Journey to the Dark Side has begun!

What can I say? I love games! Always have. Back in the day my pop and I would play Risk, Axis & Allies and Fortress America (I love that game!) When we were a lot younger (and shorter on children) my wifey and I would play roleplaying games, card games and board games all the time. Now as a daddy and a worker-bot I miss those fun times so very much. We just never seem to have enough time to sit down and play those great games from our youth...

In an effort to get my wife back into gaming (or at the very least to letting me push little plastic heroscape pieces around a board with her) I decided to "trick her" into the fun. I did some diligent reseach into terms like "gateway games" and "spouse approved games" to find just the right sneaky kind of games that are both fun enough and interesting enough to creep up on you and get you wanting to try even more games... sort of like crack for gamers haha!

What I ended up deciding on was 2 games: Ticket to Ride and Lost Cities, both of which I grabbed from a great online store called Thought Hammer that offers 35% off on board and card games (no I'm not an affiliate, but I really was impressed by thier speedy service, large selection and low prices)

Ticket to Ride has got to be hands down the perfect game for suckering in non-gamers or just casual gamers.



It's a fun board game where you plunk down rows of colorful plastic trains all across the Umited State. It has pretty simple rules and though it says ages 10 and up, my six year old had no problem catching on to laying down sets of cards and putting his trains on the board (albiet he missed the finer details of connecting long routes together, but he did understand the basics and more importantly he had a lot of fun doing it!). I highly recommend it as a family game. It seems very insidious too because I can see you developing lots of strategy as you play the game more and more (you could gobble up lots of short routes, go for super long routes, focus on connecting lots of destinations, block your competition out, etc. etc.)

All in all a great game and my wife who initially thought she wouldn't like it at all insisted on playing twice and I can see the glimmer in her eye for a future rematch (since I won the second game we played hehe ;)

Lost Cities on the other hand is a 2 player card game about archeological expeditions. I have read from many other guy gamers that it's the perfect game for playing with your wife or girlfriend and that they get quite good at it so watch out!



Sadly we didn't have time to try it out tonight, but I'm sure it will be fun to play as well.

Hopefully these games will lead not only to more family game nights for all of us, but also to more elaborate and interesting games to play like Carcassone, Alhambra & Settlers of Catan and maybe into the really neato stuff with lots of little plastic monster and character pieces like Runebound, Arkham Horror & Twilight Empire. Oh and of course maybe back to my old love roleplaying (Hey killing orcs, zombies and dragons is fun too! Honest! ;)