Board game shelves around the world #21

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 shelf and tell us something about their favorite board and card games. Today we are going to look at the board game shelf of Joseph from Indietabletop!

Hi Joseph, please introduce yourself.
“I am a board game blogger and reviewer (you can find my website at indietabletop.net and on social media @indietabletop). I am currently in school working on my Bachelors in Communication and working part time in order to get me through school. When I am not working or in class I spend a lot of my time playing games (video games or board games) and organizing my opinions in the form of the digital medium for the world of gaming to read. I thoroughly enjoy the community of gaming and am looking forward to what the future has in store of us!”

How did you get into this world of non-digital games?
“A little over two years ago a friend of mine introduced me to Catan stating “he has played this at least twice a day” during his undergraduate years of college and that I needed to try it. A few sessions later this group of three invested in both Lords of Waterdeep and Small World (thank you tabletop!). My interest grew in leaps and bounds, which brought Indietabletop into the community. Since then, I’ve been actively playing as many games as I can, when I can.”

How often do you play?
“Over the past year I have been looking to grow my game groups and have frequent game nights with them. I have groups that range from just two of us, to groups of six or more. Our Thursday night game nights have been the most consistent being a six hour or longer session of games varying from heavy hour long engages to a plethora of filler titles. My two player sessions have been a more recent thing and have been seeing a lot of playtime. This is the group I get to try out all my games with two people to see how they hold up.”

Can you tell us something about your shelves?
“My shelf has been growing strong for the past year. Prior to a year I was sitting on nothing more than Catan, Smallworlds, and Lords of Waterdeep. Within one year of being involved with this hobby and the community I was able to reach the hundred game mark which is a fantastic milestone in my opinion. Luckily, I have the help of this awesome community to ensure each game I get will be a great one when judged on game play, interaction, art design, and such. This specific shelf I just recently bought in order to organize my current collection of board games. What is funny is that I didn’t measure the shelves prior to purchasing it so most of my big games need to laid on its corner. While I was bummed at first, I begin to really enjoy the look of my shelf. I felt it added character to these games. Like most board games, there are a huge array of styles and experiences—I like that my shelf can replicate that experience though it’s obscure setup.”

What is your favorite game at the moment?
“I am currently a huge fan of Star Realms. I have been playing it pretty consistently via the app on my phone and never realized how impressive and fun it was until I purchased the hard copy of the game. When I was looking at the cards, the impression it left while I looked at the physical copy of each art work compared to the app was just fantastic.”

What is your most special or obscure game?
“I think the game I own that I would say would be the most obscure would be FlowerFall. This card game is literally about dropping your card on top of others that are lying on the floor in order to gather points. At the end of the game you will count up how many of your flowers (each player has their own color flower) you own that are connected by greenery (the cards are all green), the player with the biggest batch of flowers collectively wins.”

Thank you so much for sharing your story! Something you would like to add?
“This is one of the most fantastic communities I have been able to be involved in with everyone. We are so tightly knit, and from what I noticed, everyone is always willing to help each other out. Whether it be game suggestions, rulebook help, or pushing traffic toward independent publishers, I find it so great that we can be comfortable and friendly to all who would like to be a part of this hobby.”

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