10 Board Games That Got Us Into The Hobby

hi everyone my name is monique and i'm davine from before you play and today we are doing something a little bit different this is our first top 10 video i think right it's not truly a top 10 but we'll explain a little bit more yes this is 10 board games that got us into the hobby yes and how we feel about them now so we're going to kind of throw that in like a look back yeah yeah so this came as a result of uh so many of you who have emailed us or left comments on our videos introducing ourselves and explaining how you got into the hobby which we really enjoy reading by the way uh and so we figured that you know we've never introduced ourselves over the past year so this would be a good time to kind of explain how we ourselves got into the hobby right yeah it's a good idea so this this is not a top 10 technically because uh we're not really ranking them in any order it's more chronological order this is also not top 10 gateway games because it's not necessarily our favorite games that it's just what we were exposed to when we were exposed to yeah what kind of uh dragged us in into this this hobby we are splitting up the list i have five naveen has five and we're gonna kind of go back and forth and just kind of explain it uh but before we get started i do want to mention some honorable mentions because um for those of you who are wondering yes we are married we've celebrated our three years recently and uh before we actually met i'd been playing a few board games that i didn't even know were a part of this huge hobby so i do want to just kind of mention them so my honorable mentions are bang the card game if you are familiar with that game the card game not the dice the card game the aggressive game that makes you lose your friends because uh we used to play that in high school you know we never even questioned the fact that this was like a card game that was different than any of the other classic games yeah for some reason we knew it so in high school we would play that game me and my best friends and and until we weren't friends anymore that night they would play it again the next day and so that that's a game that we play a lot another one for me was killer bunnies that was a huge one if any of you are familiar with that game our group was obsessed with that game we had every expansion and uh i still have it actually it's a big big it's in a big bin yeah but we don't play it anymore because it's just a ton of luck and we didn't realize it back then we just thought it was just so much fun yeah and my last one uh was dominion and so my one of my best friends who i've known since like kindergarten he is actually the one that introduced me to all these games he's the one who introduced us to a lot of the games that we're gonna mention that's true yeah yeah and so he introduced me to dominion online there was like there's like an on there's a website where you can play like with all the expansions and i thought like wow somebody just made this online game and it's amazing like not realizing it was not realistic yeah exactly it's like a card game with all these boxes of expansions that you have to like shuffle yourself but we used to play that like all the time um and so these three games were kind of what kept me interested in board gaming and this was all before we even met do you have any honorable mentions i do but i'm going to be stoned through the streets if i mention these games but i will mention these games monopoly [Laughter] sorry trouble like those kind of games shoots and ladders when i was a kid so they toots and letters yeah totally we that's cute we had a bunch of these games candyland so when i was a kid we had a big stack of like your milton bradley like those you know old school uh games that everyone kind of grew up with um then as i got older you know i i wasn't playing games anymore and then when our friend did reintroduce us to games because i think i had that foundational childhood memory of playing games you were into it like it was easier for me to springboard than if somebody you know that has never played games right you know and naveen is also uh what you like play poker yeah it's like a lot of texas hold them yeah plays a lot of like uh standard card games so that is those are our um honorable mentions and i don't play any of those three today i would still play dominion like that's a solid deck builder but uh i just don't yeah yeah so let's get into our list so i have five you have five yeah um i'm probably going to go first sure because um talk about chronological order yeah phonologically i have like the earliest game so the first game on my list is munchkin that's what honorable mention it's also kind of about mention because the first time i played munchkin was before i met him sure yeah and uh the same friend introduced me to munchkin and he had picked it up from like uh barnes noble or something and he was like there's this amazing game where you go through a dungeon and you fight you know whatever i don't remember how to play anymore and and you can like ask each other for help and when he introduced it to me i thought it was the greatest game ever i went online and looked for all of the holiday expansion packs just to have like the cute cards and um after we met yeah i forced naveen to play the adventure time adventure time one yes version making bacon pancakes yeah yeah and so yeah so that was one of the another kind of early one that that got us interested uh how do i feel about that today well i had this box full of these expansions that i was mentioning and i tried my best to get rid of it so aggressively because you know once you start like playing more games in the hobby you start realizing that you're no longer interested in those games and so i don't play munchkin anymore but it did serve a nice uh spot in my life and we did give it to somebody else who's now enjoying that game yeah ideally they they're enjoying it and has passed it on to somebody else and that is part of the the joy of this hobby right like if you once you're kind of over a game you give to somebody and they re discover it and it becomes something happy for them maybe it's their gateway now that is what happened with munchkin your turn okay