The Beginning

My name is Jason Chun and I wanted to create a blog about my board gaming experiences. Even though I may have limited experiences compared to others in the hobby due to the fact that I enjoy doing may things, one of the things I enjoy doing is playing board games and I wanted to share some of my thoughts and experiences with you through the form of writing and images. Through this blog I would like to share with you my joys and frustrations, thoughts, opinions and the hours I spend board gaming. What I enjoy about board games are the strategies involved and how mechanisms and components work together to create an idea, along with the bonds that you can create with your other fellow gamers. I would hope that reading this may encourage you to enter the world of what I would consider an exciting hobby or just entertain your mind as you see what unfolds.

Before I begin, I would first like to share my background in board gaming to show my previous experiences why I might make certain choices. I grew up playing Monopoly, Clue, Risk, Stratego, Chess and Checkers. These board games are your standard American board games that lots of people know. While I didn’t play a lot, I knew how to play them and they were fun. I remember playing clue one Halloween night with my parents, Aunty and Uncle. On one birthday my parents got me Hero Quest. I played a few quest with my mom being the DM but it was too complicated and soon fell off for other things.

My parents liked playing cards and we played a lot of Cribbage and Trumps. During high school in my ninth grade year, I got introduced to Magic: The Gathering. I was hooked! For the next four years I played lots of Magic. This introduced me to the Customizeable Card Game boom a few years later and got into Original Netrunner, BattleTech, OverPower, Pokemon, Middle Earth and many others. In my Senior year of high school, I played Axis and Allies a few times, was doing Battle Tech Miniatures, Dungeons and Dragons, Rifts and Star Wars Role Playing Game.

I then moved away for college and basically fell out of the gaming hobby. I played Magic here and there, but never really played many board games. I started to get back into Cribbage, started to play a lot of Texas Hold Em Poker, pool and darts. This is what I would consider my dark ages of board games. But, it was a time when I was introduced to what is now considered the modern age of board games. I would visit some of my original gaming group that I kept in contact with on occasion and got introduced to Munchkin, Guillotine and Talisman.

In 2012 I found myself wanting to go into a board gaming cafe that opened up in my local area. I entered a Magic 2012 Core Pre-Release Sealed Tournament and it was really fun. I found out they had a board game night and decided to try it out. I don’t remember what I played then but that was really fun too. I went back occasionally for the next few years. During this later time I was enticed to play this odd card game. It looked fun. I played it once and I was hooked! I think my extensive Magic background was what drew me to this game. Some board game mechanic called deck building. Dominion now remains one of my favorite games of all time! In 2014 I was at this same local gaming store and saw something really cool on the table. They were little Star Wars ships. I was a star wars fanatic growing up. What is this game where you can move an X-Wing, tie fighters, A-Wings, B-Wings and the Falcon around the board? Did you have to paint them. The answer was no! They came pre-painted. WHAT! Another one of my favorite games, X-Wing Miniatures.

After this, I started going back to this board game cafe on a more regular basis playing this new age of games. While I don’t play board games as much as others because I have so many hobbies, I would say I play more games then others. I also seem to tend to play the same games over and over and over again so I don’t get to play all the new hotness all the time. There are many games that are fairly popular that I have not played. I am willing to try any game but tend to drift toward family to mid weight games lasting an hourish or so with strategy. I would also like to dive deeper into games that seem interesting and would rather play a game multiple times rather then play lots of games just once.

Thanks for listening and hope you come back for more of what I think about board games and how they can expand the mind.