Not exactly "high tech" but I figure it could fall under the "gaming" category.

Never played a ton of board games growing up outside of the odd random Monopoly/Scrabble/Sorry! game.

One of my buddies has a gaming group that I'd join in every once in a long while these past several years. Typically we'll play Risk variants though: 2210, Legacy, Game of Thrones, Mass Effect (THE TRUTH!). I'm a sucker for tactics and strategy so I'd always look forward to these nights when I could come out.

So a coworker invited my wife and I to a gaming night in a few weeks, prompting me to look into some board games to bring. I've only ever owned Monopoly and Scrabble so when I started reading about different board games...ho man it was like a brave new world out there. So many interesting board game mechanics out there. (Even though I don't play many *different* video games these days I still enjoy reading about video game development and how they're innovating, so it's cool to see that trend in the board game space as well).

For my first post-Monopoly purchase I went with Dead of Winter: The Long Night (other contenders were Pandemic: Legacy, XCOM, Mysterium). The semi-coop nature of Dead of Winter: The Long Night sounded really interesting so my wife and I have been playing that the past few nights. Mechanically precise, but really fun if you immerse yourself into the game's atmosphere. The psychology involved in trying to figure out if a Betrayer is in your midst is really intriguing (shouts to the official Prisoner's Dilemma 2-player variant).

So I think I found a new hobby. Curious if anyone else plays board games here and if there are any recommendations (both for 2 players and for groups). Apparently it's the golden age of board gaming these days as more and more people are "gamers" and the live aspect of board games can't be replicated with video games.

b-side:

Played three games of DoW so far, all Short main objectives with no modules, just to acclimate ourselves to the rules. First game we were kinda meh with (Tribute), took a bit to get used to the rules. Second game we did Clear the Colony and that was pretty sweet since we *just* barely beat it on the last turn. I only had one survivor left but he started mowing zombies down at the colony while my wife kept feeding us supplies and mass migrated on the last turn to beat the zombie count.

Our third game was especially sweet though, on Fix the Ship. Used the Prisoner's Dilemma 2-player variant for the first time, with three end-game scenarios:

a) Colony objective complete: if either (or both) players also complete their loyalty objective they win
b) Morale is at zero: if one player completes their betrayer objective (and the other player does not), then he/she wins
c) Morale is at zero: if both players complete their betrayer objective, then both players lose

The game started off normally, scrounging for supplies for crisis management. We handle the first two crises fine, which had crippling fail states. She's hanging out in the Police Station to search for Tools to "fix the ship" while I'm at different locations to try and fulfill my loyalty objective (Chemical Weapon - meds, weapon, tools) since my Betrayer one was really dangerous (one item from each location). I find a great combo that gave me another die: survivor that reduces zombies at the colony equipped with an item that reduces the food needed to feed them. I'm doing well with two more dice than her but a Crossroads event wipes out two of my survivors (Riot Gear - I chose to close the gates instead of grabbing the gear since I had injuries but the dice rolls go extremely poorly). On that same turn, she contributes two supplies to the main objective... BIG RED FLAG.

We were only on the 3rd turn out of 6, so something was up. She was harping on me all game long about my inability to contribute to the colony objective. I had the impression she was trying to strain my supplies since I had a 2-survivor advantage on dice and that I was making a play on my betrayer objective. She had a bunch of cards and I was thinking she was eventually going to dump Outsider cards, let them starve and force the morale hits (especially after I lost two myself). Nope! I read her hand right but got her objective wrong. She found the the last tool card she needed to complete the main objective on her double-turn and I was two items shy on my loyalty objective. She ended up winning on the fourth after she read me early that I figured she'd go betrayer. Her loyalty objective was Soldiers - at least two survivors, each equipped with a weapon. THIS was why she didn't play the Outsider cards. It helped that she had Anita Wallace, who was able to kill zombies without using a die AND equipped with a shotgun. This let her save dice for searches and pull off the early win (while also denying me the ability to win with her). While I hate losing, I was impressed at her play since these types of tactical games aren't her forte.

Love the game so far. After you learn the mechanics the turn-to-turn decision making is fairly simple but the complexity manifests itself in trying to figure out what the other player(s) are doing. Would definitely recommend if you play with people that like to immerse themselves and are not strictly robotic mechanics-focused players.