Board game shelves around the world #12

Analog Games aren’t just fun. They also often come in interesting boxes featuring beautiful artwork. It’s no surprise that a lot of us love to proudly showcase our board game collection on a shelf. In this series, every week one of our fellow board game enthusiasts will exhibit their board game shelves and tell us something about their favorite board and card games. Today we are going to look at the board game shelves of Edu from Spain!

Hi Edu, please introduce yourself.
“My name is Edu (aka @edkofuzz if you use Instagram, boardgamegeek.com or LaBSK) and I live in Mataró, a town pretty close to Barcelona, even though I was born and raised in Barcelona itself. I have been living with my wife (we got married a few months ago and it stills sounds a bit funny to call her my wife) for almost 13 years now, and she’s a constant victim of my board gaming activities, be it my absence to be playing longer games with my group(s) or my intention to try some new, lighter games with her. I am on a quest to find THE game she asks me to play, not the other way around (which is the norm, obviously 🙂 ). I work in an office in the media and communications department of a sports-related company. Other than board games, my passions are music (to listen to and to play), photography (I love taking pictures of board games, vinyl records and, most of all, live music) and cinema.”

How did you get into this world of non-digital games?
“When I was a kid I used to play many of them like ‘En Busca del Imperio Cobra’, ‘Pigmeos’, ‘Dracula’, ‘El Cetro de Yarek’ or ‘Embrujada’ (sorry, the titles are in Spanish but then again, most of them were only published here). After a few years of the occasional Risk or Monopoly games and more video gaming activities, I hooked up with Risk again with a couple of friends. We had great, fun nights with it and found out there was a Star Wars version of it (the original Trilogy one, before it was re-issued), so we tracked it down on eBay and got it. We loved it right away and from there, one of us brought Settlers of Catan to try out, and then the other got Carcassonne and it kind of snowballed from there (I am sure most board gamers reading this can relate to this). Everything was new and exciting, so we wanted to try them ALL! From there we jumped to Dominion, Pandemic and these great gateway games. I also made the move at home and PNP’ed Knizia’s Battle Line, which my wife and I really enjoyed. A week later, it was the first ‘modern’ board game I ever bought and is still one of my favourites.”

“After that, one person in our group was kind of overwhelmed by the game frenzy and stepped aside, so the two of us that were left from that mini-group tried to find other people to game with. That’s when I met some people I now call my buddies who were into Ameritrash games, and that is when I first tried what is still my favorite game to this day, Gears of War: The Board Game, and also Battlestar Galactica. That double Corey Konieczka fix changed my boardgaming tastes for good.”

How often do you play?
“There’s only one correct answer to that and that’s “Not as often as I’d like!”. But to actually answer the question, on a good week I have three or four playing sessions. At work, we are lucky enough to have some time and space to play a filler every day Love Letter, Fairy Tale, Incan Gold or even Splendor). In the evenings, on Mondays it’s a Descent: Road to Legend campaign we got going, maybe alternated with some other games every couple of weeks. On Wednesdays I am on a group where we play Lord Of The Rings: The Card Game with three people. Great game, though we also alternate with other games from time to time. Then, on lucky weekends, I join a group to play the longer Ameritrash games, normally on Friday nights. If not this group, maybe another closer to home with which we play all kinds of games, even some Euros 🙂 Then, of course, I also play with my wife on those home afternoons with nothing else to do. Together, we like to play Jambo, Targi or coops like Pandemic, Ghost Stories or Atlantis Rising most of all. However, I am always teaching her new games to see if I can finally manage to find the one that really clicks with her… oh, and we are still working on Agricola :)”

Can you tell us something about your shelves?
“Of course! They are nothing fancy, just plain ol’ Expedits from IKEA. When I first started buying games I moved over some books on some Billy’s I had in the office at home to fit the two or three boxes. When the box stacking and air-collecting (ahem) started to get serious, we redistributed the room: I moved my vinyl records to the Billy’s and the Expedits (plus another unit that a friend who was getting rid of it sold to me) got the board games, everybody knows they were built for that, right? The shelves are of major importance since, like most of the people reading this I reckon, they are the limit to the games I can own. So I am constantly re-arranging the games so I can create some extra space to store some more boxes in there! I have even thought about getting more shelves, but for now I’ll keep it the way it is… keyword being ‘for now’.”

What is your favorite game at the moment?
“As I mentioned above, my favorite game, for sentimental reasons and actual game-mechanics at the same time is Corey’s Gears of War. I love that it is a tough coop to beat, and I find the hand management pure genius. For those who don’t know, in this game the cards in your hand are also your health, so the more cards you play to make your actions (generally you can only play one each turn, but some extra actions to get extra ammo, help your friends or react to Locust situations require discards) the weaker you get. I won’t bore you with more details, but the combat with dice and the merciless AI, plus the great FFG components make this game my favorite one. This is one of the three 10’s I have on BGG, the other two being Cosmic Encounter (a superb game and, as I like to say, my favorite game that I almost never play) and A Game of Thrones The Card Game, Second Edition, an amazing LCG which is so clever and interactive that I can’t get enough of it, even though I discovered it only a few months ago.”

“As for my favorite game that I just discovered I wouldn’t hesitate to say Runewars and Warrior Knights, both Corey games (see a pattern there?). Both are older games but they are pure gold to me. I am also a victim of the constant over-hyping of new releases and also want to try them all, but fortunately, little by little, that bug is going away and I am more oriented towards trying to discover old gems that might be gathering dust on some shelf waiting to be played, and when you strike gold with this method it’s double satisfying (to me, at least).”

What is your most special or obscure game?
“That’s a good question! I guess it depends on availability regarding the place you live in. With the Internet it’s easier to buy things anywhere in the world but customs doesn’t make it worthwhile normally. In my current collection I’d say Atlantis Rising (which I got from the bargain bin at a store in Barcelona not that long ago) and probably Pergamon, a game I really like that took me some time to track down.”

Thank you so much for sharing your story! Something you would like to add?
“You are welcome, thanks for inviting me! The only one thing I would like to add here is that I encourage people to try to stay away from compulsive obsession and hype towards new games being released. There are just too many of them. Sit down, relax and play and enjoy the games you and your friends already own! In second-hand markets I constantly see games that are being sold after one play (even after a half-play, and I am not making this up!). Most games take two or three tries before you can really see their potential, so make the most of them! The one last thing I would like to add is an apology if there are some English grammar mistakes. It is not my mother tongue, so please forgive me if your eyes hurt from something I wrote, I will make it up to you with a game of Cosmic Encounter when you visit, but remember, yellow is already taken! :)”

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