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“I’ve enjoyed games of one kind or another since I was a kid,” Brooks, 47, a software developer at Business Objects, said. “They foster creative thinking and competition — also teamwork.”
So when Rick Rodrick started The La Crosse Board Game Group in December, Brooks joined.
Rodrick, 51, a communications professor at the University of Wisconsin-
La Crosse, attended a board game night in Oregon and loved the experience.
“When I got back,” Rodrick said, “I wanted to continue.”
The idea sparked interest, and now the group has 10 regular members. They meet weekly at Peaberry’s coffee shop on Copeland Avenue and play games such as Ticket To Ride and Bootleggers.
John Erickson, 38, a press maintenance/repair specialist at the La Crosse Tribune, said he shows up for several reasons.
“You meet people from all walks of life,” Erickson said. “The beautiful thing about these designer games is they’re entertaining.”
Erickson should know — he owns 269 of them. They’re not the same as American-based party games, he said, in that they require strategy and thinking.
Brooks agreed. He said the European games also require less luck than their American counterparts.
“That’s why they grab our brains the way they do,” Rodrick added.
Brains aren’t the only thing the games are grabbing. They’re also attracting group members from all over the region. At the Thursday gathering Brooks, Rodrick and Erickson were joined by Travis and Amy Sonsolla, both 37, from Rollingstone, Minn.
The husband and wife also belong to a game group in Rochester, Minn., but they travel to La Crosse because they love the nights so much.
“I’ve been a game player all the time,” Amy, who spends her days volunteering, said. “It’s what we did when we dated.”
“We didn’t have money to go out,” said Travis, who works as a controller at Thern Inc. in Winona, Minn.
They drive the same distance — an hour — to Rochester as to La Crosse, he said, but there is a difference.
“The Rochester group is larger because the area’s larger and they’ve been around longer,” Travis said.
Asked to name their favorite designer games, titles such as Blue Moon City, Ticket To Ride and Power Grid are called out. But, that night, the group engaged in a game of Bootleggers.
The object was to make the most money selling and transporting liquor during the prohibition era.
“I wasn’t sure there would be enough interest to have game nights like this in La Crosse,” Rodrick said, “but it seems to be taking hold.”
Want to play?
The La Crosse Board Game Group meets the first and third Thursdays and the second and fourth Wednesdays of each month at Peaberry’s, 40 Copeland Ave., La Crosse.
For more information visit www.boardgames.meetup.com/495 or www.boardgamegeek.
com/guild/433 or e-mail Rick Rodrick at rick.rodrick@gmail.com.
Ryan Stotts can be reached at (608) 791-8446 or ryan.stotts@lee.net.
