Last weekend we had two of my long time friends, Bob & Boot come to visit. We all met years ago via Xbox and they’ve been my video gaming friends for almost a decade. So it was really cool to expose them to tabletop gaming.
Bob had visited us last fall so we had already showed him a few things like Pandemic and Lord of Waterdeep. In fact he loved Pandemic so much that he bought a copy for himself. Boot on the other hand was completely new to gaming and his only experience were mainstream stuff like Monopoly and Life.
They were in town for three days and and we played a bunch of stuff, but the craziest had to be what happened with the D.C. DeckBuilding Game (DCDBG). We had a late night Friday so on Saturday, Lisa and I decided to go to bed early. When we went to bed, both Boot and Bob were just starting a round of the DCDBG. The nutty part is that when I got up at 5:30 a.m. on Sunday they were still playing!
“You know how we are when the new Call of Duty or hot game comes out,” Boot said. “We pull an all nighter playing the crap out of it”
They ended up playing it for over eight hours straight and in that time had managed to play it seven times. It was sooooo crazy cause don’t get me wrong I really enjoy the DCDBG but I can’t imagine playing it for that long.
In all the games they played, Boot hadn’t managed to win once, but even then he was still excited about the game and told me he plans to buy a copy for himself.
“The DC Deckbuilder was just fun,” Bob said. “It’s really different from the regular boardgames I grew up with which is surprising cause all you are dealing with are cards yet there is a lot of strategy to those cards and how you play them.”
Because they liked the DCDBG so much we decided to play a round of Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Deck Building Game. Lisa and I had gotten it last year and after two plays never touched it again. For us it was just too mean of a game and way too swingy thanks to the ambushes and fortune cards. However, both Boot and Bob loved it and got really into it.
“When it comes down to it boardgames aren’t that different from video games,” Bob said. “Look at something like Battlefield which is a first person shooter. If you want to do well you have to work as a team. Something like Pandemic works the same way. You need to work together to beat the game. The only real difference I see is that in boardgames there is more interaction with the other players and what you do impacts them more directly then if you were playing a video game.”
Boot was just as surprised about the whole weekend. After he had left on Sunday he texted me saying, “I had no idea that boardgames could be so much fun. After one weekend I’m already addicted.”
It was really interesting to see both of their reactions to boardgames and we did our best to give them a well rounded look at different kinds of games, though we did play a lot of co-ops. Here is the full list of what we played:
- Gravwell
- Eldritch Horror
- Pandemic
- Marvel Legendary
- DC Deckbuilding Game
- LoTR The Fellowship of the Ring Deckbuilding Game
- Steam Park
- Euphoria
- Frog Flip
- Bang! The Dice Game
- King of Tokyo
- Compounded
- Love Letter
- Sushi Go!
Just about every game we played was a hit. I think the one they were the least sold on was Eldritch Horror. They enjoyed playing with us but both said there was so much going on in it that they didn’t think it was a game they could buy and play themselves.
Then other than the DCDBG, the other hit of the weekend wsa Pandemic with the On The Brink expansion. We played it three times and neither Boot or Bob wanted to quit until we managed to beat it with both five epidemic cards and the purple mutations.
“I think boardgames are a lot of fun,” Bob said. “So far my favorite is Pandemic and co-ops but really I’m shocked that there rare so many different types of boardgames. I had no idea. I guess you can say that I was sheltered to the board gaming world.”
As a parting gift on Sunday we gave them our copy of LotR: DBG. We figured it was going to a good home where it would get a lot of play.