10 Games That Changed My Life: A Personal Journey Through Board Gaming
Review by Lincoln Hoppe: The Game Bard
INTRO
I’ve been a heavy board gamer for five years now, and I dabbled for many years before that. But this list isn’t about my favorite games. These are the 10 board games that genuinely changed my life—the ones that taught me something, shifted my perspective, or created unforgettable moments with the people I love. Some changes were bigger than others, but each one left a mark on my journey as a gamer and a person.
(this is taken from youtube video)
“Any time that you sit down with loved ones, friends, strangers, even, and you focus together on a common goal—I think every one of those gameplay experiences can be seen as life changing.”
GAME 10: DUNGEONS & DRAGONS – THE GRANDDADDY OF IT ALL
Rewind to 1980 or 1981. I was staying with my grandparents, alone without my siblings or parents. I didn’t have much interaction with them, but some neighbors invited me over to play Dungeons & Dragons. That single moment taught me two life lessons: first, friends are super important. When you don’t have anything, you realize you need people around you. Second, I discovered the creative amazingness of a role-playing game.
D&D is the granddaddy of RPGs. You’ve got mechanics, player sheets, and then you improvise everything in between. You can play it mechanically, or like a group of actors on Critical Role. That game started everything for me.
GAME 9: DUNGEON MAYHEM – THE GATEWAY
Jump ahead 20-30 years. I discovered a card-driven game for all ages: Dungeon Mayhem. We played this with my young kids about ten years ago, and everyone loved it because it was light, fast-moving, and fun. You’re attacking each other with spells, you can block—all kinds of interesting mechanics. Everyone in my family was willing to play.
This became my true gateway game. It opened up the space for everything that was to come.
GAME 8: STAR REALMS – DISCOVERING DECK BUILDERS
Star Realms was the game that introduced me to deck builders. Holy cow, I thought—you can do so many things with a deck of cards! You can build power, attack, do all kinds of things. I originally bought Star Realms Frontiers, and now I’ve got all the expansions packed into a shoebox full of hundreds of cards.
If you’re not familiar, Star Realms is a deck builder where you’re basically attacking other players across the table. You can play with two, three, or four players. It was mind-blowing that you could attack each other, build a deck, and increase in power. This is what got me into the hobby hardcore.
BONUS: DOMINION – THE GRANDDADDY OF DECK BUILDERS
I can’t move on from Star Realms unless I attach to that same number. Dominion is the granddaddy of all deck-building games. This is an expansion, so ignore the expansion name on the box—but this is the game that brought the entire deck-building genre to life.
I feel like I’m in debt to Dominion because so many amazing games came from it: Dune Imperium, Lost Ruins of Arnak, and countless others. All of them trace back to this game, and I got into that from Star Realms. Dominion is phenomenal.
GAME 6: FRIDAY – DISCOVERING SOLO GAMING
I was working for Porsche North America, doing presentations as an actor. I got to drive 911s on a racetrack at 110 miles an hour—an incredible experience. But I was alone in a gorgeous hotel, and I wandered into a game store asking, “What games can you play by yourself? Does that even exist?”
They said yes, and they gave me a bunch of games. One of them was Friday, a solo-only deck builder by Friedman Friese (who loves green, and I love green too).
In Friday, you’re trying to survive as long as possible. The cards are multi-use, and the cost goes up as your deck gets more powerful. This was the first game that taught me solo gaming existed. I could sit in my hotel room for 23.5 hours and play this game by myself. I played it a ton and loved it. It’s still phenomenal.
GAME 7: FLUX – LEARNING TO BE A LESS SELFISH GAMER
Next, we have Flux. This is a game where you’re playing cards down, and as you play rules cards, the rules of the game change. It’s wacky and gets out of hand—sometimes you’re following eight rules at once!
Here’s the thing: I don’t love Flux. But my family kept saying, “Let’s play Flux! Let’s play Flux!” And I wanted to play something heavier. So we’d sit there unable to decide what to play. The lesson I learned was this: sometimes you’ve got to play a game that isn’t your favorite so that the people with you will play a game and love it and enjoy it.
