Games
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Remember when you first discovered decent boardgames, and you were so excited that you decided to convert all of your friends and family to this wonderful hobby?
Yeah, me too. Years later my wife looks at my boardgame collection with thinly-veiled disdain and my kids are all over the Xbox 360 and our Wii. It's also getting increasingly difficult to persuade my wife that I really need to spend four hours on a Friday night to push around cardboard, especially when Friday (our group's meeting time) is when my wife likes to go out after a long week of adult responsibility, and I can't blame her. I was starting to lose interest in a hobby that had played a vital role in helping me escape material reality for so long. I was starting to fear that the long, pleasant dream was coming to an end.
Despite these problems I've been gaming more than ever, and I've been playing decent boardgames with my brother (normally a videogamer) and another friend who has no gaming background. What's the secret to getting non-games to play, you say? Chloroform and a dungeon? No! We've been playing cutthroat Carcassonne and Samurai on our Iphones (in my case, a work-purchased Ipad and an Ipod Touch). Both are turn-based, but there are moments when our schedules synchronize and we knock out a harsh game in 20 minutes. We trash talk online, sometimes more than I do in our meatspace group.
And although Carcassonne is something you've probably already played into the ground, I've found that with three ruthless grownups who are trying to hurt each other, the game is pretty good. The whole thing started when I began playing Words with Friends with my bro, who would tirelessly submit possible words until he would land 45 points a turn. That got old, so I sent him Carcassonne for his birthday, and he bought me a copy of Samurai for mine.
I realize this isn't the same thing as playing something heavier and trashier for four hours, face to face, with pizza, but in the words of someone who is dead, "A drowning man will grab the end of a sword." For now, this is good enough. Plus, Neuroshima Hex will be coming out soon, and who knows, maybe one day we'll get Storms of Steel for the Ipad. A man can dream.
