All a-board Whether a classic from your childhood or one of many created in the current boom, today’s the day for tabletop game play By: David Sanderson Posted: 3:00 AM CDT Saturday, Jun. 1, 2024

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This article was published 01/06/2024 (846 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

International Tabletop Day, an occasion that encourages people to spend a few hours playing their favourite board games, falls annually on the first Saturday in June.

Board game collector extraordinaire Matthew Bencharski wasn’t previously familiar with the faux holiday but now that he is, he knows precisely which of the 800 or so games monopolizing one wing of his rec room he’ll roll out first.

“There’s a pretty interesting story behind this one,” he says, reaching for Battle Masters, a combat game by Milton Bradley that comes with close to 1,000 pieces and is contested on a 20-square-foot, plastic fold-out mat.

Bencharski, 41, received the game as a Christmas present when it was originally released in 1992, only his parents sold it at a garage sale years later, after he had moved out. He was at the Value Village outlet on Jefferson Avenue a while back when he spotted a used copy of Battle Masters on a shelf. Figuring the price was right at just a few dollars, he tossed it in his shopping cart.

He opened the game up when he returned home to reacquaint himself with the rules. That was when he exclaimed “you have got to be kidding me” loud enough for his wife and three children to hear. On the inside of the box was his full signature written in black felt marker, from when he was probably 11 years old, he says, showing off his John Hancock.

“I couldn’t believe it. Not only did I get my game back, I got my game back.”

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When it comes to collecting, Bencharski’s first love will always be video games. He had acquired so many by his early 30s — in the neighbourhood of 3,500, in every conceivable format — that it had become increasingly difficult to score ones he didn’t own already or was remotely interested in, he says, dressed in shorts, sandals and a blue Atari T-shirt. The thing was, he still enjoyed hitting garage sales and thrift shops on the weekend to hunt for this or that, so he changed his tack by setting his sights on board games, instead.

He was initially on the hunt for ones he remembered from his youth, classics such as Sorry, Mille Bornes and Clue that he and his younger brother would have played at their home in the North End or at a family cottage at Winnipeg Beach.

It didn’t take long for the collecting bug to bite hard, mind you. Before you could say “do not pass Go, do not collect $200,” the junior high school teacher was scooping up anything and everything he could get his hands on, so long as it was fully intact and met his two main caveats.

“My No. 1 rule is they have to be inexpensive; I don’t like to pay more than five bucks,” he says, brushing his hand over a game inspired by the blockbuster movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind that still carries a $2.99 Good Will price tag. “Second, I grew up in the ’80s and ’90s so games from that period really appeal to me, things like HeroQuest (a fantasy-adventure game from 1989) and The Omega Virus (a save-the-planet entry from 1992).”

While some board-game collectors preserve their treasures in shadow boxes, Bencharski, whose filing method is “anywhere it fits,” doesn’t shy away from handling his on a regular basis. When his daughter, now 23, was younger, Friday nights were almost always game nights. First they would decide on the menu for the evening, then they would jointly settle on what games to dive into, once the dishes were done.

“Our oldest son is 14 and isn’t as interested as he once was, but the nine-year-old still thinks it’s pretty cool. These days, he’s the one who usually picks the game,” he says.

At this juncture, Bencharski has most of the usual suspects, such as Battleship and Life. He also has a fair number inspired by popular TV shows (Charlie’s Angels! Mork and Mindy! The Love Boat!), as well as some that fall under the category “board silly.”

One of those is Dream Phone, a game from 1991 directed at teenage girls that calls on participants to figure out which one of 24 guys pictured on playing cards has a mad crush on them. Players pose questions to each over a provided electronic touch-tone telephone, hear their secret admirer respond “you’re right, I really like you,” and win the game.

Another oddity is 1982’s True Dough Mania, the name of which was a not-so-subtle stab at Canada’s 15th — and 17th — prime minister, Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Players are forced to deal with national issues such as acid rain and metrification. Be the first to lose — yes, lose — all your assets to the federal government and you’re the victor.

“Oh, and this might be the oddest of them all,” he says, reaching for Snifty Snakes, a four-person game from 1975. “What you have to do is move your pieces around the board, by pushing them along with a long, plastic snake nose that’s attached to a pair of glasses you wear on your face. Even the kids thought it was creepy.”

Dorian Zaharia is one of the administrators for Winnipeg Tabletop Trading Post, a Facebook group wholly devoted to buying, selling and trading tabletop games. It was created in 2019 and really took off during the early days of the pandemic.

“We get a range of stuff with the group, both old and new,” Zaharia says, noting current membership is currently a tick over 1,300. “There are random games that have been hanging out in closets a little too long, some vintage treasures as well as modern games, from silly party games to the more strategy-focused ones and everything in between.”

Zaharia, whose favourite game is 2018’s Root, feels there are a number of reasons for board games’ enduring popularity, in a day and age when the video-game industry pulls in an estimated $350 billion annually.

“The social interaction is a big part, (but) the other big factor for their continued success is their approachability. I can get people of all ages to sit down and enjoy a game together, whereas people, especially older generations, tend to be a bit more hesitant if I were to hand them a controller,” he says.

Back in his basement, Bencharski says games-as-teaching-tools is another plus in their favour. He often brings selections from his assortment to school for his students to play, as he feels they assist with math, reading and problem-solving skills. That and he isn’t sure he’d know where Yakutsk or Kamchatka are located, if it wasn’t for Risk.

That said, he recently made the difficult decision to begin culling his cache, in order to provide his wife with a workout space devoid of errant Ker-Plunk marbles or Scrabble letters. An online ad he placed in April drew hundreds of responses (many were interested in Trump: The Game), plus he intends to rent a booth at Thirsty’s Flea Market at 1111 Ellice Ave. later this summer to gauge demand.

“A while ago, my wife and I had a talk about what the long-term goal was,” he says. “Am I going to be 70 years old, surrounded by hundreds of games, or do I get rid of them while I’m still young enough to enjoy the proceeds?”

Are we to surmise, then, that his days of rolling the dice are slowly fading? Not exactly.

“I bought another game, just last week,” he admits somewhat sheepishly. “It’s based on that old Canadian kids’ cartoon Dudley the Dragon and was only $1.99 at the Sally Ann, so what did I have to lose?”

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca