This past weekend was Nerd Summit, the once-every-few-months Saturday gathering where my closest friends and I play marathon board games from early morning to late into the night. I greatly enjoy the time with my friends and look forward to Nerd Summit whenever we can get all our schedules together, but every so often there’s a game we play that is basically just me spending hours getting my ass kicked.
I enjoy board games, from the social aspect of playing with others to the tactile satisfaction of physically handling pieces and moving them around, but that doesn’t mean I’m good at them. I am the type of person who needs time to get accustomed to a game’s rules and pacing and strategy, and I generally learn the most valuable lessons by making mistakes. This is a fine approach with a game that takes maybe an hour to play altogether, but these are not the types of games we play at Nerd Summit.
My friends, on the other hand, are excellent at board games. They have strategic minds that grasp a game’s rules and mechanics faster than I do, and have revelatory “Oh, I get it now!” moments while I’m still struggling to grasp what to do next. They also like games that are deep and involved, and take perhaps two hours to complete.
The resulting combination is me spending hours getting my ass kicked, as I realize far too late what I should have been doing and watching everyone score loads of points around me while I fall further and further behind. It’s demoralizing at best and feeds my persistent fear that among my friends I’m The Dumb One.
I know that’s not true, but when you’re thirty points behind everyone else and two hours deep into a game that’s got another hour to go, it can start to feel pretty convincing.