sure uh so this is a little bit out of order just so that we can have like this ping pong back and forth otherwise monique would say four things in a row uh but for me it was splendor so splendor was my true gateway game i would say um same friend brought it out before we were gonna go on a vacation together he brought it down and sat me down and we basically played a three-player game of it and i was like what the heck is this this is not like roll a die move and see what happened the artwork the the tactic uh the artwork sold you oh yeah yeah i like like this is not like you know cartoonish like uh sliding up and down a ladder or yeah you know so uh the chips you know just like that feeling those chips and strategizing and everything that i still like that game a lot we still have it in our collection splendor is something that i know has kind of gotten heat over the years uh just because it was such a popular game whenever there's a popular game they're going to be people aggressively on both sides that's not a game so why yeah it is a game what do you mean we actually still really enjoy it yeah it's it's here somewhere um and fun fact this is a very fun fact naveen is a champion a splendor that's why i have to defend it one day to validate my championship i think it was on an international tabletop day yeah yeah we entered a uh a splendor tournament and oh gosh i don't even know why i entered because it's like you have to play like four straight games of it and then it's like you know tournament style and whoever kind of wins in the brackets wins like the grand prize which was this like glorious play play mat yeah which we didn't have which we didn't have the time so we entered and the best moment was when they were announcing the winners naveen just happened to be in the bathroom washing his hands and so he didn't know that this was going on but right when they were like and the grand prize winner naveen he like just comes out of the bathroom everyone starts clapping and it's this like amazing moment when they've been just walking through oh my god like i had no idea i'm the splendor winner i had no idea yeah so anyway fun fact i knew i won that one because i didn't lose a game yeah i won every single game we played yeah anyway that's splendor that's why i defended splendor yeah because i won but splendor it was definitely one of the earlier games that aggressively got us interested in more next up we have and this is a game that's probably a little bit before splendor uh seven wonders so this is a game that's i think a lot of people a lot of people um consider it one of the games that got them into the hobby all right and so the same friend came over went just assume it's the same dude every single time this guy we've been best friends since we were like three or four so he he spent thanksgiving with my family and i one year and he brought over this game and with his partner and so the three of us played it and i thought like wow this game is amazing and at the time i had only known dominion and i was playing dominion online so after he left i remember calling naveen because we didn't spend thanksgiving together yet and thinking like where can i play this online because there are places where i can find it online and at the time there was no i don't think like board game arena or like all those other websites were like actively um just our knowledge base of resources and board gaming we didn't even know about bgg at the time yeah that's true we didn't know bdd so i could obviously i couldn't find it online uh but that that game like really stuck with us it's funny because um that same friend came over again a few months later and we played it together and we totally we really struggled with the rules in seven wonders like so the top left is what and the bottom is what you get right okay i think i get it and then like two rounds later so i pay the bottom like this is like constantly going on if you ever feel bad about not being able to understand how to play the sort of game just remember that we struggled with seven wonders and then the whole nate buying from your neighbor it's like oh yeah i can buy from you such a strange concept for it i don't get it how do you feel about it now so it was in our collection for a long time we had a couple expansions and then we sold it or we moved on from it because it doesn't play it too and we had seven wonders duel or we have some understanding we were like let's it's a big box let's just give it to somebody who will play it yeah i think we had like this kind of like gateway mentality with it and then uh we have it back in our collection it came back it came back a boomerang so so we have it and uh it's a very good game what can i say it's been it's been reprinted and re i think they they like upped some of the artwork recently like in the past year it's weird it's like it's one of those games that if somebody suggests it you're probably not gonna be like yes i'll play it but if it's like you find yourself in the situation of playing it you're gonna find yourself enjoying it yeah you know right right uh and so if you ever kind of get stale with seven wonders look up the rules for seven blunders that's another way of playing it exactly gets the the lowest number of points and you uh the next one for me is a ticket to ride yeah base ticket to ride right my first train game yeah uh that that came yeah i think that was that's right it came like right after seven wonders i think it was we played seven wonders and then we were like one day we were like let's go and try to buy a new board game yeah yeah i don't know how we discovered it but but yeah so that that was a game that we found ourselves playing a lot um just the base map and then we actually bought some expansion maps i never played them and never played them because we were now starting to to get into the hobby you know yeah but ticket to ride was a game that lasted a while for us uh we kept it in our collection after a while mainly for when other people come over because it really is like the perfect game to teach people who don't play games because it's so kind of easy to get into and they end up more often than not enjoying it so naveen got kind of tired of it before i did yeah and we had