I have a confession to make:

I’ve become addicted to board games.

Correction.

I’ve developed a board game-related addiction.

And it’s called TableTop.

I’m not entirely sure when this happened, but sometime within the past two years, I began searching for a new Christmas gift for my lovely wife. She had expressed a desire to spend more time together that wasn’t centered around the television (which can be really difficult in this day and age).

TableTop is (was) a web series hosted by Wil Wheaton. Each episode usually features one board game, where Wheaton briefly explains the rules and mechanics before sitting down to play with three guests for the duration of the episode.

But back to my newfound quest for a new board game…

I hunted high and low for interesting titles at local stores and scoured the internet for reviews. The results were often overwhelming. On top of that, most of these games started around fifty bucks and only climbed higher from there. Dropping that kind of cash on a board game without ever playing it first just seemed like too much of a risk.

Still, I was determined not to let sticker shock scare me away. I wanted to find something vastly different from the games I had grown up playing as a kid. Not that Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit (especially the Totally 80s Edition), or Risk and the like were banned from my house. They just felt overplayed, and I had become disinterested in them.

Board Game Quest Side Note: Lisa despises Monopoly. And while despise may be too harsh a word for a silly board game, I don’t blame her position. I’ve seen friendly games turn into ugly arguments faster than just about anything else. She dislikes the game enough that we don’t even own a copy, and I’ve yet to convince her to play a single game since we’ve been together. (Not that Monopoly is all that fun with just two players anyway, but that’s beside the point — and an entirely different conversation altogether.)

Back to the quest…

After searching for things like “best modern board games” and “best board games for two players,” one title kept appearing over and over again in the results: Pandemic.

Pandemic is a cooperative board game built around the idea that four deadly diseases have broken out across the globe, each threatening a different region. Unlike most traditional board games, Pandemic isn’t about defeating the other players. Everyone works together to discover cures before the world spirals completely out of control.

To understand the basic mechanics in under 30 minutes, feel free to check out the TableTop episode below.

“…I have had more fun losing this game than I have had winning a lot of others.” — Wil Wheaton

While it’s a great introduction to the game, keep in mind that these four are playing the “Legendary” version, which also happens to be the highest difficulty level available. I would never recommend that to anyone playing for the first time — or even the hundredth time. (It’s hard enough to win with just two Epidemic cards in the stack, let alone all six.)

This show has resulted in at least two additions to our ever-growing board game collection over the past 18 months, along with an Amazon wishlist that seems to grow every single week. So if my venture into modern board games has intrigued you, here are my recommendations:

• Try to locate a local retailer that specializes in games.
• Worst-case scenario, there’s always Barnes & Noble or Amazon.
• Look for titles outside the usual Milton Bradley or Hasbro catalog.
• Research replay value before buying anything.
• I highly recommend starting with Board Game Geek and going from there.
• Lastly, see if Wil Wheaton has played the game with his friends on TableTop.

If all signs point to yes, congratulations — you’ve probably found your next board game.

Go buy a board game and have some fun.

Board games are a great way to socialize without relying on the technology that already dominates so much of our lives. Disconnect. Unplug.

Leave your smartphone in the other room and really get to know the person sitting across the table from you — the person who just might help you save the world.

Somewhere along the way, these games stopped being about winning and became another excuse for Lisa and me to spend intentional time together without distractions.

Trust me. You’ll thank me later. I promise.