Recently played Games:Who am I?I was born in may 1985 so I'm rather young compared to some folks out there!
I was born in Lille (north of France) and both my parents are French but I've lived all my life in foreign countries.
It started with Aberdeen in Scotland (age 0 to 1 so don't ask me what I thought about it!). Afterwards came Port-Harcourt (Nigeria) for 4 years. This is where my first memories are. We then went to Singapore for another 4 years.
After a brief passage in the south of Paris (6 months!), I changed continent and went to live in Caracas (Venezuela) my teen years.
And finally from 16 to 18 y/o I have lived in Dubaï (UAE). After I had my Baccalauréat, I left my parents and went studying in Paris.
I started by 3 years of prépa in Collège Stanislas in MP (Maths-Physics).
For those who are not familiar with this typical french system, it means that during 3 years I did nothing else than preparing "concours" for several "Grandes Ecoles" which are the most prestigious universities in France (Sciences Po, HEC or for me as scientific: Polytechnique).
After these three years, I got into ENSAE (a stat school) in Paris.
I've been there since 2006 and validated my two first years. I am now in internship at Calyon (I'm studying finance).
My boardgaming historyI have been gaming for as long as I remember. It started with the obvious roll and moves games like monopoly, la bonne paye and Mad that we always had in our home.
However, my first real experiences were made in Cadaquès, a small village in the north of Spain. My parents had an appartment and every summer, my whole family came their for 2 or 3 weeks since I was born. Since my sister's birthday came in july and my cousin's in August, we usually wished both at te same time and since it would be hard to get them gifts without angering all smaller cousins (me included
). This was resolved by offring all the small cousins boardgames. This is where I dicovered Monster Mash (one of my all-time favorite), Loopin' Louie, Labyrinth, Les secrets de Pékin, Survive (les rescapés de l'atlantide) and others fun games for children. I also used to play Mah-Jongh (I don't remember how it spells!) there with my grand-parents, mother and cousin and it is still a game I enjoy.
One year, me (11 y/o) and my closest cousin Greg (12 y/o) got acquainted with Boris (11 y/o), a Cadaquès first-timer. Our friendship really took off and he came pretty often afterwards. One year, he introduced us to "strategy games". Games where luck didn't matter as much as the games I was used to and where Thinking was the real thing! Those games were Armada (in retrospect, I don't like the game that much but hey, that's all I knew at the time) and Power. We really loved those games and played pretty often year after year.
So some time later, when I went with my mother to buy the games for this summer's birthday celebrations (I guess in 1996), I went in a boardgame shop in Lille (first time I went in such a store and I was immediately subdued by the shelves packed with games!). After getting counselled, we bought Settlers of Catan and Méditerranée (Serenissima). Serenissima didn't get a lot of success but Settlers sure did and it is still one of our most played game in Cadaquès.
In 2002, I invited friends from Dubaï to Cadaquès and got to play Serenissima. They all loved it and since the game didn't get much playtime with my cousins, I brought it back with me to Dubaï where my best friend and I (César) played multiple time in my Terminale (2002-2003).
I stopped playing boardgames in prépa and recentered on card games such as Tarot and Belotte Cointrée (Tarot I learned with my parents when I was young, Cointrée during Prepa)
I got Puerto Rico at christmas 2006 (I think) and didn't get to play it until 2007's summer with some friends from ENSAE. Indeed after one year playing exclusively poker (mostly Texas Hold'em but one occasional game of Stud 7 or Omaha) at the ENSAE, Matthieu and I found out a common taste for Méditerranée and Settlers, we got together and played once or twice during the year. During the summer, I had to make a trip with two other poker players that were in the poker club Matthieu and I had created. I brought along Puerto Rico and it was a blast. We played it again and again once back in Paris. I finally brought Pillars (got it the preceding Christmas and had never played it) but it wasn't such a success.
Since we started playing a lot, I started buying some new games: Caylus, T&E (exchanged against Pillars), Imperial, Funenschlag in October 2007.
I only bought heavy euros for multiplayers but at the end of my second year in ENSAE, we started having less and less time to play (exams, got girlfriends...).
This is when I started playing with my girlfriend Laurène, we started directly with Caylus... Bad idea, I then started playing some faster games for 2 players (Traders of Carthage, Race for the galaxy...).
Now my gamegroup starts playing again and now I majoritarily play 2 player short games with my gf or with Matthieu and some heavy multi player euros with others.
My BGG:I've been using BGG since summer 2007. However, I wasn't even logged in until early 2008.
In fact, I always used trictrac.fr (the french equivalent to BGG) to contribute, comment, post in the forums.
One day, a T&E contest was launched between TT users. Since we were to play at BGG, I had to log myself in and so I did.
I started contributing on BGG as I felt I needed to give back something to it.
I started my rating my games and commenting them. I will eventually rate and comment all the games I have played. The games that are "owned" are those that I have at my place in Paris, those I have in Cadaquès or at my parent's in Montpellier are not logged.
I logged all my plays for the past year, each logged play has a comment (a mini session report). Games up until summer 2008 are commented in French as they used to be logged on trictrac. If I play a game with its expansion, the play is logged under the base game. I do not log online plays, only face to face. There are some games I played that weren't logged (lik my abstracts, I haven't played them for some time now and didn't log plays when I played them).
Party games logged do not have comments.
If I feel a game was interesting or that the context was original, I sometimes write a session report on the game.
My reviews are, as of now, short reviews that concern two abstract games that weren't reviewed until now (or only once).
I upload photos only if I feel they give information that is missing in the database. I do not submit non informative photos as I am a poor photographer with a bad camera (you can notice that my photos aren't very nice, often a bit blurry...) but I feel that even though they are very low quality, the information they give is important (well... as much as any information on a game could be important...)
The geeklists I created don't really follow any kind of logic, they are just ideas of geeklists I had and created them on a whim.
What I'm doing now: I'm writing a meatier review on Imperial, it will not be the same format as my two previous reviews.
I'm working on the translation in french of 1936 Guerra Civil.
I'm still geekmodding from time to time.
My top 10 is an unranked list of games I feel are really really great.
My hot 10 are the games I really really want to play right now (usually newer games).
What kind of player am I?in progress
