I've always been rubbish at Board Games.
I did love the box art and the game parts but never enjoyed playing the games, worst luck for me especially at Christmas when families traditionally play.
I did play crazy plastic games like Mouse Trap, Cascade, Ker-Plunk and Buckaroo but these were lore like toys than games. Normal games played with dice and boards sent me running for the hills.
It's my brain. I get bored almost immediately, no pun intended and fidget and twitch. Then I give up.
Lots of games filled our family home when I was a kid in the Sixties: Blast Off, Formula 1, Go for Broke, the tiresome Monopoly, Backgammon and of course various chess sets - plastic, magnetic, wooden - and the game of geeks, Space Lines [which I tried to play] to name but a few.
So when I met my Missus on the Continent in the late Seventies I was amazed to find that she loved board games and unbelievably, strategic games.
She played Go, a sort of Japanese draughts that looked like a large square board covered with sweets. O'd never seen it before in 1978.
She also loved [and still does] Halma [Ludo], Mensch Aerger Dich Nicht, Monopoly, Mastermind, Muhle [Nine Mens Morris], Floh Spiel [Tiddlywinks], Spitz Pass Auf [Mousy Mousy] and Mikado [Pick up Straws].
The only game she didn't play was Mah Jong, a Chinese game involving cream tiles adorned with classical Chinese imagery like Cranes and Bamboos. I've never played it either but have regularly seen it for sale at flea markets, usually in a nice leather case. Anyone played it?
So despite living with an acute inability to play board games I do love the box art and the contents. I have collected them as works of art for many years and have some beautiful games in my loft.
I also now regret selling many fine vintage games as well, in my toy dealer days, like Mine a Million and Air Charter. You can't keep everything though can you?
Do you collect board games readers? Do you play them? Do you like strategic games?
I thought the same way you did as a kid.My mom and brother liked thinking games like Scrabble and Parcheesi(spelling correct?) but I would goof around and get thrown out of the room.But we did have some great kids games that we could do all night marathons on.Which Witch,Green Ghost,The Voice of the Mummy,Lost Gold and Pizza Pie were our faves.Info on all these games can be found online.Monopoly was a compromise that I could play with mom and bro.I keep a classic version of Monopoly because it depicts old Atlantic City. Most of the streets and properties on the board are no longer in existence as Atlantic City is now a sad, crime ridden ruin of a town.In our teen years, we got swept up in the new wave of home video games, and that changed the way we played for many years to come.I still love to play a round of Trouble on occasion.
ReplyDeleteThose are some fab games Brian. Which Witch was called Haunted House here in the UK, the drop it down the chimney game! I've never seen Transogam's Green Ghost in the flesh but know it from books. It looks huge! U very nearly went to Atlantic City in 2005, whilst staying with friends in Woodbridge NJ. Sorry to here its gone downhill.
DeleteI enjoyed boeard games well enough, and still do on the rare-ish occasion we can get the boys off their computers. I do play Mah Jong, I have a nice set that belonged to my Gran. It's similar to Gin Rummy in concept and I also have a playing card version somewhere.
ReplyDeleteIn my later teens I played a number of war simulation games, but didn't like pushing little cardboard tokens around. So I upscaled two of them - a WW1 air combat game that resulted in collecting a dozen or three airplane kits and painting those up in the aces' colour schemes (somewhat clumsily in hindsight :) and using those on a large board on a ping pong table. And next I made a pretty large battlefield for use with WW2 troops after I had made a small German Kampfgruppe and a friend turned out to have a US combat group. This was wallpaper taped to the floor and then painted, with hills filled with layered corrugated card, woods out of styrofoam and paper houses. Great fun!
5-10 years ago I made a modular terrain and some buildings and obstacles for the boys' Warhammer figures. Much better made than my young efforts at kits, and also great fun.
Best -- Paul
Wow Paul, you've built some game bases in your time! The whole role playing thing passed me by so I never played any board based war games. I may have had one game of Dungeons and Dragons circa 1979 based on a set of rules in a magazine called White Dwarf back then. I did collect Avalon Hill boxed games in the 90's largely for the box art, which was stunning.
DeletePlayed quite a bit of Dungeons & Dragons in my student days, with me Bruv and his friends. And painted a series of figures for us to use. Good fun, and recommended, despite the nerdy reputation. Actually started an introductory game with the boys on holiday last summer. Me being Dungeon Master which took awhile to prepare so we never finished the game (and I'll have to start all over again if ever we continue...)
DeleteThe two upscaled games were both Avalon Hill - Richthofen's War (which just had a colour photo of a WW1 fighter on the box - likely taken at Rhinebeck) and the WW2 battle was based on the rules and strength values of Panzer Leader (nice graphics indeed) where we could greatly simplify the rules. No need to go through several pages of line-of-sight/line-of-fire rules if you just squint past the barrel of your model Jagdpanther and check if there's no obstructions to the hapless Sherman you're aiming for!
btw: Avalon Hill apparently is no more, but there's somebody selling a DVD with scans of all the bits for plenty of their games on epay.
(and btw2: assuming it's not wa-ay off topic, I believe I could rustle up some pics, if I've never shown you those before).
Best -- Paul
They sounds like glorious days indeed Paul!I always admired the boxart of Avalon Hill games too and enjoyed finding them at sales. By all means send some pics of games for the blog!
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