Development of Taste, or How I Learned To Love the Oddball

 Building a Foundation for Interest

As a Tolkien fan, I loved this game.

I've got a really weird set of criteria that I feel like is ever evolving when it comes to games. When I initially started purchasing games myself, I started off with the usual suspects: Risk: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy Edition, Trivial Pursuit: The Lord of the Rings Movie Trilogy Collector's Edition, and Monopoly: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy Edition. Obviously, I was going through a bit of a phase with those games and while they were just derivative of the original games, I still enjoyed playing them.

As I was growing up there were also a lot of card games that we played around the table, with significant emphasis on Hearts, as we played almost every time we got together with our extended family and grandmother, and often times there were house rules that were added to the game when we were feeling feisty (which was all the time). I played games like SET and Phase 10 as I got a bit older and we started playing games in school, but mostly it was all card-based games.

My family was brutal with this game.

Of course there were the usual other board game suspects like Sorry!, Risk, and Monopoly that my parents had from when they were growing up, which made up most of my usual plays of games as a kid. I also got the chance to play other games like Are You Afraid of the Dark? and other horror-themed games. I'm not entirely certain what game it was but I'm pretty sure it was Goosebumps: One Day at Horrorland Game, but I will add in the caveat that the game was my cousin's and we only played it once or twice. While these games weren't the best, they did present a simple and easy way to pass time for me, although I generally was more interested in video games than board games, spending quite a bit of time playing both Age of Empires II and Red Alert II on the computer.

This changed everything.

As I got older, there were newer games that I was introduced to with games like CATAN and Apples to Apples being a mainstay of what I played during that time. I never really clicked with Pandemic, despite it being my first foray into the real genre of cooperative games, as I had one too many losses to really consider it a game that I wanted to play over and over (and despite that I ended up getting a copy of the game myself in the hopes that I would do better). Apples to Apples was much more of a hit for me and as I began to develop my taste further, I found myself enjoying the world of CATAN as well. Growing up, I played a lot of abstract games and puzzle games, so I think that CATAN really hit the spot for me in that respect.

Funnily enough, I was initially turned off to CATAN by the long play time of it and the fact that the original time I saw the game being played, it was being done by several guys who were super into it. It was really weird to me (at that time) that anyone would get so into board games and CATAN would sit in this nebulous state of me being interested, yet feeling that those that got so excited about a game were UBER-nerds (I was a nerd, but not that much of one). I fid finally play about a year later and was extremely impressed with the game and it immediately became one of my favorite games at that time.

Budding Interest

This still is a gorgeous cover.

I think I've mentioned this in the past, but I then started to collect games of my own, getting many of the "gateway games" that were popular back in the 2010s: Ticket to Ride, Azul, and Splendor were some of my first purchases with my wife as we delved into the newer realm of gaming. I dabbled a bit in Kickstarter campaigns and backed a few card games, but nothing really took my fancy after they both turned out to be duds and that really turned me off to games from that area.

As I started developing my tastes further and further, I started getting games that interested me with their themes. Games like Betrayal at House on the Hill and Disney Villainous: The Worst Takes it All were added to my collection because I liked the idea of the theme that they presented. I started adding games because I thought they sounded cool or I liked the idea of playing a game in that world. Jaws was another game that I picked up because I loved the movie and I wanted to be able to play as the titular giant shark that ate people.

Yet, through it all, I was having more and more issues with actually playing the games that I purchased. While I was interested in the games and the themes that they encompassed, I found that I was usually the one in my friend group that suggested playing board games versus going out to a bar or playing video games. It was a frustration of mine since I wanted to be able to do something that I enjoyed, but never really got to do as much as I wanted.

I love this game, but the theme didn't hit.

I knew that there were some really cool games out there, Wingspan being one of them, but I just never really had a good group of friends to play with. Just before the pandemic hit (COVID ruined a lot of things but board games with friends was the hardest to miss for me) I was able to connect with several people that loved board games and had some that I didn't know about and that jumpstarted my dive back into board games.

I learned that in the last several years especially, there had been a significant revolution in board games that had resulted in some absolutely fantastic games being made and one friend kept badgering me about playing a game called Terraforming Mars. I had been cautious about the recommendations that this friend had made in the past, but when I saw the box and what the game entailed, I was immediately hooked and knew that I had to try the game.

Eclectic? No, I'm Just Weird.

Merriam Webster defines "eclectic" as "composed of elements drawn from various sources, heterogeneous". I'd like to say that my collection has grown in that direction to be diverse and have quite a few different types of games that offer a wide range of possibilities. But the more I look at my collection, the more I realize that I have a very odd and weird sense in collecting games and what I add to my collection.

I would like to point out that while I have been playing board games for quite some time, I still am building my collection and currently sit at 74 games (I'm selling about 7 now and picking up 1 more so that will bring that number down to 68) which in the scheme of BGG, is actually on the lower end of the curve. General collection size sits around 100-150 for BGG users and that's about what I would like to hit with my collection size, but I'm still narrowing down what I want to include in it.

This took forever to find.

