What was your first "hobby game"?
Brian Morris
United States
Raytown
Missouri
2nd, 6th & 7th Wisconsin, 19th Indiana, 24th Michigan
24th Michigan monument at Gettysburg Pa.
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We all played games growing up. I have great memories of playing Parcheesi with my grandmother and my father would have the family play Monopoly until my sister and I fell asleep at the table...literally.
In general most people in their lives play the usual suspects like Clue, Monopoly, Life, Risk and alike. At some point however you make that leap. You go from playing the family games you can find in Toys R Us and to the games you find a a specialty game store.
So here's the question. What was the game that made you cross over? The game that took you from Hasbro or Milton Bradley side to the games that you consider hobby games?
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Patrick MacFarlane
United States
Boalsburg
Pennsylvania
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If it weren't for this game, I'd have a lot more room in my closet. This one started the collecting.
Honorable mention to two games from my childhood that primed me for it.
Of course Dragon Strike had this video with a very serious disembodied head. What could prepare you more?
http://youtu.be/B8LBpMuSTrQ
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Franz Kafka
United States
St. Charles
Missouri
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I joined a game club at school, primarily for a place to play Magic: The Gathering. Since some of the other members were allegedly stealing to pay for their M:TG habits, that game was instantly banned.
Instead, the faculty advisor pulled Civilization out of the closet, and we spent several Friday-afternoon sessions to complete a game. Then again. Then we added Advanced Civilization. There may have been other games, but this is the one I remember.
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Zachery Goldsmith
United States
Zanesville
Ohio
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This was mine. I had purchesed Heroscape in college and was playing it another student came down and was interested and played and asked if I liked other games. I told him that I really didn't they were boring. He asked what I had played and I told him the usual suspects, Battleship, Monopoly and so on. He said that he was going home next weekend and he would bring a game from his childhood. He brought this we played it and I have been hooked on board games from that moment on. Now if I could just afford to purchase a copy of this.
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Phil Lewis
United States
Evans
Georgia
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My friends introduced me to a lot of great games in the early/mid 1980s, but it was Strat-o-matic that really hooked me. We played season after season, meticulously keeping the stats. In fact, we still reminisce about the great games--the 1986 Pittsburgh Steelers OT loss to the Houston Oilers hurts the most.
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Jaded Lounges
United States
Vashon
Washington
With this sign I abolish your magic.
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I was in middle school and several of my geekier friends had discovered the genre (as well as D&D in its early years). I sought a recommendation for my first serious boardgame and this is what I ended up with. Not a great foothold for a newbie, but I valiantly played and learned. Thank heavens for Kingmaker and eventually Cosmic Encounter, which really hooked me for life.
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Alexei Gartinski
Switzerland
Geneva
Unspecified
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That was my first real wargame. It is still sitting prominently at my game shelf and I would still play it now
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Charlie Turtle
United States
Madison
Wisconsin
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After playing Risk and the Gamemaster series games for a few years, a friend of mine happened upon Guns of August in our favorite Comic Book Shop of all places. Despite the fact that this was the first non-AT wargame that we all played we were hooked. I'm still not sure how we overcame the gridlock and painfully slow play of Guns of August to make it to the Panzer games and Squad Leader and beyond, but somehow it did.
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Everett Hathaway
United States
Virginia Beach
Virginia
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I trekked down to the only store in the area I knew sold boardgames and saw only one copy of this game on the shelves.
I knew Knizia's name from all of the research I had recently done about this "boardgame" hobby that had taken me by storm, but I didn't know the game.
My friends and I had been playing Bohnanza for a while, but I had ordered that game on-line for all of us to play on game night (then a new creation). The night I found Samurai, I was shopping for board games for me - because I wanted one; I wanted to open it up, learn it, play it, have it on the shelf.
I knew when paid for it at the register and every minute on the drive home that I could never go back again - I was a boardgamer from that point on.
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109.
Board Game: Junta
[Average Rating:6.92 Overall Rank:423]
KYEO
United States
Silver Spring
Maryland
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I think this was my first game. I am not 100% sure. Other candidates are Diplomacy, (Advanced) Civilization, and Blood Bowl.
Junta was probably the game out of these that it was the easiest to find players for, and we had a lot of fun playing it.
Now though... I don´t see how I would pick this one ever again.
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Tom Rybak
United States
Denton
Texas
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My oldest brother got a copy of this and we played the heck out of it. I grew up in a game-privileged family and couldn't wait until I was old enough to join in the "adult" games, which were mostly the 3M bookshelf games (Acquire, Facts in Five, Oh-wah-ree and many others). I played all of them eventually and then even being swayed to the darker side (again by my oldest brother) with Panzer Blitz and even Third Reich. But I remember still being just a kid when playing this one. Speed dials and metal cars, yessir.
