It’s officially been five years since my first blog post. I wrote about last year’s anniversary, and with every passing year, I like to take a look back down Memory Lane. 

As I sit at my dining table plugging away on my laptop, my back toward my Kallax shelves full of board games, I can’t help to think of the first games to enter my collection, the catalyst to the inevitable transformation of my dining room area to board gaming central — mini-studio lights and all.

The first five games in my collection were Catan, Ticket to Ride, Agricola, Arkham Horror and Twilight Struggle. Catan, TTR and Twilight Struggle were all gifts, and Arkham and Agricola I purchased after a deep dive into the BGG rankings. 

A few months ago, after a game of Agricola, nostalgia spurred me to share on Twitter these five games and asked followers which five hobby games first entered in their collections. 

Feeling nostalgic since my Agricola game last night. What were the first five hobby games in your collection? Mine were:

1. Ticket to Ride
2. Catan
3. Agricola
4. Arkham Horror
5. Twilight Struggle

— Meeple Lady💃🏽🌵🇵🇭 (@MeepleLady) June 19, 2019

Well, the Twitterverse did not disappoint. 

I received over 850 board game submissions, and I thought it’d be fun to compile that information and see which games were most often mentioned. A good majority of my Twitter followers seemingly entered the hobby around the same time I did, based on their responses.

For clarity’s sake, I lumped versions/editions/expansions into the base game of the same name. For example, I grouped all of The Settlers of Catans and Catan Seafarers all under Catan.  The top 12 results are below in a nifty data visualization I created. (You can hover over each bar to get more information.)

And here are the top 25 games mentioned, broken down by years. There appears to be a dark period there, based on the responses, between 1985-1995. (I’m pretty sure a lot of people were playing all those Milton Bradley games, such as Shogun). 

Then in 1995, Catan debuted and helped usher in the Golden Age of board gaming. And as they say, the rest is history. 

I still have a fondness for my first five games (which are all still present in my collection), but, in all honesty, I’d probably only play four of them if asked right this minute. I’ll let you guess which one wouldn’t make the cut. 

What were the first five hobby games in your collection, and which of them do you still own?