When did board games 'click' for you?

Sadly, the first board game I played was Monopoly at ~10, and that drove me away. Then I rediscovered them in uni with Settlers of Catan and Risk.

A college buddy introduced me to Settlers of Catan, and the rest was history.

I'd always liked board games, but the wife and I never had anything beyond the 'classics', which were fun but kind of been there done that sort of vibe. Then one day a couple years ago we went down to our friend's house and they showed us Unstable Unicorns, Dixit, and Munchkin and our minds were blown. We immediately started buying the games we'd played and a couple more that had cool art and as we played more with friends and by ourselves we kept buying more and more, even being able to show our friends games they hadn't heard of. And now we have too many 🤣

Family always played Scrabble and I did not like it... In college my friends frequently played Dominion but I always opted out because I thought I didn't like board games. Eventually I tried it and fell down a rabbit hole

Been playing board games of one stripe or another since I was 4-5yrs old and my dad taught me how to play chess, backgammon, checkers, Monopoly etc. Early teens brought more complex games like Shogun, Catan and Roborally (I am HORRENDOUSLY bad at games with move programming like Roborally) along with CCG's and RPG's into the mix.

Jeez! Now I feel really old realizing I've been gaming for nearly 40yrs.

Wow, so many Catan inductees here.

For me it was the notoriously shitty Civilization (2002). I was around 11 years old. Any designer board game is incredible if it’s the first one you’ve ever played.

Catan... The "human warrior" of boardgame introductions, but it did its job

It branched from there to Citadels, Villainous, Rummikub and others until reaching my inevitable fate of becoming a Wingspan addict

I’ve always had the core family bargains around the house; Cluedo, Monopoly, chess, backgammon, as well as slightly older pub games like shove ha’penny, shut the box, devil among the tailors (pub tabletop skittles). But with the young family a couple of years ago we started looking for new things, found Carcassonne & settlers of catan. Pride of the newest games I have is split between ‘The King is Dead’ and a full size Carrom table. And I built my own Mah Jong table to house an automatic mechanism that shuffles the tiles and racks them for you. (We’ve had a traditional set for years and always played a UK version of Hong Kong rules across a couple of generations.) Yeah I clicked with board games as a kid and have always looked forward to a chance to play them with family and friends.

My family always played the standard 80s/90s board and card games, I picked up Carcassonne in 2012 but it didn't really click, plus my girlfriend wasn't into it.

It wasn't until 2021 when I picked up Azul and Sagrada, that I realised how amazing games have become. The pieces, rulebook, simplicity and depth.

First time playing a worker placement Euro was a real eye opener, having been raised on roll-and-move.

I’ve been playing board games my whole life, but when I was 9 my cousin busted out catan, that was the first proper longer game with actual mechanics. It was the moment I realized board games could be more than a boring family activity.

As a kid I liked boardgames, but often I would have to play them alone and would play some of them on the PlayStation or similar. This basically started the transition of playing games on video consoles and later PC. Boardgames became a forgotten pastime and I raveled in the complexity of pc games for many years. I even disregarded boardgames because I thought they could not compete with the glory of PC games. Of course I was utterly wrong.

It all changed when I got Slay the Spire Early Access on PC and loved it. My gf also saw the game and liked it as well. We both thought its silly to play what in essence is a card game alone, on our own computers. So we venture to a local boardgame shop and told them that we play Slay the Spire and the lad, in his wisdom, suggested Dominion. What a great start it was! We played Dominion for like 9 months pretty much every evening before we thought it could use an addon. Soon more and more games and expansions entered our collection. Here we are, 5 years later and boardgames have become a very central part of our hobbies.

They generally still don't. I'm very picky about my board games and also about the people I play with. If you just grab a random well liked board game and a number of average board game enthusiast and sit me at a table with them. I might have a good time but it's unlikely.

When my dad did blockades in parcheesi, and also when I found Carcassonne

For me it was either Arkham Horror 2nd edition or Last Night on Earth. Big thematic games with some fun mechanics that we would have stories about playing for months after they were finished.

Ppreviously played Cluedo and Exploding Kitten very casually maybe 2-5 times a year.

Then 3 years ago, I joined a Talisman (4e + Dungeon expansion) 6 player game that lasted 5.5hrs and I stayed in the chair from start to finish. Won the game by 1 turn after completing the dungeon and teleporting to the crown which was being used to finish me off by the last player.

There was assistance from other players with rule clarifications and some tips, so not a solo win.

Now 180 games in the collection(with 30-40 Wall o Shame), I'm regularly exploring the mechanics and previous classics that are out there.

(Inis, Innovation, Port Royal, Bruges, Netrunner, Captain Sonar, Captain Carcass, Crokinole, Diamant, Targi, Morels, Radlands, Skull)

I grew up with the Ravensburger box of classics so, board games were always a part of my childhood. They quickly captured my imagination and I began to draw roll and move boards, explaining to my mom what should happen on each space.

When I got older the whole family got into games and that turned into a nice sunday tradition.

Eventually I got sucked into BGG and never financially recovered...

As a kid, I liked boardgames but I haven't really been introduced to anything that you couldn't find on a toy store so I didn't know about "real" boardgames before I found a YouTube series called "Tabletop". They basically recorded playthroughs of different types of boardgames with amazing production. That series really opened me up to the world of boardgaming and gave me a good enough sample of different boardgames that I could have an idea of what kind of games I liked.

Oooooh, been a long time.

For it wasn't Catan. I liked Catan, sure. Played it a few times when it came out. But what did it for me was that my partner at the time went to Spiel in Essen every year, and after we got together dragged me there in 2003. I looked around, a lot was really interesting, and then ended up buying Alhambra for myself. First board game I got for myself. And that really did it. It was far from a perfect game, but this whole expo-then-bought-a-game thing really cemented the idea of not only playing board games but also wanting to have a collection so I can play them with friends when they come over in me.

Aaaand, nowadays I have a 6x4 Kallax filled with games. 🙈

I played some board games here and there; a little Risk, a little Catan. Then a few years ago I was gifted Spirit Island and it just took off. I've played a good number of other games since, but a friend and I have been getting together to play Spirit Island almost every week for the last couple of years, and I don't see any signs of it slowing down.

My friends and I in high school spent a lot of days just hanging out. For one reason or another we started playing monopoly off and on as we chatted. As a few weeks went by we quickly realized there was a lot more to the game than meets the eye and our strategies started to develop. We went from just rolling and going with the flow to buying everything we touched and negotiating some intense trade contracts. We moved from there to Catan and Dominion and saw how much more depth there could be. We have all been hooked ever since.