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Stephen Harper
United States
Chula Vista
California
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My sisters and I always played a lot of boardgames, such as Monopoly, Go to the Head of the Class, Concentration, and so on. In late elementary school, I happened upon the Milton Bradley American Heritage games, and bought Dog Fight and Broadside. I could get my sisters to play Dog Fight, but they thought Broadside was too complicated. In 1965, while in the 9th grade, I ran across two Avalon Hill games in Clauson's Toys that blew me away. These two games were Midway and Battle of the Bulge. I always had a strong interest in military history, and to run across games that were so "realistic" was fantastic. I spent the weekend mowing neighbor's lawns and did some babysitting, so that I could go back on Monday and buy those two games. Couldn't get my sisters to play them, though. But I talked a couple of my buddies into playing them and we had a great time. Although purchased in a toy store, I count these as my first hobby games. I have been an avid wargamer ever since.
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William Koppelaar
Netherlands
Leerdam
Zuid-Holland
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It almost shames me to say this 'honor'goes to Fluxx. I got introduced to Bang! and Klaverjassen by a friend of mine at college and thought I could also put in my 50 cents by bringing another filler between classes. It did not hit that sweet spot a game like Bang! has. It has been played over the years (It's been 5 years since), but not nearly as much as the other two games I mentioned.
The game that was a hit however to me was Puerto Rico and followed not long after.
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Steve Gibson
United Kingdom
Manchester
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One of the first I bought. Silly enough to get non gamers interested. Also it stayed in one place, unlike Sorcerer's Cave which rapidly took over the house.
The only broken bit in it was if the Golden Bough (which Guyon needed to get into the Cave) was in the Cave.
The expansion didn't ruin it either.
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Tom Hilgert
Germany
Unspecified
Bavaria
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Well I found the Spielbox magazine in 1985 with a advertise for the famous (now closed) shop DAS SPIEL in Hamburg. They sent me their catalog and that was a strong impact on my gaming life. Games I never heard of: Titan, Wooden Ships & Iron Men, Speed Circuit, Cry Havoc and CIVILIZATION. So I traveled to Hamburg by train (Six hours ) , walking through Sankt Pauli to get to the shop. And I bought it for 80 Deutsche MArk. (I think it would nearly the same today in Euros), Getting back home through an Anti-American Demonstration after bomb explosions in Berlin and retaliation against Lybia ("You can run, but you can´t hide") we played the game when the Tchernobyl Fall-Out came down over Southern Bavaria (Yes guys Neuschwanstein and Munich are all heavily polluted
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Civilization was so different than all the Ravensburger, Schmidt and Parker games I´ve played before. Its a time machine while you are playing it because time flies by. Excellent game, excellent entry in this hobby
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Raimund Bubelis
Canada
Welland
Ontario
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My cousin introduced me to Guadalcanal when I was about 10 years old. We then branched out to Waterloo, Afrika Korps, Stalingrad, and Blitzkrieg, then discovered SPI and my life was never the same.
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Ted Webster
United States
Owosso
Michigan
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My high school brother bought this on the recommendation of an older cousin. Who would have thought the 10 year old (me) would be the one to actually take to the game. It wasn't until I was in college that I convinced a couple of roommates to create a fleet of their own and off we sailed.
When we finally laid this down we picked up Yaquinto's Swashbuckler and started swinging swords and throwing mugs of ale at each other.
I still have both games. I don't think my older brother knows I still have his WS&IM. Please don't tell him.
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Kathleen B
United States
Boise
Idaho
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So, for years my husband and I had hosted large game nights and, because we knew no better, played mostly party and card games. We had lovely friends and a fantastic time. We did have a copy of Milton Bradley's reprint of Scotland Yard from his childhood that was much enjoyed, but it didn't directly send us down the Euro path. For a friend's birthday, seeking Scotland Yard, I found N.Y. Chase on Funagain and noticed the Ravensburger name which was filed away in the back of my brain. A couple of years later, a garage sale in our neighborhood had a copy of Heimlich & Co. and Enchanted Forest. Recognizing the Ravensburger name, we picked them up. As best as we can recall, this was the tipping point. We realized that these games had something more to chew on than the games already in our possession. (I still find Heimlich & Co. clever and recently loaned a spare copy to a friend that I'm trying to draw in.) From there, the web and BGG led my husband to buy
us me Carcassonne for a present and, then, we were on the Euro road. Now, we have our very young children are used such meaty games as Dominion, Forbidden Island, Ticket to Ride: Europe and Abalone, as well as dozens of Ravensburger titles.