decided to get rid of it because at this point we had started getting more games and more strategic games and just right fun factor-wise and it's just after a while you get kind of not tired of a game but like i know that's what you guys just gotta move on move on from the game from them so that's a game that i would still play if people like really really wanted to play them especially some of the uh newer iterations of it because they kind of switch up how the gameplay works um how about you yeah i i i would play it yeah i wouldn't say no i think it's like very few games that would be like i will not play that's true yeah that is true okay so next up for me is um a lovely game called smash up smash up was gosh i really fell in love with that game same friend introduced it to us and uh i made everybody play it like i did i did i'm kind of embarrassed about it now because why i was just so aggressive about that game every anytime anybody came over and my sister my sister has been so kind to us in board gaming because she doesn't really enjoy board games as much as we do but anytime she'd come over she'd say i know you want to play a board game so let's just pull out smash up and i wanted to have every expansion for it if you're not familiar with it it's a game that you can kind of uh you take a faction and your faction has its own deck you take two different factions oh yeah that's right you take two different factions you mix them together and now you have like ninja ghosts or like fairy dragons i don't know i don't know remember that yeah i think ninja ghost is a thing and then uh based off of the factions that you use they have their own kind of personalities when you mix in the deck and you're trying to take daddy games it's very yeah well you're just trying to score the bases by putting your cards in these areas in a variety of ways but i really loved it for a long time i was like i'm going to get the big geeky box i'm going to put all the expansions in it and then one day i just was over it that was the end that was the end before we were able to acquire the big geeky box i yeah i enjoyed my plays of it uh but i think that was one that again i think i was kind of over it before yeah yeah i would i kept bringing it out every chance i could get so uh that was smash up uh okay so the next one for me is a game it's a little card game called just desserts it is a super basic card game now that i am way deeper in the hobby uh but i picked this up at my very first international tabletop game that's right uh day and we went to our local gaming store here uh in fullerton california and um just grabbed a random thing i think it was like eight bucks i was like all right let's just let's just buy this game is like i like desserts yeah i like desserts okay let's let's get it read the back i was like yeah okay let's play it so it's basically a game where uh you have these people and and these people all have these certain uh desserts that they like and you have to gather these ingredients so it's you're basically uh collecting resources to satisfy these different desserts are they even customers they're customers customers come to the table and you have a hand of like food cards and you're trying to satisfy as many of the guests that you can right and it's like if you have uh each customer is like a different type of favorite or something so if you have like one of each type you win something like that yeah it's like very dependent on which desserts you draw there's like very little strategy but he loved i did love it for a very long time it's like we have friends over we just had dinner let's play just desserts yeah yeah so that was it um yeah we went it's no longer in our collection it's yeah it's another game that has now moved on to another home right so it's not going to get a filler friday coverage but if you're interested and that sounds fun look up just desserts yeah it's out there all right so we are kind of chugging along here the next one for me oh this is a good one the next one for me is the downfall of pompeii so this this is like shortly after we got just desserts we kept on going to that specific store i think is because of that like this store has got the good stuff they had just desserts yeah so let's keep going back there and see what they got this week yeah not realizing actually that we have our own local gaming store that's like much closer we kept on going to that one and uh they're very nice people over there so they have they had a demo they have a demo table where you can kind of pick out a game and just play it and naveen is a fan of like you know that like kind of euro-y artwork on games that people might consider to be a little bit dry if if it's a box that somebody else would pass on i'd probably pick it up and read it it catches his eye he just loves the boring boxes or like the the the art style that looks kind of dated i want to see it like i want to know what this is yes yeah i don't know why downfall pompey caught his eye for that reason and we set it up it had this volcano and if you're not familiar with the game you're basically trying to fill pompeii with people with these cards and then at some point the volcano is going to explode as it did and you're trying to get as many of your people out before the volcano gets you and there's some take that because uh whoever draws like the volcano chits can choose which people which way the lava flows yeah which way the lava flows within reason yes and so we played that game at this at that store and immediately bought it yeah we were like hooked and we brought it home and for the next like three days every day we would play it like back to back yeah twice a day twice a day for the next three days uh so we were really hooked by that game if you haven't played that game it's i think that that game probably stands the test of time it's not like other games up to this point i haven't really played a game that's quite like that one yeah because in board gaming there's a lot of games that's like oh yeah i really like that game and now this new one came out improved on this one so that means this one is now kind of obvious absolutely exactly but that one just fills its own little bubble yeah yeah so we still have it we still have