That’s how Flux changed my life. It taught me to be a less selfish gamer.
GAME 5: WINGSPAN – DISCOVERING ENGINE BUILDERS
Wingspan is a phenomenal tableau-building game that spawned expansions and sister games like Wormspan and Finspan. In Wingspan, you’re building an engine by placing gorgeous birds down and powering them up. When you do a certain action, you get to power all your birds in the row.
This game taught me that you could build an engine in your game. Engine builders were news to me, and it absolutely blew my mind. But here’s what was really life-changing: I had a teenage son at the time who had zero interest in a game with birds. We convinced him to play. On his first playthrough, he said, “This is incredible. This is amazing.” I saw his eyes light up.
There’s something magical about Wingspan. It’s building your tableau, placing those cards into their habitat, activating all those powers you’ve built. My first true Euro game experience—and it still holds up today.
BONUS: EVERDELL – CREATING A WORLD I WANTED TO LIVE IN
I have to say this at the same time as Wingspan. Everdell is another tableau-building game that absolutely blew my mind. Everdell did something different: it created a world I wanted to live in. It was the first game that made me think, “I want to crawl into these cards. I want to shrink down, get on the table, and pick up these berries and live in this world.”
I didn’t know board games could do that. When I first got Everdell, the art, the presentation, the tree—it’s all gorgeous. It’s resource management and worker placement done really smartly. It’s not a simple game (it’s about 3.2 on BoardGameGeek’s complexity scale), and there’s complex card interaction and strategic planning involved.
But it really opened me up to the theme of a board game capturing my imagination and making me want to live there. I absolutely love that.
GAME 4: DICE THRONE – DISCOVERING THE JOY OF DICE
I was at a Barnes & Noble and discovered they had real board games. I walked by Dice Throne and thought it looked interesting. I looked it up on BoardGameGeek.com—the first game I’d ever checked before purchasing. That was my introduction to BGG, which changed my life in its own way.
Dice Throne is so fun. Designed by Manny Trembley (who also does the art—mind-blowing), it’s a Yahtzee-style dice game where you roll five dice up to three times, keep whichever ones you want, and use your player board to qualify for powers. The game tray system is incredible.
What I discovered was that I had no idea how fun dice could be or how strategic dice rolling could be. You mitigate luck by rerolling whichever dice you want, and you’re seeking goals that can change mid-game. I loved throwing dice, and Dice Throne showed me why.
GAME 3: CASCADIA – THE COZY MASTERPIECE
If you ask me to play Cascadia any day, I will say yes. It may be in my top five favorite board games of all time. This is a gorgeous tile-laying game that taught me how cozy and relaxing a board game can be.
Cascadia takes place in a beautiful, simple wilderness. You’re drawing tactile, gorgeous, chunky wooden chips for animals, drafting tiles and animals at the same time, and building your own little wilderness. This game blew my mind while relaxing me like no other board game had done before.
Cascadia is strategic, yet the choices are simpler and more pared down. It allows you to go into that Zen, relaxed, meditative state. Still one of my favorite games of all times. If you like relaxing games, please give Cascadia a try.
BONUS: CARCASSONNE – LEARNING TO LOVE TILE LAYING
Honorable mention also goes to Carcassonne for teaching me first how much I love laying tiles. So thank you Carcassonne.
GAME 2: SCYTHE – OPENING MY EYES TO DESIGN
Next we have another one of my favorite games of all times, a game that I resisted for so long. When Scythe first came out, it was super popular. I heard it was complex and it sounded scary. So I said, “Oh no, thank you.” My opinion has greatly changed.
Scythe is incredible. It’s an engine-building, worker-placement, area-control game that blew my mind by how much you can do in one game. It introduced me to player boards and how much I love playable boards. My sons and I have absolutely loved playing this together, and my wife too.