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John Sizemore
United States
Glen Allen
Virginia
Chicken Caesar, a Game of Plots, Politics, and Poultry for 3-6 players -- no luck, just revenge!
This is NOT a Chihuahua. It is a Sphynx cat. A bald, grouchy Sphynx cat who will bite you if you mistake him for a Chihuahua.
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I honestly can't remember whether I got this or Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set (First Edition) first. But this isn't RPGG, so I'll assume it was the board game.
Wilmington, Delaware, 1978. Squad Leader was still the new hotness at Avalon Hill, and I was 9 or 10 years old. I had seen my dad's friend's copies of Anzio and France, 1940, and I lusted after them with a geeky passion that only a pre-pubescent boy can muster. I knew Squad Leader was bigger, tougher, and more realistic than anything that had come before it, and that alone was reason enough for me to scrape together the loot and buy my copy. I believe it cost $12 at the time, but may have been as much as $15; either way, it was a princely sum for me at the time.
I was disappointed that there were no Americans in the box, and felt a bit morally ambiguous about whether I wanted the evil Nazis or rotten, commie Russians to win. It only took me punching out the counters to realize that the Germans were far cooler than the Russians, and besides, the Soviet Union was still a going concern. Maybe this was the start of my lifelong love for all things German.
I was a kid -- it was easy to find the time to read the rules, over and over, until I got them. Sadly, finding anyone else my age who actually wanted to learn the game just wasn't going to happen. So Squad Leader became my new set of Army Men -- I'd set up giant battles and spend days or weeks playing them down to the last bloody gun crew.
They were desperate battles, many of them. But somehow, the Germans always managed to pull off a win in the end.
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John McLintock
Scotland
Glasgow
Lanarkshire
"Roll dice and kick ass!"
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I could count Diplomacy here- I played it at age 10; but for us kids it was just a bigger, badder version of Campaign or Risk. Dreadnought was the first proper wargame I ever played. The teacher who ran the school wargames club brought his copy in one day and my brother was able to wangle a loan (it helped that our mum taught in the same maths department as that teacher). The pair of us had a lot of fun steaming our big battleships around and knocking all hell out of each other.
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It's rather too long ago for my memory to function very well, but I'm sure this was the first game I bought in a specialist games shop (on Elm Street, Norwich, UK, IIRC) in 1979 or 1980 -- also bought Traveller and MERP; then job, children, etc took control and things went very quiet for a few years
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Peter Hendee
United States
McKinney
Texas
I do not think it means what you think it means.
Whenever you become anxious or stressed, outer purpose has taken over, and you have lost sight of your inner purpose. Your state of consciousness is primary. All else is secondary.
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I enjoy puzzles so Ricochet Robots interested me - a race to solve a puzzle. I had played a lot of Acquire but I fixated on RR for a few years. Eventually I branched out to play more Euros. I suppose I like coops because they are basically puzzles.
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Steve S
United States
Rockford
Illinois
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It's been at least 25-30 years so my memory of what specifically came first isn't great, but this is one of the first non-PB/MB games I remember owning.
Then probably 15 years or so ago I went through a bit of an M:TG phase which may have been a stronger hook.
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T.L.W.
United States
Maryland
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I was in high school when some of my friends started a "war game club" and invited me to join, probably since I was on the chess team. The first game they brought out was WS&IM and after playing once, I was hooked. We then moved on to playing a little Squad Leader and Magic Realm but got completely caught up on a relatively new game at the time you might have heard of called Dungeons and Dragons. However, this one has always remained as one of my favorites.
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Luis Fernandez
Venezuela
Caracas
Miranda
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My first hobbie game was this, but also i started with magic the gathering at 1997
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Dan Long
United States
Tacoma
Washington
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At the time I got it- early 70's, it was the only 'war game' the hobby shop carried...I had played RISK, but the idea of different units and terrain, etc. was such a revelation!
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San Leandro
California
Fountain Valley
California
Same here. Several come to mind, but I have no idea what the first one was. It was before Cosmic Encounter, Illuminati, Snits Revenge, Nuclear War, Diplomacy, Dungeons & Dragons, Sleuth, some Sherlock Holmes game whose name I don't remember, Stop Thief, Dark Tower, Troke, Stratego, Othello, ...
People often ask me what my gateway game was. I don't have one. I was born inside the gate.
San Antonio
Texas