Board games
What is there to do indoors over the winter with friends other than watch sports and eat food?
I’ve recently gone down a rabbit hole of looking at listings of boardgames on facebook marketplace, and gave a couple a try. After convincing a friend to print out custom organizer inserts (no more tiny plastic bags!) with a 3D printer, I was ready to digest the lengthy rulebooks and condense that into at 15 minute presentation.
After an always brutally slow and confusing first game where none of us have any idea what we are doing, each subsequent game you start to understand the game’s rules more and more, and how those lead to different strategies. I was surprised that board games could have so much depth, though I agree the more complex it is the heavier the initial investment is (and convincing others to have the same patience is a tall task). But there seems to be a certain feeling of in-real-life meetups and gameplay; touching the physical pieces, sifting through the cards that cant be replicated online.
Facebook marketplace is a great to look for used copies, which are often listed between 30-80% of MSRP. You just need a leap of faith that the seller included all the pieces.
For anyone interested, the games I bought that inspired this post were Ark Nova and Gaia Project.