I’ve been playing boardgames seriously since about a decade – but what is it about boardgames that keeps me interested and coming back for more?
Boardgames were a part of growing up, but only a small part, as I remember playing Mille Bornes and Monopoly with my parents, and a bunch of other games with my sister (I mostly remember Hotel (Hotel Waikiki Beach looked awesome!) and Ghost Castle (remember that light-in-the-dark skull that you dropped down a tower? Also awesome!) My best friend throughout my childhood and teens had lots of boardgames, and we played together during school breaks. I remember us playing a lot of The Mad Magazine Game. In fact, she introduced me to Carcassonne in the early 2000’s. But I only got into ‘serious’ boardgaming in 2012. Since then, it is my main hobby. And that is something, because as a child, I fluttered from hobby to hobby and didn’t commit to any of them - much to my parents' despair  Piano lessons: 2 years. Drawing: not even a whole school year (I never moved past the matchstick men). Gymnastics: 1 year. The only hobby that stuck to me through childhood and teenage years was horseback riding. So why do I keep playing boardgames?

It is the same in boardgames: I often learn new strategies just by playing with other players and observing their playstyle, how they lay the groundworks for their path to victory.

To meet with friends

For me, boardgaming is about the social interaction with people who share this wonderful hobby. I often feel uneasy when I play with people I don’t know, and when there is little social interaction, when everyone just sits with their head in the game, seemingly unaware of the fact that there are other people around the table. I am an introvert person myself, so that doesn’t help in reaching out to people I don’t know. But I have joined a boardgame club and met some really nice people there, some of them I now consider Friends (caps intended), and I enjoy playing with them. The game is just a means to get together. We play, we talk, we laugh, we have fun. I would much rather play a bad game in good company than a great game in bad company…

The pandemic was/is harsh, as all game nights were canceled, for a very long time. Many of my friends turned to online boardgame platforms. I never did. I tried though: on day 1 of the first lockdown, I set up a premium account on BoardGameArena. 18 months later, I didn’t play a single game online. One reason was that I already spent all my working hours behind a computer screen so I was reluctant to add more screen time to my day, but another and equally important reason was that I knew it just wouldn’t be the same without the actual physical closeness of fellow players, who would talk to each other, maybe even crack a few jokes and share a few laughs - the absence of that would only make the whole lockdown hurt more.

I tried playing boardgames with my dog Boromir, but as you can see, that didn’t work out so well: he was only interested in the sheep meeples of Agricola, and the guard dog of Res Arcana scared him  So even though I love my dog very much, he just can’t compete with my friends when it comes to playing boardgames. 

For the mental workout

I am convinced that playing boardgames keeps the mind sharp and offers great memory training. A lot of boardgames will test your problem-solving skills and logical thinking. I love how games make me think and plan ahead (strategical thinking), or react to an ever changing board state (tactical thinking). Every game feels like a puzzle you need to solve or a maze you need to make it across on your way to victory. I very much enjoy the journey through a game, especially the medium to heavy games that only reveal their secrets and their layers as you play. Like for instance Cooper Island: there are different strategies, but they are fairly clear-cut, so on all my plays, I tried focussing on different things (ruins/temples, buildings, racing,…), and I enjoyed every play.

I also enjoy it when there is some (indirect) interaction, like when actions by one player can mess up my plans, forcing me to rethink my strategy, and adapt to the new state of the board or the game, for instance in Taluva, Terra Mystica and Yokohama.

 To be amazed by new things

I am in awe of boardgame designers. These creative minds come up with new games to bring us many hours of fun around the table. And every once in a while, some brilliant mind comes up with a new mechanic in a game. I remember the euphoria I felt when I first played Orléans, the first bag building game. I had so much fun getting new citizen chips to add to my bag and then drawing some every turn – the excitement and anticipation with every draw: will I get my knight so I can travel?

But a game doesn’t have to bring new mechanisms to the table to be enjoyed. There are plenty of games out there that make an interesting combination of mechanisms, or take a familiar mechanism and do something different with it. For instance Raiders of the North Sea is a typical worker placement game, but it lets you place a worker on an action spot, perform the action and then retrieve one from another action spot. I love Res Arcana so much because it strips a favorite mechanism (engine building) to its core and has you creating and running an engine with only 8 cards and a mage with a special power at your disposal.

To win

It’s not my primary motivation to play games at all, but boy, it does feel good when I can pull off a win! I don’t consider myself to be a good player. If I would mind losing, I wouldn’t be playing games anymore. I am often surrounded by gamers who are much better and faster at breaking down a game into separate parts and seeing the clear path to victory. Or hard core strategists who can quickly lay out a strategy and stick to it. I’m not always able to keep my eye on the prize and I sometimes get sidetracked. There are games I am somehow naturally good at and rarely seem to lose, like Yokohama, Taluva and Res Arcana. The feeling of mastering a game lets me start the game with a bit more confidence in myself, but at the same time, it weirdly adds to the pressure: “I’ve never lost this game, so I don’t want to lose now!” And Yves often refuses to play deckbuilding games with me – he claims I’m too strong at those. I think my years of playing Magic: the Gathering has made me more familiar with strategies that are useful in most card playing games.

So in general, I don’t mind losing a game, I play for the fun of playing, and if I can somehow win, it’s a bonus. But I can be pretty bummed if I lose a game and I know exactly what decision or chain of events caused me to lose. I sometimes make stupid choices in games (as in life I guess) and I have had these moments when I made a move and 5 seconds later realize that it was a dumb move. I don’t mind losing if other players just played better than me, but I do mind if I lose because I wasn’t paying attention. But then I only have myself to blame, so I’m not really a bad loser, I do not whine after a loss 

And there are even games I enjoy so much, that I genuinely don’t care one bit if I win or lose, simply because I have sooo much fun playing them. Mostly, that’s the case when a game has a strong theme, like for instance Argent: The Consortium. This is one of my favorite games, I often describe it as “Harry Potter goes to university”. I like the setting of a university of magic, where players get to recruit mages and send them out to do their bidding and defend their goals. You learn powerful spells and get to use them against opponents, and work your way through the different rooms of the university, each with its own action spots (it is a worker placement game after all). The game is so immersive that I don’t care about winning.