Do you or did you play board games?

[Avioncore]

The few fellow Fire Emblem fans I know irl played a lot of Risk, chess, tabletop board games, etc. as kids (and some to this day) but I didn't. I want to know if you all were interested in strategy type board games when you were younger or if you're like me and are just really into Fire Emblem and possibly other strategy/tactical video games.

[Jotari]

I'm a pretty enthusiastic chess player, though it can be difficult to find people to play against. And I was pretty into diplomacy for a while.

[whase]

Playing boardgames with friends in person is my favorite thing. I don't really play the classics anymore, Catan, Risk, Monopoly and such are no longer on the playlist. Some of my favorites are Dominion, Betrayal at the House on the Hill, Evolution and Tsuro. I also enjoy making my own boardgames. I never really got into chess, I too easily beat my friends, while my dad won from me too easily.

[Armchair General]

I'm mostly into Chess. Not really an fan of card games for an number of reasons (family thinks I'm weird for this). I'd probably enjoy stuff like 40k, but I don't feel like killing my wallet over it

[vanguard333]

I used to play a lot of board games with my family: The Game of Life, Monopoly, Payday, Risk (though I can't remember a time we ever finished a game of Risk), and sometimes Chess, though we weren't very good at chess.

The last board game we played was a gift from relatives called Ticket to Ride: a game about building railway networks and completing sidequests handed out on cards. I was in last place for the entire game, then at the end, it turned out that, because I focused on completing all the sidequests I had received throughout the game, I had by far the most points at the end of the game and won in a landslide.

[lenticular]

I do play chess at an intermediate level, though almost exclusively online. And I tend to go in cycles where I sometimes play a lot but then sometimes hardly play at all for a while, and I'm in one of the latter at the moment. For anyone for whom these numbers are meaningful, my chess.com elo ratings are about 1100 blitz, 1400 rapid, and 2000 daily.

I also used to play a whole lot of Scrabble, but haven't played in years. I was pretty good at it, though. Not anywhere close to tournament level play, but a strong casual player.

Beyond that, I have at least some experience with most styles of board games. Classic games like draughts (aka checkers), backgammon, and go. 20th century games like Monopoly, Cluedo (aka Clue), or Risk. And modern "German style" games like Ticket to Ride, Pandemic or Small World. These days, I'm mostly limited by time and having people to play with, so I'll maybe play a few games of Ticket to Ride per year and that's about it. But overall, yeah, I love board games.

I don't really see that much common ground between board games and Fire Emblem, though. They occupy very different niches in my brain and are rewarding and fun for me in very different ways. I don't think it's at all strange for anyone to be into one but not the other.

[Jotari]

4 hours ago, lenticular said:

my chess.com elo ratings are about 1100 blitz, 1400 rapid, and 2000 daily.

An ELO rating of 2,000 is super freaking high. Like you could do well in competitions if you're that good.

[Eltosian Kadath]

I like playing board games, although I don't get to play them as much as I would like now a days with maybe a dozen big days a year where I get to do any serious boardgaming (back in middle school, and high school I was in the games club, where we would even play boardgames during the lunch break). Although it sounds like I am a fan of more complicated boardgames than most people have been describing, so I think I will go into a few. I am a fan of GMT's COIN, or Counter Insurgence series of games, which tend to be 4 player (generally) asymmetric war games like A Distant Plain (a boardgame based on the recent US war in Afghanistan), Fire on the Lake (about the Vietnam War), or Andean Abyss (about Colombian conflict in the 1990s); the Pax games are fun although I think Pax Renaissance is the best of them; It been a little while since I played one, but card based historic war games like Here I Stand, Twilight Struggle, or Hannibal: Rome Vs Carthage are great; Versailles 1919 is a game I been particularly fascinated with recently all about wheeling and dealing to forge that infamous treaty that ended WWI...honestly I could keep naming more boardgames than would be reasonable if I tried (especially ones from when I was in High School), and while I focused on series in that little talk there, I like variety.

[lenticular]

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

An ELO rating of 2,000 is super freaking high. Like you could do well in competitions if you're that good.

2000 is pretty great, and I am proud of it, but it's not as impressive as it seems. "Daily" is chess.com's version of correspondence chess, which is heavily influenced by how much time and effort you're willing to put into each game. And when I played it, I was pretty routinely only having one game at a time and putting an hour or more into every move. Whereas I know that other people have dozens of games at once and make each move without much thought. Which is weird to me, since if you want to play quickly, why not just play with regular time controls? But regardless, it's not really comparing like with like and does over-inflate my actual strength. My rapid rating of around 1400 is a truer representation of my actual playing strength.

[Fire Emblem Fan]

Yes, I do play board games! And card games. I play things from chess to Horrified to Red Dragon Inn to Monopoly.

[Original Alear]

Ya, I play with my parents probably at least once a week. We used to play Catan quite a lot, but we don't take that one out as much anymore. I might spell some of these wrong, but some of the most common are Alambra, Carcassone (we have the big box set and a few additional expansions), Castles of Burgundy, Lords of Waterdeep (almost always with the Scoundrels of Skullport expansion), Segrata, Splendor (barely ever with the expansions), Rise of Augustus (I like it cuz I feel it's very quick), Machi Koro, and Seven Wonders (with the cities and leaders expansions). And there are some more I'm too lazy to remember. I think Lords of Waterdeep might be the favorite.

I wish I could play the Game of Thrones board game a little more, but my parents don't like it and I'm too lazy to find friends these days.

[Sidereal Wraith]

Back in the day a good friend of mine and I played Arkham Horror, which was always a blast.

[Bad_At_Fire_Emblem]

I didn't play a tonne growing up, but I'm very into board games as an adult. Arkham Horror is masterpiece of a board game and I will happily sink many hours of my life into it 😅