Board game shelves around the world #20

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 Rum and Board!

Hi Rum and Board, please introduce yourself.
“Hi, our names are Meryl, Jordan, Haak, and Jessi! We are friends and boardgaming enthusiasts that live in apartments across the hall from each other. Yes, straight out of the TV show Friends. But with board games! We make a board gaming Youtube channel called Rum and Board. Every week during our seasons we release a snarky “how to play” video for a game, and then a riotous play through of the same game, during which we drink original cocktails to accompany the game. We recently played Red Dragon Inn, in which we drank our own versions of Dwarven Firewater and Troll Swill (which are actual drink cards that you can get in the game).”

How did you get into this world of non-digital games?
“Jordan is definitely the most intense and long term gamer out of all of us. His dad is professionally a digital game designer but is a hobbyist analog game designer. Every year for Christmas his dad has designed Jordan and his brother a custom analog game. So cool! Jessi has always played games with her family and then started to play a lot more in college when she met Jordan.”

“Haak and Meryl played the occasional game (one of Meryl’s first modern board games was Chaos in the Old World, which she found that she surprisingly enjoyed!), but their interest didn’t really take off until Jessi and Jordan moved in nearby. Then Haak and Meryl started having regular game nights, watching Tabletop, and it sort of took off from there. And when we say “took off”, we mean “developed a severe case of acquisition disorder”.”

How often do you play?
“We usually play games 4 or 5 nights a week! Typically one weeknight goes to test playing games for our channel and one to playing in front of the camera. It’s nice that we live so close together because it’s always easy to find a group for a 2-4 player game! Haak doesn’t like worker placement games so Meryl can always go to Jessi and Jordan’s place to get her fix.”

Can you tell us something about your shelves?
“Most of these games were purchased in the last year or so! We’ve tried to organize our shelves by play style, but we have enough games now that sometimes the logic of our organization gets sacrificed for the sake of cramming in another box. We’re really hesitant to buy another shelf because we know it will just get filled again if we see it sitting there empty! Right now we have some games with orange post-it notes on them which is our system for calling attention to games that either haven’t been played or need another play to solidify our understanding of the game. Trickerion is a great example of one we played once when we first got it and haven’t managed to get it out again. It was interesting, but our learning play took forever. The longer we sit on it, the longer it will probably take to relearn it. So, it gets a “post-it of shame” until we revisit it!”

“You might notice that we’ve got four whole shelves devoted to co-op and partial co-op games. That’s one of our favorite mechanics, although we’ve been trying out more war games and area control games lately, like Cthulhu Wars and Kemet. We’re pretty open to different styles, although we doubt we’ll ever be heavy war gamers or miniatures gamers or Magic The Gathering fanatics (though Haak does have a pretty decent MtG Collection).”

“We’d like to start expanding our game awareness into more internationally designed games. We’re a little tired of seeing games with ‘exotic’ themes designed by people not actually from those places. Sorry, Antoine Bauza!”

What is your favorite game at the moment?
“Lately we’ve been loving Above and Below and Splendor, like everyone else and their mother. We like building up engines. One Night Ultimate Werewolf is definitely our collective favorite game of all time though, it’s seen a ton of play from our friend group, and we really enjoy the chaotic bluffing and quick play.”

What is your most special or obscure game?
“It’s probably got to be one of Jordan’s one-of-a-kind games from his dad. Last year’s Christmas present was “Battle Lines 2.0,” which is played on a hand-crafted wooden dodecahedron that changes with stickers sent by physical mail. It’s so unique looking!”

Thank you so much for sharing your story! Something you would like to add?
“Our Youtube channel is at youtube.com/c/rumboard and our website is rumandboard.com. There you can find written reviews, drink recipes and pictures, and all of our videos! Our Instagram and Twitter is @rumandboard. Tell us what game you think needs a drink to go with it!”

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