We are really excited to be participating in the Tabletop Writers Guild Diversity Initiative Challenge. This post is our response to the Week 1 Challenge: The Game(s) that Brought you into the Hobby.
Two hour games of Monopoly spent watching yourself lose for 1.5 hours? Feeling like the only option for a “non-kids” game is Risk, which is treated by friends and family like it’s only for the boys? Actually playing Risk and realizing you can walk away for 20 min and not really miss anything? Yeah, sure, board games are “fun”. That was pretty much the psychic message we sent each other when a friend brought out a card game called Dominion circa 2012-2013.
We were both solidly of the opinion that board games were either for kids (ex. Candyland), forced family fun nights (ex. Yahtzee), or were for boys who got together to pretend they were at war for a day (ex. Risk). While these perceptions aren’t true, at the time, we didn’t see games as something to dedicate friend hangout time to. Despite our lack of enthusiasm, we sat through the relatively quick rules explanation and then proceeded to have our minds blown.
It was challenging, it was interesting, it was shorter than 2 hours and not marketed for children! And with that, we were sold on Dominion, unknowingly participating in a fun activity that would soon snowball into a consuming hobby.
We picked Dominion up for ourselves at Barnes and Noble in the mall one day figuring it would be nice to have a game to break out with friends or family, and other social gatherings that was actually fun (sorry to the Risk lovers out there). We didn’t play our game much with just the two of us so it mostly sat off to the side in our tiny apartment alongside Monopoly, Scrabble, and Yahtzee that we stole from our childhood homes.
Fast forward to our annual “friends weekend” cabin trip later that year where someone suggested we add board games to the weekend itinerary. We ended up playing Dominion a TON and actually started to get a feel for how it was different every time we played (what we would later call great re-playability). But another game was at the cabin that weekend – Ticket to Ride: Europe. Maybe Dominion was fun because it was a card game and different from the standard go-tos of our childhoods, but Ticket to Ride was an actual board game, and it was actually fun. While today Ticket to Ride is mostly brought out when one of our non-gaming friends and family want to play, at the time it was a proverbial lightbulb clicking, flashing, and screaming “THIS BOARD GAME IS FUN!”
But this post isn’t about Dominion, or Ticket to Ride. This is about our one first true love. Well, board game love, though (spoiler) we also got married to each other along the line, so maybe true love in that sense, too.
This was around 2014 or so, and we had been dating long enough that it was well-established that Sarah has no restraint when interested in something. As soon as we returned home from that trip she spent hours of free time surfing the internet, learning that there were more (gasp!) Ticket to Rides. And not just more Ticket to Rides but more games. There was a whole website dedicated to listing out said games in a ranked fashion telling her exactly what games to buy. Start with the best, right? Oh, but the best was some game about the Cold War (Twilight Struggle, which actually did end up being great when we played it). Sarah worried that maybe all those games are like Risk (again, sorry Risk lovers, just not for us!).
Only slightly deterred, Sarah continued researching. This time turning to Amazon because they have everything, right? A few days later (Prime for the win!) a game arrived looking like it had a thrift shop painting of a medieval landscape on the cover. If you, reader, are thinking to yourself, I bet Emily was pretty skeptical of whatever shenanigans Sarah was up to, then you would be correct!
That game was The Castles of Burgundy, which Amazon reviewers assured was good for two players.
Emily is always a good sport and willing to indulge Sarah’s new obsessions (raw denim, raspberry pi, becoming a sommelier in Minnesota, the list goes on) so we gave it a shot. The rule book was in English and we knew what all the words meant but when they were all put together? Totally. Lost.
Some google searches led us to a YouTube video of some guy (thanks Rahdo!) playing and explaining Castles of Burgundy using a shaky iPhone camera and talking about his off camera wife as another player. Then it clicked. And we LOVED it. Enough that Sarah carefully taped a paper player mat back together after Bandit ripped it to shreds.
For those of you who haven’t had the delight, Castles of Burgundy is a mid-weight dice action-selection game and we review it in-depth here. What we really liked about it was that there was a bit of luck, but the outcome of the game was heavily influenced by the player’s ability to plan several steps ahead and adapt. We could see ourselves improving and getting more strategic every time we played.
And then the combos. It took us a while to realize how to chain actions and combos together, but, mind blowing. If you haven’t giggled in delight at turning a single placement into four additional actions, have you really lived? Sure, Dominion has great chaining, but at the time we still thought of that as a card game and didn’t realize you could harness that feeling of raw power in a board game as you do 100 things in one turn.
We played Castles of Burgundy over and over again. We tried to make it “harder” by playing two boards each, sometimes scoring only our lowest scoring board and other times the combined total. We bought, played, and enjoyed other games but kept coming back to Castles of Burgundy.
Regular readers of our blog have probably read this already, but we’ve played Castles of Burgundy as a couple so many times that we can anticipate each other’s strategy and moves (even if one of us thinks she is being clever and trying something “different”). One of our most memorable gaming moments was a game of Castles of Burgundy where Sarah took the last available ship and locked Emily out of finishing a large shipping area on her board which would have won her the game. It was all very dramatic and there may have been an empty threat of someone sleeping on the couch.
Flash forward to today. We got married, had a couple kiddos, and grew our fun little hobby into a huge part of our lives, culminating in starting this blog earlier this summer. And while our gaming tastes have evolved over the years, Castles of Burgundy will always have a soft spot in our hearts.
Very cool, my first time playing Castles of Burgundy was managing two boards because someone dropped out mid-game and we were unsure how to handle that. I had a similar experience diving into the BGG Top 100 and skipping over Twilight Struggle because I was unsure how I’d get anyone else interested in it.
Thanks Julio! The BGG Top 100 is definitely a great resource for newcomers, but it can be intimidating having a “top list” tell you what you should like if you want to be in the hobby. I’m glad we all made it through!
I really enjoyed reading your story, and I was going to say that I had read another of The Game(s) that Brought you into the Hobby posts over on BGG that I also liked, and it turns out it was Julio’s! It’s fun to hear how others got into the hobby and which games were important for their journey.
Thanks! We’ve been enjoying reading others as well and it’s cool to hear which games brought people into the fold 😉
Hi! Great idea. We are also two gaming moms accepting not having time and energy to play some of our favourite games. Hahaha! Im trying to get my wife to try castle of Burgundy but she will always preffer beautiful games. I also played lot of dominion at the start, I was amazed of the deckbuilding concept. At home we enjoy a lot playing cooperative games, also with my big one of 4 year. We ve been succesful with my first castle panic. Maybe Rowan would like it. Have a nice day!
Nice! We usually like games better when they have nice art and cool pieces! We haven’t tried castle panic, but we’re always looking for good games Rowan can play too. We’ll have to check it out!