The Brad Hole

It all started innocently enough a few weeks back. As I was drifting off to sleep one night, I had an unexplained flashback about a board game I played as a kid. It was such an out-of-the-blue memory that I had to look up the name of the game on the net. The game was Alfred Hitchcock's Why? The only thing I recalled with any detail was that the look and atmosphere of the game. The artwork gave off that old haunted house vibe, and I found myself wanting to play it again. So I did some surfing on eBay and placed a bid on one. This started a chain reaction of events.

In the next few days, I recalled more games that I used to play but didn't have - Stratego, Clue, Careers, and Kensington. eBay saw increasing use.

Then I racked my brain and remembered two more, long-forgotten. I couldn't remember the names or even a lot of details, but some detailed searching on BoardGameGeek.com brought results - Big Deal and Fat Chance. In hindsight, Fat Chance doesn't hold up, but Big Deal still interests me despite the incredibly tacky late-70's artwork. Who wouldn't want to get rich with Paint-On Socks or Kangaroo Airlines?

In the process of buying Stratego on eBay, I got a game called The Inventors as part of the bundle. We played it last weekend when Paul and Maureen were over and I thought it was a lot of fun. It combines Monopoly with elements of another favorite of mine, Masterpiece.

During this process, I've learned a few things.

1. Beth doesn't like Stratego.
2. The version of Careers I played as a kid (and not surprisingly the version I bought again on eBay) was an incredibly simplified variation. All the other releases were slightly more complicated, and it appears more fun as well.
3. Beth is very good at Careers.
4. Beth seems to beat me consistently at Skip-Bo as well, but her streak will soon end.
5. I enjoy playing board games more than video games, and infinitely more than first-person shooters with a war theme.

I'm toying with the idea of getting some of the more "hardcore" games that are ranked on BoardGameGeek.com. I've played Settlers before (about a billion times) as well as Tikal, and I've enjoyed both immensely. However, I've seen a lot of geeky board games that require a pretty fair time commitment, and/or have fairly complicated rules and setup. Ideally, anything I can play with Beth (or can easily play with non-board-game-geek friends) is what I'm aiming for. I have less-than-zero interest in dragging my ass to a comic book/game shop to sit around a table with hygenically challenged individuals.