Finding my niche in board games
I love digging in deep in my hobbies. Board games are no exception.
Hello! I hope this Wednesday has found you well, and you’re working on setting up a fun game night for the weekend. I’ve written this week about why finding my niche in board games has been valuable in my enjoyment of the hobby. It’s a bit of a long-winded exploration of the idea, which I’m sure will surprise all of you. At the bottom of this week’s piece, you’ll find four games from Japan that I think you’d enjoy.
A bit of housekeeping before we get to the topic of the week. First, I’m aiming to send this newsletter out every Wednesday morning. If you want it in your inbox, I’ve included a little subscription prompt below. Second, you can find me over on Bluesky if you’re signed up there — let’s chat games!
Why I love niche games
There’s a funny thing about board gaming as a hobby. As niche as being really into board games can be, there’s a universality to so much of it; after all, it’s a necessarily social hobby (unless, of course, you’re into solo gaming, which is fun and interesting), and that means you benefit in your enjoyment of the hobby often benefits from introducing others.
There’s a growth element baked right into the hobby, and I think we’re seeing some dividends of that. It wasn’t so long ago that finding a truly exciting board game in a retail outlet not focused on board games was simply just not going to happen. Not Ticket to Ride, not Catan, nothing. That’s shifted in the last decade pretty substantially. You’re seeing even more niche board game entries show up in big box retail — Horizons of Spirit Island, for instance, is basically just a smaller-box spin on Spirit Island, which can be a bit complicated and difficult to teach. The weird little Japanese trick-taker Cat in the Box is available at Target, and Bezier Games is doing a (frankly confusing) super-deluxe reprint of the game, funded on Kickstarter.
Just a few years ago, I thought the growth potential of board games as a dedicated hobby space was going to plateau. The major point of growth had seemed focused on Kickstarter and similar crowdfunding spaces, and I just didn’t see a continued massive growth opportunity for the hobby outside of mass market games. (Certainly, mass market games are improving, and that’s a good thing. But that’s not exactly my point, so let’s leave it to the side.) I suspect I was wrong about the growth curve, which, again — that’s a good thing. More people involved in the hobby expands the possibilities for everyone.
There are difficulties that come with it: The volume of interesting games being released is essentially a deluge; every week, there are dozens of games released from reputable publishers, and while fewer of those will come from recognized designers, it’s certainly a non-zero amount on a weekly basis. That presents another difficulty: One cannot easily filter through reams of games, given each has a certain time commitment required. (Trust me, I’ve tried. And I haven’t stopped trying, for better or worse.) It makes truly critical analysis more difficult from a “we’ll review everything good” perspective. As a consumer of criticism, it makes it difficult to sort through the muck. That difficulty is heightened by a further deluge of paid work masquerading as criticism, and while not all paid work engages in that way, there is enough to, again, complicate the matter.
And none of this is to complain about the hundreds upon hundreds of playable, interesting games making their way to the market. The hobby is in a perpetual state of transition owing to such growth, and it’s an exciting time to be around. But filtering through the noise can rapidly become an impossible task without dedicating significant time.
That task, filtering through the noise, has led me in a few directions, and that’s what I’m hoping to impart here. I’ve found areas of gaming that interest me more than others, and those are the areas on which I’ve focused. Part of this is that I’ve been engaged in the hobby for over a decade (not that long, but long enough to have learned more about myself along the way), and I’ve worked out the mechanisms and themes that interest me more than others.
Do I want to play every heavy Euro that hits it big in the hobby? Probably not, although I’d always welcome an opportunity to play them with others, given the opportunity. The same can be said for party games, lightweight strategy games, and so much more. And so it is that I’ve found my niche in the niche — the things that have piqued my interest. If you’ve been reading my newsletter over the last three years (which is funny to put in writing), you’ll have seen my interest in trick-taking evolve from a passing understanding to a passion. I’ve long been interested in games published by Japanese companies — and that’s evolved into paying more attention to certain companies and designers. (If it’s coming from Itten, I’ll probably be interested, by way of example.) Of course, I’m also paying attention to other less niche releases, but having the opportunity to narrow in helps me bridle my passion for the hobby in some way.
I know, too, that while I’ve found a bit of a niche that I’m enjoying, I know two things. First, I’m hardly the only one engaged in such a way, and it’s fun to find communities interested, too. Second, I know the niches get more and more narrow, and I’m not some trailblazing hobbyist here. I’m hopeful that I can think critically about what I enjoy, and that I can share that with you.
So, what’s my point here? I think there’s something interesting in exploring the narrow striations in the things we enjoy. I enjoy board games and card games generally, but I also enjoy Japanese trick-taking games, and those two facts can exist side-by-side. I love music broadly, but I also love 1990s twee pop, 2000s post rock and 1970s Japanese city pop — among so many other genres. I love film, but I got really into indie films between 2004 and 2007. I could go on, but I needn’t.
As the board gaming hobby grows, our opportunities to embrace the niche grow, too. There is beauty in the fine-grained detail, and while none of us can explore the entirety of the hobby in fine-grained detail, we should welcome and embrace our ability to explore things in-depth. It’s a beautiful part of our human experience, and I love that games give us that exploration opportunity. The best part? As the hobby grows, these niches grow. It might feel a little less exclusive, but there’s so much more fun to be had in games when others can join in the fun.
Four great games from Japan
I didn’t want to leave this newsletter without some sort of game recommendation, so here are four great games from one of my favorite little striations of the hobby: games published by Japanese companies. (In this case, they’re all designed by Japanese designers, too.)
Schadenfreude: One of the games that’s been a big hit among trick-taking enthusiasts, this Japanese trick-taking game takes the general idea of a must-follow trick-taker and adds two particularly interesting pieces. First, the player whose card is the second-highest in a given trick’s led suit wins the trick. Second, the game ends when any player surpasses 40 points, and the winner is the closest to 40 points without going over. It’s tense and weird at the same time, and I love that.
Crash Octopus: I wrote about my love of Japanese publisher Itten earlier. They published Crash Octopus, designed by Naotaka Shimamoto, and it’s one of the funniest games I’ve played. In this game, you’re collecting wooden pieces of cargo by flicking them at your ship, then dropping a wooden die off the head of a pink wooden octopus in the play area. It’s weird, colorful and just so entertaining.
Nana: I’ll be writing about this game in more depth over the next couple of months, but Nana is a simple card game in which you’re just trying to collect sets of identically numbered cards. You can only collect sets by asking players to reveal their highest or lowest card, as well as flipping over cards on the table. This game, designed by Kaya Miyano, is simple and deceptively fun.
Cat in the Box: I wrote about this one earlier, so I wanted to bring it up here, too. This has the makings of a crossover hit, and I can’t figure out why, but I’m very pleased. This trick-taker, designed by Muneyuki Yokouchi, has a bit of a funny thing going on. None of the cards have suits — but each trick you play does. One player leads the trick, declaring their card to be one of the four suits in the game. Other players must follow with a card, declaring it to be of that color, unless they decide they’re out of that color. Making this even weirder, there are five cards of each number and four suits, so if somebody wants to play a number in a specific suit, but it’s already been played, you’ll enter a paradox, ending the round. It’s sure weird, and I want to tell you that you definitely don’t need the “colossal” version. Save some money and just get the deluxe version.
Thanks, as always, for reading! If you’ve made it this far, let me know — what little sections of your hobbies do you find most exciting?