Board games are terrible - please don’t make me play them
OPINION: It’s 2023, the pandemic is effectively over for most of us, and yet, the strange phenomenon of huddling indoors around a dining room table for “fun” still isn’t out.
Instead, according to a recent Washington Post, article, we are living through a “golden age” of board games.
Unlike so many relics of painfully uncool millennial cringe, board games are here to stay – the industry is worth up to A$13 billion (NZ$14b) globally and growing.
The nerds have well and truly won.
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I bear no grudge toward the board game enjoyers. Some of my best friends have been swept up in this craze since it kicked off in earnest in the 2010s. That said, I must make this plea. For the love of god, never ask me to play a board game with you.
As someone who is a friend to many nerds, I’m unfortunately familiar with the phenomenon of the “board game night”.
For the fortunately uninitiated, they tend to go something like this:
Billed as a wholesome way to break the ice with new friends, or reconnect with old, the affair is usually suggested by The Guy Who is Good at Board Games. If, like me, you happen to be a relative rookie, this is bad news – make sure you bring another amateur to make you feel better about yourself.
The night is usually accompanied by a few cheeky Aldi wines, an Aldi cheeseboard, and if you’re lucky, mediocre pizza from somewhere like crust. Somebody brings ciders like it’s 2013 and no one drinks them.
The Guy Who is Good at Board Games then spends close to an hour explaining the rules. Perhaps you are slaying a mythical beast, making sushi, or cosplaying as colonisers in a
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