Why I Started Boardgamist

For me, starting this business came from a personal ambition to be a little more childlike, to play more and to move away from screens. I wanted to work for myself too, and I'd heard plenty about how impossible that can be, so I knew the only way through was to build something around what I genuinely love. Boardgamist is the result: an independent shop built around my belief that play is important, that discovering new things should be exciting, and that some of our best time together happens around a table.

Board games have an incredible ability to bring people together because when you sit around a table, you're concentrating on something together and sharing an experience. They can be the reason a regular group of old friends actually meets up, a way for a family to come together at home away from their screens, or even the social glue that turns a table of complete strangers into people sharing a brilliant evening. Playing together within the rules creates this little controllable world that anyone can enjoy, whether that's the chaos and laughter of a bluffing party game or the brain-melting puzzle of a complex strategy game.

That's what I think the board game hobby is really about, and it's why I'm careful about what I put on the shelves at Boardgamist. There are retailers who will stock whatever is turning a profit or attracting hype, even when the game itself isn't a particularly good experience. I don't want to do that. I don't want to impose my own tastes on you either (the games I love won't necessarily be the games you love) but I know a bad game when I see one, and I refuse to stock something I think is likely to leave you feeling disappointed after spending your money, learning the rules and giving up an evening to play it.

There are simply too many incredible board games to choose from. I can't stock everything, so my collection is carefully curated and I see my role as pointing you in the right direction. If you ask me for a recommendation, I'm much more interested in who you're playing with, how long you've got and what sort of experience you want than what's currently at the top of a bestseller list. The right game isn't necessarily the most popular game; it's the one that works for your table.

More than anything, I want Boardgamist to be about discovering something new. Sometimes that discovery can be surprisingly big, like seeing a completely new side to someone you've known for years because of what happens around the table. Sometimes it's tiny: a clever mechanism, an unexpected decision or just a little novelty hidden inside a game that makes you smile. I love that board games can still surprise us like that, and I want more people to experience it.

Boardgamist is still a small independent business and the personal side of it matters enormously to me. I choose the games, make the recommendations, answer the messages and pack the orders myself. So if you discover something here that you end up loving, please let me know, because that joy genuinely fuels my ambition to keep building Boardgamist.

Thank you for supporting my shop, trusting my recommendations and, most importantly, trusting me with your game night. I hope I can help you find your next favourite game.

Dan
Founder, Boardgamist