Ten Games to Start Your Game Collection (And Twenty More)

Randolph Pub Ludique's games library. That's a lot of games. 

One of the most common topics I see in board gaming communities like DFW Nerd Night, The Boardgame Group, and /r/boardgames is about folks who are new to the hobby and want to expand their board game collection, but aren't sure what to buy. We're in a "golden age" of tabletop gaming, and with 1,500 new games being released each year, there are plenty to choose from and plenty of ways to evaluate them.

I've crowdsourced this list by polling the members of DFW Nerd Night, and used that list, plus some of my own discretion, to put together "Ten Games to Start Your Game Collection". It's important to note that these aren't the ONLY ten games I think our new friend should purchase, just the first ten that should give her plenty to play for the foreseeable future.

Pit, and an Interview With a Competitive Friend

Age ain't nothing but a number

As I've become more and more immersed in this world of tabletop gaming, it's been easy to be consumed by the "hobby" game market and conveniently forget about - or worse, look down on - the millions and millions of people who play "mass market" games like Risk, Stratego, Uno, Clue, Whist, Euchre, etc in their regular play groups. 

For more than a century, at least four full generations of Americans have spent their evenings around the table playing a game about making markets and furiously trading cards in an attempt to collect sets and make money. It's not Monopoly - that mainstay of American tabletop gaming - but it is just as old. (Seriously, 1903 was a great year for game design!)

The game is Pit, and your great-grandparents learned it from their parents around the kitchen table after dinner, when the radio was newer and more interesting than Marvel's current cinematic universe and "Eurogames" meant the renewal of the ancient Olympics in Athens, Greece just a few years before. 

This is a guest post from Andrew Christopher Enriquez, co-host of The Nerd Nighters and life-long gamer.

So after an exactly 20 year hiatus, I finally played D&D again. I was the same ages as my son is now when i played my first session. I ran my wife and two kids (8 and 10) through the first scenario of the starter box. OK so i have played in a few 1st edition campaigns but they were always really shorted lived, and saying i haven't played D&D is not saying i haven't Role played at all. But for all intents and purposes I've been away from the brand for a very long time.

We went to the Reaper store up in Denton one night to pick out minis for our characters, and minis for the bad guys. I figured this would help keep the kids engaged if they had mini's to care about, especially if they took the time to paint them themselves. My son has ZERO patience for playing games, and a pretty bad temper to boot. Board wiping(he has ODD) because he has to wait in turn is not an uncommon occurrence, so we usually keep it to light quick paced games. And D&D definitely is not light or quick paced, ESPECIALLY since i haven't played in so long

So how did we do? Well to be honest i should really preface this by saying my wife wanted absolutely NOTHING to do with this, she didn't want to role play at all. She has a hard time getting into any game where she embodies a character, even Mice and Mystics and Betrayal are too much for her. This is not a complaint, i understand role playing isn't for everyone, shoot no game genre is for everyone. I just knew going in, that she decided to play with us because i pressured her into making this a family event. And she hung in there as best as she could.

Goodbye, New Friend

www.jessie.org

This morning a young boy died. I met him last November at the Ronald McDonald House in Fort Worth, playing games as we’re wont to do on third Fridays each month. I only met him once. I remember speaking with his mother, talking about the games they play with his older brothers, talking about his treatment, and why everyone loved him so much.

This kid - he was hands-down the best gamer I’ve ever met at the RMH.

We played Set, and he got it right away. He just ate up anything I put in front of him, so we naturally got into a discussion about the finer games in life, which ended up being a conversation about my favorite games, which ended up with me making a late-night dash to Evolution Games to pick up a copy of Ticket to Ride to give to my new friend.

I can’t remember everything about that night, no matter how hard I try. I’ve been teaching games with my wife for more than two years now, and we meet a lot of people. Some stick with us because we see them every month, and we try really hard not to think about how messed up it is to see somebody more than once at the RMH.

This kid – I met him once. I talked to him for an hour. He’s stayed in my head for a year.

Gen Con Interview - Ben Harkins of Floodgate Games

Ben Harkins from Floodgate Games joined us to talk about Legacy: Gears of Time! The Floodgate booth was huge, and packed with people. I picked up a copy of L:GoT afterwards as promised in the video, so if you'd like to play it with me at game night, just leave a comment!

For a full playlist of Gen Con 2014 interviews, click here!

The Nerd Night Manifesto

Foreword

Before anything else is written, it should first be acknowledged that no community is built by one person. DFW Nerd Night is the product of hundreds of people agreeing to care about a community. My first and most important advice is to treat each person as you would yourself, so that they feel permission to add their energy, ideas, and love to the community you want to create. To do so is to transfer ownership of the community to all of its members, and thus ensure that each member of the community is committed to its success.

This community could not exist without the contributions of many, many people, and each of them deserves thanks and consideration. DFW Nerd Night would not exist in any recognizable form without the loving contributions of my wife, Amy, and her suggestions for connecting with charities across DFW. Additionally, were it not for Andrew Christopher Enriquez’s steadfast dedication to the creation of an ideal community based on love and respect, I would have lost the drive to build this group long ago.

To both of them, and to Nate, Heather, Emmanuel, Bryan, Jeremy, my brother JJ, Brian, Shawn, Mark, Jody, Donny, Phillip, Cody, and each you I’m forgetting, thank you for at least temporarily believing what I asked you to believe – that if you treat people as the best versions of themselves, you’ll be rewarded by their being exactly that. The power of our community is in our inclusivity, and in our willingness to see past our differences and appreciate the commonalities that bind us.

Above all else, put people first.