Here we are a week out from Christmas Day ’09 and many gamers’ thoughts are filled with visions of new board games underneath the tree. Will Big Billy get that copy of SPACE HULK he’s always wanted? Did Santa remember to get the all-important SHATTERED EMPIRES expansion to go alongside Wee Willy’s copy of TWILIGHT IMPERIUM? Or will the Yuletide hopes and dreams of gamers everywhere be crushed once again with ill-considered gifts of themed MONOPOLY variants?

While the hobbyists pass off their “want lists” to significant others and justify outrageous credit card expenditures as gifts for themselves, the mainstream consumer is right now more aware of board games than any other time of the year. Anywhere you go, there are board games on display: grocery stores, drug stores, gas stations- anywhere where a last-minute shopper may rush in to complete their orgy of expenditure. Piles of games- some from hobby publishers- are stacked high in most major book stores. Most of these soul-crushing party games, boring old “classics” and movie tie-ins end up relegated to closets and dusty shelves before idling their time away before the inevitable death march to the yard sale, thrift store, or garbage can. It’s the dark side of giving games at Christmas.

But nonetheless, the anticipation of new games under the tree mounts for many, but once again I’m more than content to not receive a single game for Christmas. In fact, I don’t think I’ve gotten a board game for Christmas in at least ten years. I’m actually kind of thankful that I haven’t, particularly at a time when I am more interested in paring down the collection to only my favorite and most played games although the common gamer wisdom is “more, more, more”. Not only that, I’m terrified at the thought of my parents or even my wife wandering into the alien darkness of a hobby games store and trying to pick out a game. Or worse, asking an employee for a recommendation. I’m not very good at receiving gifts that I don’t really want, and I’m not quite sure how I’d handle unwrapping a copy of TOMB. Talk about a lump of coal.

The last time I received a gift game aside from the joke FANTASY ISLAND game my wife gave me a couple of years go was when my mother actually did go to a game shop and ask an employee to help her pick out a present. The result was this hideous bingo-like board game called SEQUENCE. The shopkeep told her that I would love the game, that it was a big seller, and that it was great. Maybe it sold well, but he was dead wrong on the other counts. Prior to that fiasco, my parents strangely bought me a starter pack of the long-defunct STAR TREK CCG. I never met anyone else who played it and I never bought any more to make a playable deck. Another Christmas gaming disaster was when I was into WARHAMMER 40k circa 1991. My sisters went out to a game shop and were somehow convinced to buy all these random models and expensive homebrew resin add-ons. All of it was Ork stuff. I played Space Marines.

I’m glad that I won’t be getting any new games for Christmas this year unless Fantasy Flight decides to surprise the press again with an amazing box of promo games like they did last year. Getting TALISMAN, COSMIC ENCOUNTER, and ANDROID in a big box on the porch was as close to a Christmas Miracle as a gamer could ever hope for. It’s not that I wouldn’t love to find a copy of CHAOS IN THE OLD WORLD under the tree, but I’d really just as soon get a nice fruitcake. Nor will I be giving any games as presents because I think that in most cases, unless you just really know what a person wants, then games are worse presents than fruitcake. At least you can eat fruitcake. A bad board game is completely useless unless you need to start a fire in a pinch.

But- and this is the point where Scrooge redeems himself and the Grinch’s heart gets bigger- there was one Christmas where I got some good board games. I think it was 1986 or 1987. This was back when Milton Bradley’s fabled Gamemaster games roamed the aisles of Richway and other major toy retailers. For some reason that is lost to time, my friend’s mom took me shopping with her to pick out Christmas presents for him. I convinced her that he really wanted AXIS AND ALLIES and FORTRESS: AMERICA. I thought I was being really smart since I would get to play them too. Low and behold, my parents wound up getting me both of the games- they just bought them on a whim, thinking that they looked like something that I would like. And of course I did, I remember sitting there Christmas night cutting all the plastic figures off their sprues and setting it all up, reading the rules so I’d know how to play. With two copies of both games in the neighborhood, we played the crap out of them for a couple of years. Thinking back on it, those were the two of the most important games I’ve ever owned, and they were presents. I may not be here writing this column today if it weren’t for them.

Maybe games sometimes do make great gifts- when it’s the right game to the right person, at the right time in their life. But I’m a bitter, jaded gamer whose eyes don’t light up anymore when I think of waking up Christmas morning to a magically delivered bundle of games. So if you were thinking about getting me something for Christmas, go the fruitcake route and don’t send me a copy of CRANIUM or- for god’s sake- the TWILIGHT board game. But if you must gift me a game, I really would like to have my own copy of CHAOS IN THE OLD WORLD. Santa, can you read me?

Questions or comments for Michael? Send them along to wabner@gameshark.com .

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