Sometimes people ask "What was your gateway game?" I didn't really have an answer so I went back and labeled when I got every game in my collection.
Childhood: Scrabble, Monopoly, Clue, Scotland Yard,
2009: Ticket To Ride, Pandemic
2010: Lost Cities, Cleopatra
2012: Settlers of Catan
2013: Clue: The Great Museum Caper, Zombie Dice, Forbidden Island
2015: A Duel Betwixt Us, Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, Roll For It, Police Precinct, Flash Point, Carcassonne, Splendor, New York 1901, Labyrinth, Escape, Love Letter, Tsuro, Sushi Go, Burgle Bros, Codenames, Pandemic Legacy
2016: Onirim, Hostage Negotiator, Dead of Winter, CV, Deception: Murder in Hong Kong, Friday, Castle Panic, Eldritch Horror
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So 2015 was sort of a turning point. I'm going to break it down by months:
January: A Duel Betwixt Us
May: Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective
June: Tsuro
July: Roll For It, Carcassonne, Love Letter
September: Codenames
October: New York 1901, Pandemic Legacy, Burgle Bros, Escape
December: Police Precinct, Flash Point, Labyrinth, Sushi Go, Splendor
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So the first board games that I purchased were Ticket To Ride and Pandemic on the same day. They were Christmas presents for Brit--I was looking for something that we could do together besides watch TV.
Over the next few years, I got a game or two here or there, but it was very much a minor hobby. After getting Tsuro for Father's Day (which was on a list for years but I never pulled the trigger) I got deeper into reading about games over the summer. At this point almost everything I had gotten I'd heard about via Tabletop, but now I was learning about games from all sorts of places.
Codenames was the first game that I pre-ordered and first time I got a game through a niche board game site instead of Amazon.
So, Ticket to Ride and Pandemic were my gateway games. And it wasn't really a certain game that triggered my resurgence in 2015, but Codenames was the first game I picked up after it became a more serious hobby.
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