Board Games

For the month of March I was initially planning to talk some more about Data Science and Machine Learning in particular. As part of our Data Science Bootcamp we were grouped and tasked to attempt to predict on Kaggle who would win a League of Legends match, based on some initial information on 8000 matches in the Diamond division, as well as some additional information for the first 10 minutes of each game. Obviously, the answer is: unininstal LoL and install Dota 2 (just kidding, both games are fun in their own ways – and the communities around both tend to be equally toxic!).

But then at the end of the month I joined my great friends Becca and Geno in attending ProtoATL, which is a Board Game Design convention in Atlanta. It didn’t hurt that the dates coincided with an Eluveitie – Omnium Gatherum – 7 Spires concert in the city as well.

Being immersed in play testing (though unfortunately currently no time to design), I figured might as well write a little bit about Board Games! I’ll get more into machine learning and data science in the coming few months anyway, leading up to my capstone project!

To be fair, Board games of various kinds have existed for thousands of years. Just take a look at the Platonic Solids and see what they remind you of. Perhaps the most enduring “classic” games would be chess, GO and the various card games. Briškula any day, all day!

But on top of that, there has been an explosion and proliferation of board games ever since 1995, spearheaded by The Settlers of Catan (whose designer just recently passed away due to severe and unexpected illness).

I was first introduced to more modern board games at the CERN‘s board game club and didn’t look back since. My collection of them has grown and for a while I’ve also organized a local board game meetup in my home town (before moving away to the US).

What I love about more modern Board Games is just the creativity and the different mechanics and themes that can be played with. Sure, all of it can be done in a video game too, but there’s something to be said about being able to see the game right in front of your eyes, plus interact with others in person. There’s also now games that come with apps to tell a story, or keep track of various parts of it.

There’s a lot of different games out there and in my view it’s really fun discovering them and finding out some that speak to you and your group of friends. Anywhere from short 5-15 min games, all the way to hours long behemoths with complex rulesets that require multiple read throughs to comprehend and memorize – there’s something out there for anyone!

Plus, it’s much cheaper to get into board games than it is video games as you don’t need a console or PC or other hardware. Everything that’s needed is right in the box.

So what are you waiting for, just take a look at Board Game Geek!