Out of left field

Last Wednesday was board game night at the Monkey Den.  Faithful readers may recall that, last time, we played Nexus Ops.  Now, Nexus Ops is a strong game.  It is manly.  It is as American as a huge cheeseburger.  You are made palpably heartier for having played it.

We did not play Nexus Ops last week.  We went in a slightly different direction.

I know ... I'm as surprised as you are.

Here's how it happened.  One of the guys, the newest Monkey in fact, had been saying for a while that he was going to buy The 'Gric.  He'd played it a bunch before he moved away from his old town, and he really liked it.  Being a man of open mind, I agreed to give it a shot ... once.

My thought process was something like this:  Every single thing I knew about the game led me to believe playing would be a kind of slow torture.  Seriously, actual subsistence farming sounded like more fun to me than this game.  But, what the hell, I figured.  I can sit through one play, right?  Then, I can at least say that I've done it.  In the future, when I sneer in scorn at it, that scorn will be marginally less ill informed than my normal scorn.

So we played.  And I cannot tell you how much I'd love to say that my unerring(!) instincts were right on target again(!).  Really, I would love that.  I'd love it so much that there's at least a 50-50 chance that I'll come back later and edit this post into one big 'Gric-hating, face-saving lie.  But, that's what it would be, a lie.  For you see, friends, I did not hate it.

I loved it.

I am flabbergasted by that, but what are you going to do?  I don't remember the last time I thought about a game so much in the days following my first exposure to it.  It is a brilliant gaming experience.  It is remarkably easy to pick up.  It moves quickly.  It offers interesting choices.  It is -- and I can't believe I'm saying this -- fun.  I didn't think euros were supposed to be fun?  Maybe we were doing it wrong.

So, I've said it, and I'm not ashamed of it (much).  It's not like I'm going to start selling my lead and plastic to buy tweed jackets and a pipe or whatever.  But I've got some things to think about, that's for sure.