Everybody Wants To Rule the World

When I was 14 years old, my parents bought me a 15′ travel trailer and parked it in the back yard of our house.  This may seem like a bit of extravagance, and it probably was, but there were a number of factors that made this a win-win situation for the entire family.  My brother was battling mental illness and having friends in the house was becoming complicated.  It gave me a place to escape the realities of our troubled household and provided a place to hang out with friends.

That little camper was definitely not a palace.  It was an old (1973 model) trailer in need of some TLC.  The bathroom didn’t work.  The floor had some soft spots.  My friends and I were in charge of any and all renovations, so we alternated trailer repairs with gaming.  We replaced parts of the flooring and even added carpet, which we promptly stained red while painting miniatures one day.  Three of us practically lived in that trailer during summers.  It was only a few steps from the back door of my house, so we could duck into a bathroom just inside that door and get back to gaming.  We even had a jar just inside the door that we dropped all of our spare change into whenever we entered.  We considered it dues for gaming there.  If you came into the trailer, you dropped some change into the jar.  The proceeds paid for repairs and renovations, food and drinks and even purchased many Dungeons & Dragons books.

That trailer was our “man cave” before anyone ever used the term “man cave” and served us until I left for college.  We had a television for watching late night horror movies.  We had plenty of room to sleep, even while a game was going on up front.  Anytime during the summer, you could count on finding some sort of game happening in the trailer, whether it was D&D, wargames with miniatures (we made up our own rules), or one of our epic 4 or 5 day games of Risk.

If you’ve never played Risk, you’ve probably never heard of Kamchatka.  If you’ve played, you know exactly where that is and exactly why it’s so important to hold late in the game.  And yes, our games often lasted as long as 4-5 days.  We just left the board set up on the trailer’s dinette table.  We’d forego folding it down into sleeping quarters and instead use the 2 bunks in back and maybe even the floor to allow the game to stay intact.  Along with The Dark Tower and Dungeon, Risk was one of our favorite board games.  Since my trailer days, I haven’t played as many board games.  Most of my gaming time has been spent with rpg’s and video games since then, but I miss playing them.  I still own a copy of Dungeon, and several other games, but the only Risk I own is the Lord of the Rings edition.  Last year, some friends of ours brought over Carcassone.  We had a lot of fun playing it, but those friends, some of the only ones we know of that like boardgames, live in another state (Pennsylvania), so we don’t get to play very often.

Here is where you come into play, faithful readers.  Do you play boardgames?  If so, what are some of your favorites?  Why should I play them?

1…2…3…GO!