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Stuck inside? Pass the time with a board game
Andy Hallman
Apr. 13, 2020 9:57 am
Whether competitive or cooperative, lasting half an hour or the entire day, board games are a great way to pass the time, especially now that families are confined to their homes.
Some people in southeast Iowa have turned their love of board games into an occupation. Joe Graff operates The Gilded Unicorn, a board game and video game shop based in Riverside. He got into games at an early age in his own home, where his mother loved to play card games and other hands-on games.
'Some of my earliest memories are playing Sorry or Goldfish with my sister,” he said. 'And even before that, Mom and I used to play match game [matching two hidden tiles of the same type]. I loved matching the tiles. The first time I got on a computer, I played the match game on a green screen.”
Jon Gilrain and his wife Therese owned and operated the board game shop and toy store Finnywicks in Fairfield from 2009 to 2017. As a child growing up in New Jersey, Jon played what he calls the 'standard” board games of Monopoly, Risk and the game of Life. When he became a teenager, his friends took him to a shop in New York City that Jon called 'gamer heaven.”
'It had so many different types of board games and military simulation games,” Gilrain said.
One of those games was a simulation of the World War II Battle of Midway between the United States and Japan. Players were presented with a map of the Pacific Ocean, where they pushed around chits representing planes, battleships and submarines.
That game re-enacting the Battle of Midway was a forbearer to one of the most popular board games in history, Axis and Allies. The game, released in 1984, is a World War II simulation game, with players assuming the identities of one of the five major powers: the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union allied against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.
'We played the heck out of that game in college,” Gilrain said. 'The game had little plastic pieces representing warships and tanks. Compared to today, it was primitive stuff. The games today have the most polished production value. The components are as much fun as the whole rest of the game. It's a joy to play with the art that goes into modern board games.”
Dungeons and Dragons
One of the significant developments in the history of board games came in 1974 with the release of Dungeons and Dragons. It was very much unlike other types of board games. In Dungeons and Dragons, or simply D&D as it's commonly known, players assume the role of a fantasy character such as a skilled fighter, a devout cleric, a deadly rogue or a spellcasting wizard.
One of the players is chosen to be the 'Dungeon Master,” and this player is the game's lead storyteller and referee. The Dungeon Master presents each player with a series of options according to the story, such as whether to sneak into a castle or cast a spell, and determines the results of their actions based on a roll of the dice.
D&D is still going strong more than 45 years after its release. In fact, Graff taught the game to his 8-year-old daughter Jillian.
'I like that you can make up your own character and choose what he or she is like,” she said. 'And you can choose how they fight.”
Joe said one of the things Jill likes about D&D is decorating the miniature figures used as playing pieces. One character she likes to play as is a tree elf who does archery.
'D&D is like a choose-your-own-adventure storytelling game,” Joe said. 'One kid turned to me after playing the game twice and asked, ‘Are you just making this up?' And I said, ‘Yes!' And he goes, ‘Oh, so we're playing a storytelling game?' It clicked.”
Magic: The Gathering
The card game that took the gaming world by storm when it debuted and remains a major source of revenue for gaming shops is Magic: The Gathering. Magic is a fantasy-themed card game where each player is a wizard who summons creatures to fight the other players using spells and other weapons. The creatures, spells and weapons are all detailed on cards in each player's hand. The company that makes Magic releases new cards to play with every month, some of which become collectible items because of their rarity.
Finnywick's once hosted regular Magic tournaments, and Gilrain said it was a good money-maker. At the same time, he said it required a continual, deep investment in new Magic product offerings, which didn't always sell out easily. What's more, he and Therese got into a secondary market of buying, selling and trading individual cards.
'We had to do it. It helped augment our revenue,” Jon said. 'But it was a huge time sink. When somebody came in with a box of cards, we had to go through each one and decipher which ones had value and which didn't.”
Jillian Graff said Magic is one of the other games she loves to play. She said she used to play the game every two weeks, but has stopped since social gatherings are now discouraged because of COVID-19.
'If I could, I would play Magic tonight,” she said.
Joe said he misses hosting Friday Night Magic at his shop in Riverside and at Madeline's Coffee House. The games had to end because of the virus. While there are ways to play Magic online, Joe said it's not the same.
'You can't sit across from the table and razz your friends,” he said. 'There are a lot of social politics at work, because it's all about who you're going to attack. This guy attacked me last week, so I'm going to attack him this week. All those personal social interactions are lost online.”
Favorite games today
Joe said his favorite game to play with his family is Qwirkle, a block-based game that involves fitting pieces of different sizes and shapes onto a board into matching categories.
'It's been used in Montessori schools and has won tons of awards,” he said.
For Gilrain, his favorite game is Dominion, a deck-building game where players are monarchs trying to expand their kingdom.
Gilrain said the quality of games has risen in recent years thanks to Kickstarter, an online platform where someone can pitch an idea for a product in the hopes that enough people will pledge money to bring the idea to fruition. This platform has dramatically increased the number of games that are being made, since game production is no longer controlled by just a handful of toy companies.
Gilrain said one of the games that has had a major impact on the industry lately was the release of Settlers of Catan, which debuted in Germany in 1995 and was later introduced to the American market. In the game, each player takes on the role of a settler who builds an ever larger series of settlements and cities, while trading resources with other players along the way. Unlike many competitive board games, it does not involve attacking other players directly. These economically-based games are often referred to as euro-style because many originated in Europe.
Today, one of Gilrain's favorite games is called Scythe, which is a synthesis of euro-style resource allocation games and more combative games like Risk.
'There are a lot of ways to win that don't involve so much combat,” Jon said. 'It has really cool miniatures that are set in World War I era.”
Here is a group of people playing a fantasy-themed game called 'Elder Sign' at Finnywick's in Fairfield in 2014.
A group of people play the cooperative board game 'Forbidden Desert' at Finnywick's in Fairfield.
Joe Graff of The Gilded Unicorn says he misses the Friday Night Magic events he was able to host before the COVID-19 pandemic prevented social gatherings.
A group of people playing the highly popular fantasty card game 'Magic: The Gathering.'
Jon Gilrain said one of the modern games he and his wife Therese enjoy playing is called 'Scythe,' seen here.