Get Your Geek On

I've been in New York for a little more than two months now and so far I've had a wonderful time. It's not even so much everything that I've had a chance to do, it's knowing that I have the opportunity to do them that makes it so exciting. One thing that I haven't really had the chance to do is to explore my more personal places of interest. Yesterday, I left the house at around 1pm and went to Midtown to the Compleat Strategist, a boardgame store on 33rd street between 5th and Madison avenues. I love games, both cardgames and board games- I love the Game of Life family style games, the Taboo party style games, I love every kind of card game you can imagine, and most importantly for this blog post, the Avalon Hill/Rio Grande geeky strategy style boardgames that cost a whole bunch of money and have rulebooks the size of biology textbook and just as dense.
It's pretty easy to find people to play the first two kinds of games with. The Game of Life and others like it are fun because there isn't much thinking involved. Since everything is up to complete chance, the competition is good natured and it's easy to laugh when a tree falls on your house and you don't have any insurance. Games like Taboo are more competitive, but the rules to those kind of games are usually straight forward so it's easy to explain; tons of people can play it and it's a great way to break the ice or get people laughing. Card games are ingrained at a young age, whether it be pass the time style games like war, family reunion games like spades, or heavily strategic games like poker. The rules to some cardgames can be quite involved, particularly for a beginner, but because they are so much a part of our culture, people proactively want to learn as to not be left out. That and a pack of cards costs a few bucks at the most.
For some reason that I can't quite put my finger on though, I have a hard time finding people who are willing to play the geek strategy games with me. Most of the games in the Compleat Strategist and on sites like boardgamegeek.com revolve around war (World War I and II and the Civil War being the most common, but there are also games for the Spanish American war, the Napoleonic Wars, and the Korean War) or allocating resources for a stated objective (colonizing alien worlds, exploiting Puerto Rico's natural resources etc.). They take a pretty big investment both monetarily and timewise in order to enjoy them, not to mention being able to find friends willing to learn how to play as well.
And, you know, they're pretty geeky. I mean really geeky. You ever met someone who participates in reenactments of the Civil War- yeah it's that geeky. It's for the type of person who is not only interested in Robert E. Lee's lost orders from the Battle of Antietam, but whose idea of a fun Saturday afternoon is sitting at a table with likeminded nerds and recreating that very battle. On a 16x16 cardboard cutout with miniature soldiers, miniature supply units, a strategy book, and a pair of 12-sided die to add a little luck to the proceedings. Strange as it sounds, there just aren't that many people per capita who want to engage in such an activity. So, although I have harbored my love for stategy boardgames my entire life, I've only played those kind of games with my brother and haven't really had a chance to explore the vastness of this admittedly pretty narrow world in full.
Even though per capita there aren't that many people who are interested in strategy boardgames,, they do exist. And not only do they exist, everybody knows someone who enjoys them. Besides being the reenactors, they're the kid who enjoys reading those serial sci-fi books. The teenagers who goes outside with their fake sword and shield and plays roleplaying games with his friends. There were always opportunities for me to join a group that enjoyed those kinds of games but I never did. I felt that that world, that group, was always shut off to me. If Taboo and the Game of Life are games that are expansive and inclusive, strategy games are inward looking and exclusive. The group of people that play them are as insular as they can possibly be. The reason I felt I was shut off is not because the people themselves were intentionally exlusionary, but because their focus was.
Think about the people I described above. Most likely, they were exluded from a lot of activities and a lot of social groups growing up, either because of their appearance or because of their interests. Generally speaking, when you are an outcast, you have three options: you can change yourself and try and get in to the "in-group" with mixed results, you can stay the same and try and get in to the "in-group" with predicatble results, or you can be like fuck the "in-group" and form your own group, a group of outcasts with some shared interests. When you do the latter though, in most cases you have to go all-in, there ain't no half-steppin in that regard, particularly when you are young. That makes crossover hard in both directions, from out-to-in and in-to-out. It also means that for someone who is not in said "out-group," there is no connection for a friendship except the strategy game, and part of the fun of any game is the shared experience of friendship beyond what is being played on the table. It's the reason me and my brother are so good at "Catch Phrase," because the words from any of the categories conjures up some memory. A memory so fresh that the connecting word comes up in an instant, a memory so obscure that we're the only ones who know. This is certainly not true for all strategy game geeks, but I believe that it'd be hard to talk about the Brewers untimely collapse, or the ridiculous asses on BET Uncut, or remembering the guilty pleasure of old WB shows, with the people I met at the Compleat Strategist or any other boardgame shop like that. I could be wrong, I hope that I am. Until I find out though, here's a listing of the nerd games me and my brother use to play. If they sound interesting to you and you also like sports, scantilly clad women, and underground hip-hop, hit me up.

Cosmic Encounter- Each player is an alien race with a special power that can help bend or break a rule of the game. The objective is to colonize 5 other planets through battles, alliances, etc. Very fun game, excellent craftsmaship, particularly the alien cards. Lots of fun, and not too complicated either.
Red Storm Rising- Late Cold War era game. Sequel to The Hunt For Red October. You are either the Soviets or US- the game is based around a Warsaw Pact invasion of Germany. The objective is of course to win the war. Game play is mostly tank units, but you can add aerial combat and chemical and tactical nuclear weapons. Me and my brother had been living with my grandfather when we were engaged in a particularly fierce game. We came home to find that my uncle had brought back some woman who also brought her kids. While my uncle and his lady friend were busy, the lady's kids decide to destroy our game, dropping the pieces in the vents or just tearing them up. No point really, but living with my grandfather was great!
Shadowrun DMZ- Shadowrun is an award-winning role playing game developed in the late 80's and DMZ was a boardgame accessory to the RPG game. Truth be told, we didn't really play it, but my brother found it one day. The game looked really cool, and to this day I am completely enamored with the "cyber-punk" aesthetic. The game takes place in a dystopian future where corporations have become defacto nations, wielding more power than any state government. That more than the actual game is what interested me, the character book was amazing.
Summit- Cold War era game (1961) where players use his resources to build military bases, steel mills, and consumer factories in order to gain spheres of influence to score points. The game is really about diplomacy and Cold War style politics rather than actual military engagements.