Board game lovers gather for their Super Bowl

‘A lot of people are looking for meaningful social interaction coming out of quarantine, and this gives them exactly that. We all love board games, but the best part is having so many welcoming people, who love teaching others how to play a game they don’t know and others willing to try a new game.’

Cheryl Harrison, event organizer of 24-hour Board Game Marathon sponsored by the Beers and Board Games of Columbus club

It looked like Josh Kreais was warming up for a real marathon instead of preparing to play 24 straight hours of board games.

He was almost in a full sweat on a 40-degree day after running to and from his car over and over and over.

Each time Kreais entered the Olentangy River Brewing Company in Lewis Center Saturday, he was hauling and unloading multiple bags of board games he had brought from his home.

For Kreais, and the other board game lovers already gathered inside the brewery, this was their Super Bowl.

“This is the day I get to dust off some of these, and it’s a day that’s locked on the calendar every year,” said Kreias, 36, a realtor from Dublin. “It’s hard to beat a day where you get to hang out with friends, meet new people, play board games you love or some you have never heard of, all while raising money for something so needed.”

About 150 board game enthusiasts were expected to join Kreias at the seventh annual 24-hour Board Game Marathon sponsored by the Beers and Board Games of Columbus club.

The event is a fundraiser for Nationwide Children’s Hospital. The club has helped raise $45,000 over the years for the local hospital. This year it had already raised $5,000 with the hope of raising another $5,000 during the marathon, according to the event organizer Cheryl Harrison.

The event is part of Extra Life, a series of video game and board game marathons held across the United States and Canada to raise money for children’s hospitals.

Most folks were planning to stay for a few hours or the rest of the day or night. But a few devoted board gamers were planning to tough it out all the way from the event’s start at 11 a.m. on Saturday to its conclusion on Sunday at 10 a.m. (Don’t forget about the extra hour from turning the clock back early Sunday morning.)

The event featured hundreds of board games.

Some, like Scrabble, Monopoly and Clue, you probably have heard of. Others, like Sushi Go Party, Captain Sonar and Goodcritters you probably haven’t.

Some of the games require only two players and some can include as many as 50.

Some cost $15 and others $125.

Some take five minutes to play and others can last for six hours.

Some involve dice and strategy, while others have themes featuring zombies, war, and puzzle solving.

“You can relate to some of the new games by playing the ones most of us have heard of,” Kreais said. “If you love Monopoly, you would love Machi Koro. If you love Scrabble, you would love Bananagrams. If you love Clue, you would love Betrayal At House On the Hill.”

Beers and Board Games of Columbus was founded in 2013 by Harrison, 32, of Clintonville, who is the fundraiser organizer.

Harrison simply wanted more people to play games with and went on Twitter looking for board game enthusiasts. The club’s first meeting consisted of five or six people, then grew to 10 to 20 at weekly meetings. Now there are about 2,000 members who belong to the Facebook group.

They meet every Wednesday from 5:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. at a brewery somewhere in Greater Columbus. And while this is the club’s big event, they hold other fundraisers for other causes throughout the year.

“A lot of people are looking for meaningful social interaction coming out of quarantine, and this gives them exactly that,” Harrison said. “We all love board games, but the best part is having so many welcoming people, who love teaching others how to play a game they don’t know and others willing to try a new game.”

Patrick Jones, 47, of Galloway, was one of the board game diehards planning to stick it out for 24 hours.

A veteran of this event, he said the key to making it through is planning the right strategy. It’s important to play the more involved, complicated or longer games earlier in the day, he explained. And then for the brutal hours in the middle of the night, it’s better to switch to a game like Charades that forces people to get up from their tables and move a little.

“I’m not going to lie. You are like, ‘Thank God it’s over at the end because it’s tiring,” said Jones, who works in IT security. “But it’s a ton of fun and gives you a great sense of accomplishment in the end knowing all of it helped children.”