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.

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.

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.

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…

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.

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