A recent trend among my friends and I are playing card and board games.
There was a solid 15 year period where I didn't touch a board or card game. I didn't have any use for them. Why would you pull out a game when there were so many other things to do? I was busy driving around St. Charles, watching my sweet DVD collection, and going to concerts.
It started when I went to Salt Lake City in 2007. My buddy Allen had this game called Killer Bunnies that we played several nights while I was there. The game was so fun, I ended up buying it and most of the expansions before I got home.
My love of the local, real life game faded a bit with graduating college, getting married, moving across state, getting laid off, etc. We didn't have time or friends nearby to play a game that needed at least 3 people to be fun.
Then there was a night where Sallie and I were sitting in bed next to each other playing "Words With Friends" which is a straight rip off of Scrabble.
There was a point where we both sort of looked at each other and thought, "This is really stupid, why don't we just bust out the Scrabble board so we don't have to look at this screen anymore?"
So for the next several weeks, we would sit in bed playing Scrabble against each other.
Our re-found love of games didn't really spill into the party arena until a game for terrible humans was released. Cards Against Humanity is a game much like Apples to Apples, except most of the cards are violent prompts with Hitler answers.
The first time we really played it was Christmas Eve 2011. Nick and Brett came over to our house and the four of us played through the entire deck because it was so hilarious. There were times where Nick was laughing so hard at a well placed poop joke that he couldn't read the rest of the prompt and drool was spilling from his mouth all over the coffee table.
Recently Sal and I got the itch to start a puzzle. We went to Target and after pouring over some really dumb puzzles of flowery fields and cartoon characters we didn't know, I found a puzzle of Scottrade Center in the clearance aisle. 1000 pieces for $3. Can't go wrong with that right?
Well, we worked on the puzzle several Sunday nights in a row, making slight progress. Soon we realized that it was a cheaply made puzzle. It was one of those where the picture was sort of blurry enough on certain parts of the crowd and the pieces could sort of be forced to fit that we weren't sure if we were actually making progress.
We gave up on that puzzle, but maybe we'll pick one up again soon. It was relaxing to do while watching TV.
A few weeks back, Brett, Rosie, Sal, and I were sitting around my brother's loft downtown wanting some entertainment we could all play. My brother was talking up Settlers of Catan, a game that was popular among my friends already, but I had never played it.
It was a blast. Unfortunately, it's only a 4 player game and somehow Sal and I tend to hang out in groups of 6 most often. So it hasn't come out since that first night, but I'm itching for more.
While we were shopping for Settlers of Catan, the guy at the comic book shop talked up a card game called Boss Monster. I just bought this using a gift card from my birthday. I can't wait to play it. I really can't.
It's weird having this love of the board game all of a sudden again. In a way, I feel like it's some rebellion against the screen. It's a way to keep people's attention span long enough so that their nose doesn't get buried in their phone browsing Reddit and you can just hang out like normal people.
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