Board Game Addictus

Sometime in August 2010, we invited our usual "movie night" friends over to our home for "game night".  This is the same group of friends we'd been hanging out with for a decade or so and, as most "Friends" type of stories go, new faces came and went, but the "core" group remained the same.  And it is with this gaggle of geeky rock music-loving artists that we began the new hobby of playing board games.  It was supposed to be just another way for us to get together and do stuff we all liked.  But, little did we know that it would turn us into...something else.

Carcassonne "meeples"

Truth be told, when it all started, we really just wanted to play simple games with not a lot of rules, twists, and turns.  Plus, game night usually started past 9 P.M.  Add to that a lot of food and booze, our brain cells went to happy hour and didn't come back.  But, everything changed by the third game night in late November.  Our game master came lugging a huge blue box labeled Carcassonne.  She had just bought it that day at the Hobbes & Landes in Bonifacio High Street.  We began playing it around 11 P.M.  We tackled it gingerly but gamely; its numerous and specific rules became better understood as the game progressed.  And, as it became clearer to us, something began to change within us.  We became vicious, competitive, and conniving. The game ended close to 2 A.M. but it started a new fire in us.  It made us crave for more and often.  It turned us into, yes, board game addicts.

Interestingly, this new addiction has also tightened our bond even more.  It breathed new life into our friendships and drew us to each other with a deeper fondness.  In fact, we even set aside an entire weekend in March and practically locked ourselves up in a relative's vacation house in Tagaytay just to play games.  We brought so many games that each one of us double-tasked on games, e.g., figuring out how to solve one of the puzzles in the North pole version of Camouflage while playing Carcassonne at the same time *raising hand sheepishly*

Our growing tower of Cardus Addictus

Partly maybe because being so interested in competitive board games requires a similar mental profile, so that you'd always have someone to play with.  Nowadays, we hang out and play games almost every week (some of us even do so on a daily basis).  Recently, our addiction was "worsened" by the convenience of playing games at almost every place we hang out in -- thanks to the discovery of board games in card versions (A.K.A. "Cardus Addictus").

It started with my little boys.  The latest craze at their school was playing the Uno card game.  They learned it, got their dad to get them a deck, and then the damage was done -- to our heads.  It got the proverbial ball (of fire) rolling because, soon after getting the Uno cards, a friend introduced us to Monopoly Deal, which we taught to our circle of board game addicts.  And, like wildfire, it consumed us all, leading us to discovering Boggle Slam, Cluedo Suspects, Game of Life Adventures, Cranium Cards, Pictureka! cards, etc.  Our newest "drug" is a game called Apples to Apples.

Apples to Apples

Now, maybe you've noticed or maybe you haven't but, I didn't hyperlink on purpose the names of the games we play to online references.  That's because it's better for you to find out about them yourselves ;-)  If learning more about them gets you interested in those games, then *evil chuckle* good for you!

Playing board games will always be fun and relevant because they create a playroom where you can be as silly as you want; it's "live", as opposed to a video game; and, for a moment in time, you and a group of like-minded friends adhere to a unique set of rules that do not exist in the real world, which gives you a temporary yet memorable escape from the stress that is real life.

Photo acknowledgements to my fellow "DAS" members: shot of the Cranium game by Val Gonzales and Carcassonne meeples by Zarah Dominguez