The Retirement Game. A Guest Post by Brad Smith

Today we have a guest post from one of the better writers in the industry. Brad Smith is the owner of Hexsides and Handgrenades and a friend. Thanks, Brad. 

The Retirement Game. 

There it is.  It sits on your shelf mocking you every time you go into the game room.  When you see people talking about it online, it sticks like a splinter in your mind.  It’s that game you told yourself was too big/complex/not solitaire-friendly enough to play right now.  You told yourself you would play it after.

After.

  

After you finished putting away the dishes.  Which turned to after the weekend began.  And that turned to after the summer holidays started.  And after that all came and went, the game still sat there collecting dust on the shelf.  So you tell yourself, finally, that you’ll play it when retirement comes and that’s the final say.  But guess what?  When retirement comes, there will be other obligations.  Your wife isn’t going to let you down that easily.   

So let’s face it.  After is really a polite way to say “never”.  It’s time to break out that retirement game.  Get it on the table, punch the chits, and get down to business with the rulebook.  You can do this.

Or maybe you still need some inspiration.  If that’s the case, I recommend a quick trip to your friendly Internet forums for some of that good stuff.

Check out the story posted by BGG user Soren Narnia for “A World At War”.  Aptly titled, “At Dawn We Ate Sugar Smacks: Wargaming Newbies Tackle the Monster of Monsters”, it tells the strange journey of a man who tried to conquer the gaming equivalent of Mount Everest and found a weird sort of friendship along the way.  Disguised as a session report, the novella-length tale has a bit of everything in it:  a romance gone sour, a hopeless mission to learn one of the most complex games in the world, a reclusive genius, and a moment of pure zen at the end of it all. 

  

If you need some more solid help to lift the heavy oppressive girders of gaming inertia, I recommend a visit to The Boardgaming Life (I’m not providing the link here – you all know how to use google by now, I’m sure!).  It features loads of articles, PDFs, strategy guides and links for dozens of games, especially those that are intimidating or “big” enough to scare a gamer into putting something away into the “Retirement” pile.

I also want to shamelessly plug my own website – but not for purely selfish reasons.  You see, as Forrest Gump once said, “I am not a smart man.”  I would have to say that my wargaming chops are pretty limited and I struggle mightily in learning rules that most experienced gamers would devour in a sitting.  Yet, I have managed to get a couple of those bigger “retirement pile” games off my shelf too and finally sit down to at least figure them out a bit and start playing them (and badly, I might add).  What I’m getting at here is that if someone like me can get a campaign game of “Vietnam 1965 to 1975” off the ground then surely you can too. 

  

And if you don’t like the game after all, you can at least say you finally figured out when “after” arrived. 

Be sure to check out NIGHT OF MAN, a science-fiction, card-driven, board and counter, tactical battle game, designed by Mark H. Walker and published by Flying Pig Games. It is on Kickstarter until December 31st. You can view the Kickstarter page and place a pledge right here.