Board Gaming

Most people got back into board games during the COVID-19 pandemic or were board gamers before. That's not my story.

I played games when I was a kid. I was obsessed with a (from today's view quite simple) racing game called 'Autorennen wie noch nie' my grandpa owned. It was made in the early 60s and we played it a lot. We also enjoyed card games like Rummy and Canasta. I somehow never got into Skat which is the card game where I come from - no wonder, as Altenburg, the town who invented it, is not that far away.

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I later played the usual stuff you had back in the days. Think Mankomania, Monopoly and the like, but it was never a 'serious' hobby.

During a holiday with my then girlfriend while I was at university we discovered 'Catan - The Card Game' in our holiday apartment. We fell in love with it, bought one for ourselves, got an expansion and even printed some additional fan-made ones from the internet on sticker paper with an inkjet printer and put the stickers on another Catan set we bought. We had never heard of 'print and play' (and I'm not sure the term existed back then), but we had fun.

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Board gaming then lay dormant for me for a long time. I just picked up playing some simple games when my son was born and it took till 2022 to fall deeper in the rabbit hole. I somehow stumbled over Andor and was interested, and I got a used copy. And when I found Marvel Champions - The Card Game I was finally hooked.

Since then I gathered a (small) collection of games that I play regularly. I mostly play board games solo, but sometimes my wife and son join in and we play something like My City or Dorfromantik together. I enjoy dungeon crawlers, card-driven games and have a lot of fun building print and play games from BoardGameGeek or PNPArcade.

Board gaming is the perfect relaxation for me. Sitting in front of a computer screen all day, doing something analog in the evening or on the weekends is really satisfying. I try to keep electronics out of my board game sessions, but sometimes my iPad sneaks in as helper apps make tracking complex games much easier (looking at you, 'Gloomhaven - Jaws of the Lion'). And yes, I also have an account on BoardGameArena, to play board games digitally.

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