Are you into board and strategy games?

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Started playing chess this year, but I am taking a break lately. Also tried out shogi, but the ai was complete garbage even on highest difficulty. Maybe it was just the website I was playing on. Would like to try a real game of shogi though.

I've got seriously obsessed with classic board games of late. I've started learning the rules and making boards for games from all around the world- Lambs and Tigers, Permainan-Tabal, Yut... lots of obscure treasures. I spend a lot of time on sites like Board and Pieces reading up on whole families of related games.

Trouble is, I don't really have anyone to play with yet, though I plan to host a board games session once my living room is in a decent state. (So, never....) Sad sod that I am, I'll quite happily play games against myself- I enjoy it, and have no trouble playing both sides equally well. But obviously it's difficult to conceal my strategy from myself!

I've had two regular chess opponents in the past, but both were significantly better than me and I never seemed to improve, so I got fed up with that. One of them I introduced to Chinese Checkers, which I beat him at for a few weeks before his superior brain cracked it. The other, we moved on to Nine Men's Morris, which turns out to be a pretty intense game.

About 5 years ago I lived in a shared house where all 4 of us were obsessed with board/tabletop games. We got heavily into modern "Euro"-style games- we must have played hundreds of games of Carcassonne and Dominion. I really miss those times. One of my few remaining friends has hosted gaming days, but only about once a year.

I'm not keen to play tabletop games online. I love handling physical pieces, cards and boards (kind of a stim?). And I prefer to play on a "friendly" basis rather than a cut-throat "win-at-all-costs" one, which seems more likely online. I'm all about the fun.