Initially, I thought that I wanted to go pure fantasy and science fiction with my collection. When I really started adding games to my collection, theme was king for me. I had played a copy of Magic Maze before the pandemic and absolutely loved it and I knew that I wanted to add it to my collection. I spent a year or so looking for a copy before I was able to get my hands on it and it still is one of my most favorite games to play when winding down at the end of a night. There was a slight fantasy bent to the game, but it also took place in a mall, which sorta fit my theming for my collection.

A few more games were added to my collection, including One Deck Dungeon and King of Tokyo which also hit the themes that I was building my collection with. My collection was growing slowly and I was adding things in that fit my general ideal of what I would like to have my collection built around, trending towards games that had, if not outright, a general bent to the theme that I was building my collection on. I was fairly happy with the collection and while it was growing slower than I would like, I was also picky about what I added.

Great cover and great game.

Then something weird happened to me. I found a game that I wanted that didn't have a fantasy or sci-fi bent to it: Welcome To.... I had explored the idea of flip and writes previously and since I didn't have anything in my collection like that, I wanted to get something in my collection. That's when I stumbled upon Welcome To... and realized how great of a game it was. I snatched up a copy that had all the expansions included in it (it was a resold Kickstarter bundle that I got super cheap) and I immediately fell in love with the game. It presented deep and clever mechanics, all while building on the theme of an old-style 1950's neighborhood. A theme that was distinctly outside my normal set of games.

This presented me with a conundrum: do I continue building my collection of games based around fantasy/sci-fi games or do I open up the collection to more genres? I tend to play things that allow me to escape, yet I had found an incredible game that was built on the idea of a 1950's neighborhood, like an old sitcom. I spent weeks talking with friends about this conundrum but I didn't have an answer to the question about what I should be building my collection around.

It was around this time that I really started being active here on BGG and I saw the slew of potential opportunities that were available for me to purchase games. It really opened up my eyes to everything that was out there and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I had been too narrow with my game collection building. There was so much more out there to experience and by limiting myself to a few genres, I had limited the potential to add some incredible games to my collection.

I was so happy this was restocked.

I began reading through recommendations here on BGG and even began seeking out specific games to play and try using the BGG rankings. I picked up Cascadia for my wife for Christmas (along with Flamecraft) and it ended up being an absolute hit for my wife and I. Despite there being some photorealistic animals on the game cards (which I'm usually not about), I found myself immersed in the puzzle-based nature of the game and I found myself playing game after game of it.

What really sealed the deal for me getting games outside my preferred genre was when I got the opportunity to play Heat: Pedal to the Metal at a local convention. It was a blast to play and I wouldn't have played it previously had it not been recommended here on BGG over and over again. I was a big fan of F1 racing and being able to play a game that was based on the 1961-1963 championships was actually really fun for me. I ended up searching everywhere for a copy of the game and it wasn't until it was restocked that I got my own copy of the game, but I'm so happy I did. I loved this game and love having it as part of my collection.

Funnily enough, when I mentioned that I wanted Heat, my friend Anthony, whom I've written about quite a bit on this blog as he and I play regularly together, gave me a skeptical look. He replied "Don't you usually get games that are sci-fi and fantasy related?" to which I affirmed that I usually did, but I was now willing to look outside those themes for other games. I'm so glad I did as I was able to find and play and acquire a game that is not only really fun to play solo, but also fun to play with others.

Final Thoughts

I'm still growing as a board game hobbyist, especially since I really only started heavily investing in games back in 2022-2023. My collection is smaller than most, but I'm carefully curating what I have as I know that I'm liable to fall into the trap of getting anything and everything that I see and get interested in. I'm taking time to think about themes and mechanics more since I've found that just because a game falls outside my preferred theme, it doesn't necessarily mean that I won't like it.

This whole experience has been a journey for me and I would like to say that I've grown significantly, even in the last year, and matured my tastes. No longer is the newest, shiny game that gets announced on BGG one that I need to have to my collection (Wyrmspan being a significant exception), and I'm finding that I'm more willing to look at games that previously released to see if I can find some hidden gems that I wasn't aware of.

Games are weird and wild as they can vary significantly from one another and there's so much out there to play. I'm so happy I got into this hobby when the board game genre is absolutely exploding in number of releases, but that can also be a bit daunting at first. My advice to new time hobbyists is this:

Find a genre that you like and get a few games in it. Build up your collection with a few games from that genre, finding and exploring mechanisms that you appreciate. Then explore outside that genre some and look into games that you wouldn't normally give a second thought to that have some of those mechanisms. With how vast and different games can be, you might find a game that hits the right notes and find a hidden gem that you weren't aware of before.

And if you don't like the game that you purchased or obtained? That's ok too. Games are meant to be fun and if you don't like them, it's ok to give it up. Sell that game and use that money to find something else. Exploration and experimentation are the basis of this hobby and your tastes will be different than others, so don't be afraid to not like something that everyone else does. This is your collection and you are the one in charge of it, so have fun with it.

Give your thoughts:What are your favorite genres and/or themes in a game that you like to have in your collection? Are there any games outside that theme that you'd pick up and add to your collection? What was the initial thought process when you started building your collection? Was it strategy game based or built around a specific mechanic? Built on a selection of party games that you played with friends? You were the only one in your group that played games so you wanted to find games that appealed to everyone?

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*Originally posted on BoardGameGeek on 19/6/2024*