutely loved it. The conventions in Portugal are also very good, such as LeiriaCon, Invictacon, and (of course) RiaCon are among my favourites.
With boardgames I developed an enormous passion about other types of games, such as RPG and card games. This resulted in the use of one of the most stables platforms for RPG online called Roll20, either due to friends in distance, or due to a 2-years confinement following the COVID pandemic. But also building a couple of decks for Magic the Gathering, which later on resulted in a total addiction to Hearthstone.
Currently, together with other colleagues from the JRC, we have a board game club called LudoMaggiore. We get together Saturdays evenings for the joy of gaming , but also to socialize and interact with one of the most diverse groups I've encounter. We already have more than 1 year of activity, and we are tremendously prod of it.
That's it! Board games are nice, and extremely engaging. Just try some, and you will have a blast!
