Has it been a consistent hobby since childhood or was there a single game, a mechanism, theme or social situation which hooked you in?
I grew up with the Ravensburger box of classics so, board games were always a part of my childhood. They quickly captured my imagination and I began to draw roll and move boards, explaining to my mom what should happen on each space.
When I got older the whole family got into games and that turned into a nice sunday tradition.
Eventually I got sucked into BGG and never financially recovered…
As a kid I liked boardgames, but often I would have to play them alone and would play some of them on the PlayStation or similar. This basically started the transition of playing games on video consoles and later PC. Boardgames became a forgotten pastime and I raveled in the complexity of pc games for many years. I even disregarded boardgames because I thought they could not compete with the glory of PC games. Of course I was utterly wrong.
It all changed when I got Slay the Spire Early Access on PC and loved it. My gf also saw the game and liked it as well. We both thought its silly to play what in essence is a card game alone, on our own computers. So we venture to a local boardgame shop and told them that we play Slay the Spire and the lad, in his wisdom, suggested Dominion. What a great start it was! We played Dominion for like 9 months pretty much every evening before we thought it could use an addon. Soon more and more games and expansions entered our collection. Here we are, 5 years later and boardgames have become a very central part of our hobbies.
Ah that’s a great story, I had the same experience early on, got heavily into video games for a long time before wanting something more tactile and social. I enjoy Slay and Monster Train, maybe I should check out Dominion. I’m not very good at them…
If I start dating again, board games will be an essential requirement :D
I think Dominion is super great and has aged well. But if you want to take the deckbuilding to the next level you should check out Clank!