Roger’s Roundup
Do y’all like board games? I love them.
Some people dismiss them as a waste of time that don’t accomplish anything. True, they don’t get any actual work done, or, in most circumstances, advance anyone’s bottom line. But there are other things in life that are important — spending time with family and friends, for example.
“But Roger, I can do that without a board game. We can just sit around and visit,” you might be thinking.
Sure. And that’s great. Maybe you don’t need a board game.
I guess I’m not that great at the art of conversation. After the catching up has been done, usually about a half-hour into the visit, what is there to talk about?
Maybe we can scratch another half hour out of current events.
Maybe I should become interested in sports. But, when you think about it, professional and college sports are just games where someone else is the participant. If board games are a waste of time, isn’t talking about sports equally as wasteful?
I guess one thing sports has over board games is a wider societal appeal.
This gives watching sports a greater utility in conversation. Other people are, to some degree, more likely to know what you’re talking about when you talk about last night’s ball game instead of last night’s board game.
Obviously, there’s nothing inherently wrong with either sports fandom or board game enthusiasm. It boils down to a matter of personal preference.
That said, I’m a gamer.
I started out with little kids’ games. Chutes and Ladders and checkers are some of the earliest games I remember playing, but early on — I guess I was about 6 or 7 — my dad introduced me to chess. I love chess, and still play it almost daily, with real people through an app on my phone.
Of course, I played a lot of family games like Monopoly and Life.
Somewhere along the line I got introduced to Risk. I suppose that was my first war-themed game — unless you count chess. When I was in junior high school or early high school, dad got hold of some early Avalon Hill war games — Afrika Corps, The Russian Campaign and Gettysburg, as I recall — and we played, sometimes for hours at a time. I remember leaving a Russian Campaign game set up on our dining room table for more than a week, playing a few hours every night.
As I got into high school and college, other games came along. The great Axis and Allies was World War II in a box.
Star Fleet Battles was a confusing but fun rendering of spaceship battles in the Star Trek universe. A professor introduced me to Shogun, a game similar to Axis and Allies, but set in feudal Japan.
Watch out for the ninja.
We came back to Risk in college, adding house rules to spice up the game. Roll three of a kind in a battle, draw a card.
This week I ordered a game that I played once back in college based on the Dune series by Frank Herbert. I remember it being great fun.
When ‘Rona settles down, anybody want to play?
Roger Cline is a staff writer for The Snyder News. Any comments about this article can be made to roger@snyderdailynews.com