Board Gaming

[YorkeDaddy]

This is a hobby I got into about a year ago and it’s definitely grown into a serious part of my life. I think so many people are unaware of the kinds of awesome **** that’s out there for board games. Maybe you’ve played/heard of Catan or something but it gets way deeper than that. There are hundreds of awesome titles that come out every year that the general public does not hear about at all, and instead we see 40 new editions of Monopoly on store shelves and that’s the perception of what the board gaming hobby is.

I have a pretty big collection of 40+ titles at this point but I’ll focus on some of my coolest ones here. If anyone else is into the hobby or intrigued by what else I have I’d happily gush about my entire collection



A game with a pretty typical base scenario: you choose a faction and you’re trying to spread your influence over as much of the hexagonal map as possible, occasionally battling your opponents. What this game adds is an incredible art style, giant mechs (and awesome mianiatures of them to place on the board), and perhaps my favorite gameplay component in the entire hobby which is variable player powers. Each faction you can pick has their own special abilities and strategies to focus on, so each time you play you can have a vastly different experience. I absolutely love this. One faction might want to be more aggressive and attack other players, whereas another might want to turtle up in their starting section of the map and build up a bunch of resources. This makes the game so replayable and no two games will go the same.



A game about running a wine-making business?! It’s a lot cooler than it sounds! This game is in the subgenre of worker placement games, where there are spots on the board that do a certain action, and you have limited workers to place on those spaces. You’re also competing with your opponents for those spaces, like if your opponents take all of the “plant a vine” spaces during a round, you won’t be able to do that until the next round. There are so many cool little mechanics to this game, like at the start of a round everyone bids for turn order, and if you want to go first you won’t get any extra rewards whereas going last gets you powerful bonuses like an extra worker for the round or a free victory point.



A very new title to my collection, this is a co-op game, meaning everybody works together against the game. You all either win together or lose together, and its tough to win in this game! This one takes variable player powers to the next level, where you pick one of eight base spirits that all play vastly different as you try to protect your island from colonizing invaders. There’s so much packed into this box, including different scenarios and difficulty levels to tailor your experience however you want. It’s also refreshing to play a game where you’re not competing against your friends and instead you’re all in it together!