it see dated art style but fantastic gameplay you know it's it was that it was more the title that drew me in when we were going up and down and just looking at everything downfall of pom pom i mean now i look at it artwork is actually yeah pretty good it is good but can you escape the inferno good question that is a game that is still in our collection we haven't played it in a while but maybe we will play today yeah it's really fun now that it's out maybe today yeah okay the next one for me is the social deduction game called one night ultimate werewolf have you heard of it we clearly still have it in our possession um do we play it still that's the question do we still play it though um not so much this is if you're not familiar with it oh yeah it is a social deduction game it's very very popular so if you are really into the hobby chances are you've at least heard of it and it's a game where it's pretty much like mafia if you're familiar with that game but everybody has a role and everybody goes to bed there's like a narrator on the phone and they tell you kind of what you do if you're the robber you can switch out your identity with somebody else and you don't want to be the werewolf because after everybody wakes up everybody the villagers job is to try to figure out who the werewolves are right it's not so much that you don't want to be the werewolf it's if you're the werewolf you want to make sure that they at the very end of the game when there's an accusation as to who the werewolves are you want to get the onus off of you that's absolutely right that's what it's all about there are people out there who love being yeah i like being the werewolf i was projecting because totally projecting so uh naveen's right after the timer is up everybody casts a vote and if you're the villagers you want to blame the werewolf you want to actually find it identify who it is one of the werewolves and if you're a werewolf you want to have everybody be pointing at a villager you want to convince the whole group that somebody else is wearable we would have like six or seven people together playing it and just constantly playing it so we are one of those gamers who fell in love with this game uh it's just such a good we brought it to like your family gatherings yeah and got his cousins his younger cousins hooked up yeah they love it we've gifted it to people and people always kind of love it it's just a really fun way to break the ice too so like if you are maybe i have like a work gathering or a meeting and nobody knows each other you play this game and now everybody's friends yeah right yeah so do we play it that much anymore um even pre-coveted you know i think we were kind of stop stop playing this i like the game yeah for some reason for me you know i'll play like two rounds and after two rounds i'm kind of like ready to move on to the next game or something like that you know what i mean like so i'm still willing to play it it's just i don't know if i want to do those like sessions right you know those long sessions like we would seriously play this for like two hours back to back to back yeah um i'm in the same boat i still really enjoy it but up to a up to a certain extent and then we move on all right so my last was truly the one that uh kicked off the rest of it for me okay at least specifically for me and so if because we haven't really been doing a good job as telling you where we are in the timeline we we actually started like truly diving into board games in 2015 and the reason why was because i was in my master's program and i had just finished i graduated 2015 and i had to study for my boards exam and i was so stressed out i had moved down to southern california and i didn't really have any friends outside of like my classmates so naveen was like you need to go make some friends so i discovered meetup.com and like the easiest way to like find people was through board games like they have an actual board game section meetup where you can find like groups that are gathering i found a group and i made some friends in that group and somebody introduced me to this game which is star realms and so if you're not familiar with star realms it is a i i think it plays more than two but we only played does it play more i think it's intended to be like a two-player game but you can play it with four can you see we've never played it with more than two but it shines at two and it is a deck builder i guess i should mention that it's themed in space so there are like spaceships and stuff stations yeah and your goal is to try to deplete your opponent's life i think everybody starts at like a life of 50 and you're attacking your opponent and every time you attack their life goes down a certain amount depending on the cards that you're playing there's like defense you can get stronger attacks things like that yeah and as soon as your opponent loses all their lives you win and i was hooked on that game she would kill me at that time she would win 10 out of 10. i was just like i i can't beat you in this game so nobody wasn't a fan i was ready to move on well to be fair naveen doesn't really like deck builders as much as i do yeah that mechanism for some reason is just not my favorite he's always like so then you reshuffle your hand and that's that's it you keep on going and keep reaching i'm just not good in deck builders like now i think now you know five years after that i understand you got to get rid of that little onecoin card that thing's just clogging your deck but like for some reason i'd be like but what if i need that one coin you know like so i would not you know oust cars he doesn't like he likes the whole he's a hoarder not in real life but he's a card hoarder he doesn't like yeah so for me star realms kind of i played that so much i told everybody about it um but unfortunately we don't own it anymore i think it was more because naveen was kind of over it and weird it wasn't getting played it's the theme here naveen's over james before you to be fair i feel like in every household where there's like a couple dynamic if one person is not into a certain game then it's just not going to get played right yeah i think a lot of people can kind of relate to that yeah that was my last one what about you