I'm writing this from the confines of my game room. It's a room, in my basement where I get to keep all of my stuff, most notable is my game collection.

I have a sizable collection compared to the people that know me but not a large one compared to those that belong to people that I know. Piled around me, on shelves, are about 100+ board games. There are also a few minatures games, dice games and card games. The video games are upstairs as are my daughter's games.

One thing has to be pointed out. Some of my games will not be played this year. Perhaps not even next year. Why some I have had for over ten years and they have never been played!

You are probably wondering why I'm telling you this.

It's because...

It's because I'm a game-o-holic.

There, I said it...

I wasn't always this way. When I was a kid I was lucky to have a few games in the house, most were missing a piece or two. Some of my friends had large game collections, some even went into double digits!

I distinctly remember a time when we had the game of Life and Tank Battle but... Neither was complete. So, what did we do? We played Tank Life! Yes, one player began at the end and the other at the beginning of the Life board and we would move our tanks toward the middle of the board and battle! I do not recall us ever completeing a game though I do remember much cheating.

“You can't shoot me, I'm too many spaces away.”
“No, your tank is next to mine.”
“It's not next to yours, the spaces wind over that way before they turn towards you.”
“I'm using indirect fire.”
Being the younger kid I had no idea what indirect fire was.

I do have to admit that I fell for “Farmer and the Slave” but I never fell for “52 Pick-up.”

Up on my shelf I even have several versions of Battleship. Two to be exact. I have a real bad travel version and a real good regular size version. No, I don't have electronic Battleship, though I always wanted it as a kid! Battleship was another one of those games that lent itself to cheating.

“What do you mean I didn't sink it? I've got four hits in the thing and all around it is misses.”
“It still has one spot left that you haven't hit.”
“Where is it?”
“Well, if I told you then you would hit it.”
“It better not be your aircraft carrier with it's nose hanging off of the board...”
“Well, it's not the nose!”

This often ended in a fight. We didn't have many problems with people moving ships while playing, but I have heard of such nasty tricks. Come to think of it... My daughter did try it once, but she quickly stopped doing it when I pointed out to her that I was tracking all my misses and then if any of my misses lined up with her ships she would be in a heap of trouble. There was a little biy of movement on her board but then the game went on as usual.

One game I picked up recently, due to reasons of nostalgia is Bermuda Triangle. This is an older game where a special magnetic cloud passes over the board and sucks up your ships. There is next to nothing to the game, but it is fun.

I mean, come on, it's got magnets and a big cloud that eats ships!!!

I play it with my daughter and she just grins whenever that cloud heads towards my ships. If her and her mother are playing against me, I've already lost. They gang up on me... They do it in every game we play.

I don't mind though. Besides, I know some day some lucky guy will thank me. Of course he's going to need to be lucky to dodge my buckshot!

My current favorite "I want to play but no one will play with me game" is Arkham Horror. It's one of those games that can take all night. It's also cooperative so either we all win or we all lose.

I confess to playing it once with my daughter... Once...

It's not that she had trouble playing but it became more a game of me playing solo and her heckling me the entire time.