The experience around the table with my family being blown away by how many things could be done—someone coming back when everyone thought they were losing, nobody seeing it coming—there are just so many incredible cinematic moments. This game opened my eyes to maybe board games should be a bigger part of my life than just playing them. It made me wonder: how do people design games like this? Could I ever possibly do that?
BONUS: RISE OF FENRIS – THE BEST EXPANSION EVER
I can’t move on without mentioning possibly the best expansion of all times that I’ve ever played. A non-legacy expansion with spoilers and surprises: Rise of Fenris.
This expansion is incredible. We played this whole thing in a week. There are eight missions in the campaign. First campaign game that we played. I absolutely loved it. The surprise box is incredible. Unbelievable. That’s all I can say without spoiling anything, but it’s also modular, so you can go back and play any module that you unlocked and add it to your game of Scythe.
Mind-blowing to me and changed my life in the way that I looked at how expansions were made, what they did. The thrilling game experiences that we had playing Rise of Fenris were absolutely incredible. So again, just life-changing for me and my sons playing together and really enjoying that. I can’t get enough of Scythe.
GAME 1: LORD OF THE RINGS: FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING – SHATTERING MY PREJUDICES
Okay, I think we’re onto my last thing in the list. And this is definitely the most modern game. There are so many games that could come in here, but one stood out above the rest.
There are genres of games I do not like. I don’t like roll and move—it’s too boring. And I don’t like trick-taking games. I just don’t. But every now and then comes a game that absolutely shatters a deep-set opinion or prejudice against a certain type of game. And this game shattered that.
Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring is a trick-taking game, but it’s cooperative. You’re basically playing tricks—like Hearts, where if someone plays a certain suit, you have to follow the suit if you can. You’re getting rid of all your cards around the table while trying to complete missions.
I remember playing at PAX Unplugged with my friends on the All Play team. At first, I was like, “I don’t get it. I don’t know trick-taking games.” We failed the first mission, failed the second time, then passed the third time. And I was like, “Oh, I think I get it.” We kept playing through, and I got better at it because I’d played so few trick-taking games—which may be why I hated them. But I just loved this one.
This game turned my world upside down. It shattered my prejudice against an entire genre and made me realize that sometimes the games we think we hate just need the right execution.
BONUS: Sail– BLURRING THE LINES
Now I mentioned All Play. Sale by All Play is another game that really changed my opinion about trick-taking games. Sale is different. You’re using powers, and if you don’t like trick-taking games and if you don’t like this, you should probably still check out Sale. If you want to be moved in your opinion, if you like other mechanics, Sale uses all these other mechanics. It’s cooperative as well.
If you want a board game experience in a trick-taking game, you should check out Sale. It really blurs the lines of trick-taking and board game beautifully. And it’s beautiful. And it’s in a tiny little box.
VERDICT
Some of those changes were bigger than others, but here’s what I want you to keep in mind: any time you sit down with loved ones, friends, or even strangers, and you focus together on a common goal—whether you’re attacking each other or getting more points—when you’re working together around the table centered on a board game, every one of those gameplay experiences can be seen as life-changing.
Maybe it’s just a little bit. Maybe it’s a teensy-weensy little bit. But I believe that’s life-changing. Anytime I sit around a table with my family and we laugh, get upset at each other, or block someone’s move—these are memorable moments. These are fun. These are how we react and survive together as human beings.
A board game is an opportunity to sit around a table and generate memories, moments, and experiences. I’ve shared games where I can remember specific gameplay experiences from 40 years ago. That’s what I love about this hobby: you can sit down with a group, zone in together, be in the moment, and make experiences and memories that last for the rest of your life.
Isn’t that great?
by Lincoln Hoppe
Original Music by Lincoln Hoppe: The Game Bard
No review copies provided.
My Board Game Geek Page: Lincoln Hoppe
Lincoln Hoppe
Lincoln a professional film & Television actor based in Los Angeles, California.
He has a family with 5 kids, and one of his joys in life is playing games together as a family.
He's on a mission to spread the love and mental health benefits of play and board gaming to the world.
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