Hello

[Droogy]

Hi all

I was introduced to board gaming by a friend 10 years ago when he brought along Last Night on Earth to our video gaming group. This was a game changer for me because I just considered board games to be Monopoly and Cluedo etc

We played through the game and I loved it so I went on the hunt for games I can play solo and found A Touch of Evil.

At first my main focus as a completionist is to buy up everything to do with AToE because I loved the theme however when I played the game I struggled to remember all of the rules as well as the abilities of the villian and the heroes so I went on the hunt for an "easier" board game to play solo

I do not have an artistic bone in my body so I roped my wife into painting the AToE minis for me but didn't realise how long each one would take so she only painted a handful of the 24 I had before announcing she had better things to do with her time.

That's when I found Flash Point Fire and Rescue which my family also enjoyed so that became a gateway for other board games but the theme didn't grab me like AToE (I grew up watching the Hammer Horror films).

Visiting Wayland Games in my hometown (a shop I had ignored for years) I found them playing a game called X-Wing Miniatures and being a lover of Star Wars I instantly brought into it but I needed to play against other people so it wasn't something I could shut myself in a room and play by myself

After some research and a few Youtube videos later I found Eldritch Horror and took the time to learn how to play it properly so I bought everything EH but the problem was I needed to dedicate a whole day to set up, play and tear down.

The next games I moved on to were Arkham horror and The Walking Dead and that's when I met a fellow Walking Dead player who encouraged me to start painting myself. I found that painting Zombies was easy as any mistakes could be hidden behind blood.

With my new found painting confidence I started buying up the Zombicide games and backing Kickstarters. Whilst getting my family into easier to learn games like Ticket to Ride.

Around this time both my children moved out (not because of my hobby but they had both found partners and bought their own houses) which meant we had 2 spare rooms in the house. My wife grabbed the larger of the 2 as a dressing room and we put our wardrobes in it and I had the smaller room in which I have a painting bureau and two walls covered with Kallax units full of board games and some of my old video games consoles all wired up to a single TV.

This also meant I can set up a game in the room and leave it set up so I can keep going back to it over several days - as long as I keep the door shut so the cats don't get in there and mess with it.

I soon discovered Euro style games which could be played solo and bought Wingspan, Scythe, Terraforming Mars and Everdell.

Whilst all this was going on AToE was just sitting in a Kallax cube untouched.

Two weeks ago I finished painting Zombicide Undead or Alive and played the first 5 missions and while I was packing it away I found my KR case with the AToE minis inside.

I decided then to paint the final 19 minis now that I know how to paint at a reasonable level although still nowhere near the detail my wife did. She painted eyes and lips on each figure. To paint them I needed to dig out the rule books to identify each mini and the hero cards to get an idea of colour schemes.

It was whilst I was doing this I suddenly got a new love for the game I hadn't looked at in several years. Last weekend I sat down read the rules for the core and both expansions cover to cover and the gameplay made total sense to me and I thought the rules were easy to follow so once all the minis were painted I went back to the base game with all the components and played 4 heroes Vs the Scarecrow and although it was a bit dicey towards the end I actually beat the Screcrow.

The game has been set up over the past week with just the Shadowbrook board and now I'm going against the Werewolf but I just know over the next month or so I will be adding the other boards and playing through all of the Villains.

It has taken me a while to get back to this game but I have learned a lot in the meantime about boardgames and how they play and now I feel I've gone full circle on the learning process.

I found this forum via BGG and have enjoyed looking through the posts

In other news I discussed Last Night on Earth with my wife who will play the occasional board game when the children come over and she said she would give it a go so I have ordered a copy from ebay.

I am resisting getting all the expansions for it at this point

I'm also resisting getting the 10 Year anniversary of AToE because it's only available for an over inflated price on ebay and I need to reign in on buying board games I already have. I've got every Zombicide theme which is too much

Anyway that's my introduction and thanks for having me on here