Tag: arkham horror

First 5 hobby games in my collection

First 5 hobby games in my collection

It’s officially been five years since my first blog post. I wrote about last year’s anniversary, and with every passing year, I like to take a look back down Memory Lane. 

As I sit at my dining table plugging away on my laptop, my back toward my Kallax shelves full of board games, I can’t help to think of the first games to enter my collection, the catalyst to the inevitable transformation of my dining room area to board gaming central — mini-studio lights and all.

The first five games in my collection were Catan, Ticket to Ride, Agricola, Arkham Horror and Twilight Struggle. Catan, TTR and Twilight Struggle were all gifts, and Arkham and Agricola I purchased after a deep dive into the BGG rankings. 

The first five hobby games that started it all for me.

A few months ago, after a game of Agricola, nostalgia spurred me to share on Twitter these five games and asked followers which five hobby games first entered in their collections. 

Well, the Twitterverse did not disappoint. 

I received over 850 board game submissions, and I thought it’d be fun to compile that information and see which games were most often mentioned. A good majority of my Twitter followers seemingly entered the hobby around the same time I did, based on their responses.

For clarity’s sake, I lumped versions/editions/expansions into the base game of the same name. For example, I grouped all of The Settlers of Catans and Catan Seafarers all under Catan.  The top 12 results are below in a nifty data visualization I created. (You can hover over each bar to get more information.)

And here are the top 25 games mentioned, broken down by years. There appears to be a dark period there, based on the responses, between 1985-1995. (I’m pretty sure a lot of people were playing all those Milton Bradley games, such as Shogun). 

Then in 1995, Catan debuted and helped usher in the Golden Age of board gaming. And as they say, the rest is history. 

I still have a fondness for my first five games (which are all still present in my collection), but, in all honesty, I’d probably only play four of them if asked right this minute. I’ll let you guess which one wouldn’t make the cut. 

What were the first five hobby games in your collection, and which of them do you still own?


The second-annual Friendship Con

The second-annual Friendship Con

My friends and I decided to host a second-annual Friendship Con last week, and I had so much fun. It was nice seeing friends who moved away from Phoenix and those friends I haven’t seen since last year’s event.

We played a lot of games, though sadly we didn’t get through all the games on our uber ambitious list. There were a couple sleepless nights for me (I am so not a morning person, and, not gonna lie, it was rough getting somewhere by 8:30 a.m.), but in the end, I got some good gaming in with fun folks!

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In between Pandemic and Cthulhu land …

In between Pandemic and Cthulhu land …

I’ve been going back and forth on what to write for this week, which explains the lag. It’s not that I haven’t been doing any board gaming; it’s actually quite the opposite! I’ve been doing a lot of gaming in the past week or so but it’s nothing new that I haven’t written about. So this be more like an update on the state of things.

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This week’s gaming: Mombasa, Arkham Horror and others

This week’s gaming: Mombasa, Arkham Horror and others

The new year has been busier than expected, and it’s been a little difficult gathering up the troops for a game night. But it finally happened this past week.

This past Thursday, I got Mombasa onto the table again with my core group of gamers, and it was awesome. I came thiiiiiss close to first place — only 2 points away! But it was definitely a lot better than the previous time I played, when I came in last. But most importantly, all the guys in my core group of gamers have played this game and love it as much as I do, which means it will definitely make it to the table more often than not. Woohoo! I ended up purchasing some Mayday card sleeves for the game in order to protect each player’s action cards.

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Friendship Con: Our very own gaming convention

Friendship Con: Our very own gaming convention

About six months ago, I was telling my board-game friends that I was going to BGG Con again, after having an awesome time last year. My one friend had this crazy idea to have our own convention, without the need for traveling and in the comforts of our homes, since they all couldn’t get away for an entire week to Dallas for BGG Con. I’m like, sure, let’s do this!

We decided to keep it as a convention of 5 friends, naming it Friendship Con! We took this event very seriously. During the planning stages, we voted on a list of games we all wanted to play, a schedule for said games, divided up who was in charge of learning the rules for a particular game, locations for gaming each day (we spread it out among 3 people, so that no one home would become overrun by us), and, of course, menu options. The host home would provide an easy breakfast, and then sandwiches for lunch, and then a quick healthy dinner. One of the cons that my friend had mentioned about going to BGG Con or similar events was that having limited access to cheap, healthy food because you either paid a premium at hotel restaurants or had to leave the gaming area to find other eateries, which resulted in less gaming time.

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My top 9 board games

My top 9 board games

A few days ago @theboardgeek asked on Instagram what #mytop9boardgames were.
Here’s the photo I posted on Instagram for the #mytop9boardgames thread.

The user @theboardgeek started this hashtag #mytop9boardgames a few days ago on Instagram, and I decided to jump on it and create my own photo grid. I hadn’t actually thought to write down my list in a while. There are just so many games out there! And of course, as you get deeper into the hobby, your tastes and preferences change. If you check out the list, I totally love heavy, crunchy games.

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Weekend gaming: Arkham Horror + expansions

Weekend gaming: Arkham Horror + expansions

This past weekend, we met for our monthly game of Arkham Horror. My friend has done an amazing job of tricking out his game.

We added the Innsmouth Horror and Miskatonic Horror expansions to our game.
We added the Innsmouth Horror and Miskatonic Horror expansions to our game.

He replaced all the small cardboard tidbits such as hearts, brains and track tokens with color-coded glass beads. Each set of the glass beads also sit in awesome small decorative bowls that match the horror/occult theme of the game.

For this particular game, we included the Innsmouth Horror expansion board, and the Miskatonic University institution from the Miskatonic Horror expansion.

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Arkham Horror love

Arkham Horror love

I am part of an Arkham Horror gaming group that meets up once a month. Arkham Horror is one of my uber-favorite games, but it’s hard to find people who are down to play it. Until I connected with these Arkham folks this past summer, I would play it about once a year. Yeah, pretty sad for a game I adore.

Arkham Horror
Arkham Horror, a cooperative game for 1-8 players.

Arkham Horror is a cooperative adventure game set in the world of H.P. Lovecraft and his Cthulhu mythos. Who is H.P. Lovecraft, you ask? Lovecraft was an American horror fiction writer from the early 20th century. He didn’t see any success during his life, but his works later influenced many writers such as Stephen King and Neil Gainman, and various works of pop culture, such as Batman and HBO’s “True Detective.” In Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos, Great Old Ones exist, and humankind is unable to to comprehend their cosmic horrors should a Great Old One (also known as an Ancient One) awakens.

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