okay the final one it was this is the one that really i mean splendor really did get me but yeah i would say of the entire list splendor was one that was naveen was really really into into but mine is pandemic yeah endemic yeah bass pandemic standard the problem solving i like co-op games i know there's a lot of people out there like iffy about co-ops i love them oh and i mean love probably because of people like me you don't like them quarterbacking like you should do this you should do that i'm sorry i'm that guy any kind of quarterback you don't correct that i'm like you should probably do that if you'd like to do that i mean we've played a few co-ops on our channel so i don't know maybe you can tell us if he's a quarterbacker but i don't feel like like that i think he just has sound reason we just like to work together i do like to work he's a team player team players played sports growing up so i just like that idea like team um and so yeah pandemic is one of my favorite games uh introduced by the same friend introduced by the same friend yeah you'll see him one day he's amazing but he uh he was like yeah you guys are healthcare professionals and so is he actually so he was like you might you might enjoy this one because it's about curing disease all over the world all over the world yeah um so we we actually purchased that one without trying it yeah just like it's like everything he's he's told us is good let's just get it yeah and for a very long time we were playing it incorrectly yeah what were we doing wrong i think we did it we eradicated the disease in a way that you're not supposed to it's like if you start the game without a disease on the board you eradicate it yeah we were eradicating diseases incorrectly yeah and so we were just making it so much easier for ourselves so but we were really in love with that game that that was a one that we play all the time so do you play it now the bass game well we don't have it anymore but because we do like the uh what are those called the legacy games yeah the legacy games we've we've played all the way through season one love that one uh we won't talk anything about it uh we are in the middle of season two right now we've been in the middle of season two for like a year and a half yeah uh it's hard with the legacy games because once you stop it's like wait what happened in those first few months we need to kind of re refresh on the story that time to go back and refresh for some reason it's very daunting but i know the second we get into it we're gonna be into it yeah so especially now that pandemic legacy season zero is coming out so um we need to finish that at some point but for that reason we don't have base pandemic anymore because we could probably just pull out legacy and play it as base as base yeah and also because in playing pandemic legacy you you play the game at least 12 times over and over again so we don't really play anymore but that is those are 10 games more than 10 games actually that got us into the hobby yeah um after that uh i started going to conventions before naveen did mm-hmm and local conventions local conventions yeah we have our local convention here that's it's really uh really kind of amazing if you're in southern california area it's called strategicon but i started going in and then naveen started following after yeah i would go for like like so it would be like a three or four day uh thing i would go for just a day yeah he was like i don't know the whole weekend i don't know if i can go a whole week yeah and now he nowadays he's like oh the convention's coming up we should book a hotel room we should take friday off you know so usually into them now but those are what what is the game that got you into heavy gaming that's a good question goa yeah this is a bonus a game called goa so goa is a rudiger door game uh i have the game that i'm talking about this is goa this is like i said a rudiger jordan game i think this came out like in 2004 or something like see that artwork yeah yes well somebody had suggested this at a convention yeah and they sat me down and they taught it and we played a four player game and this is a game that you know after talking about all these other ones the level of thinking and like what you're doing the player interaction um really elevated reach new heights it reached new heights and this after playing this game is where i was like wow there's there's a lot more uh out there in terms of board gaming like this whole culture of board gaming and so this one is like super out of print so this is staying in the collection for a very very very very long time i remember he tried this on that one day that he was at a convention and then after that was when he really took a deep dive into board games so this is a really good one the game that got me into heavy gaming was kanban so you know about all i love for listerine games but that is it those are more than 10 games that got us into the hobby uh it is five years later we are still going strong i don't really see this hobby kind of dying out for us so um and i think i'm sure a lot of you can relate but for anybody who who hasn't emailed us or commented we would love to hear your story uh how what got you into gaming what were your favorite games that really kind of like secured this hobby for you please share in the comments below or send us an email we would love to hear your thoughts but thank you guys so much for watching the video we hope you enjoyed it like monique said please let us know in the comments below what are the games that kind of got you trapped in the hobby trapped and uh if you want to see more videos like this please consider subscribing thank [Music] you [Music] you

Channel: Before You Play

Views: 52,258

Rating: 4.9182057 out of 5

Keywords: top 10 board games, gateway games, board games, top board games, best board games, munchkin, splendor, 7 wonders, ticket to ride, smash up, the downfall of pompeii, star realms, just desserts, pandemic board game, killer bunnies, killer bunnies and the quest for the magic carrot, goa, kanban board game, one night ultimate werewolf, board game, easy board games to learn

Id: tv-wGkiro_g

Length: 29min 14sec (1754 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 31 2020