by Justin Bell

My latest obsession on Board Game Arena is Nucleum, the Board&Dice production currently in alpha. I thought Nucleum was pretty good as a board game, but playing it twenty more times on BGA—in addition to plays and reviews I’ve now done of two expansions, Nucleum: Australia and Nucleum: Energy Research Institute—has made it become one of my favorite games. After chatting with Nucleum co-designer Dávid Turczi at SPIEL Essen last fall, I have it on good authority that we are going to get more Nucleum games for years to come, so I’m just as invested as the designers are.

I wish I had more time for two-hour live plays of Nucleum, but such is the way with work travel, family life, and “IRL” game nights. So, I do my Nucleum plays async on BGA, meaning I take a turn, then the next player has a window of time—a day, maybe two—to take their turn.

On paper, I always think that means I’ll take at least one turn of my current game of Nucleum every day. The reality is quite different. That’s because right now, while reading this article, there’s someone in Reykjavik, Dhaka, Tuscaloosa or Le Mans waiting for you to log onto BGA and take care of your business.

Yeah, it’s your turn.

***

I am not normally obsessed with my phone; often, I leave my Pixel phone flipped over (Google calls this “Flip to Shhh”) because I don’t want to be bothered. This changes when I’m doing async plays on BGA, stressing my next move. That makes me a phone obsessive, as I stare at my phone between meetings waiting to see if it’s my turn on table #811104232.

I always start async plays with the best of intentions, setting up games with other people who have 100% positive reputations on Board Game Arena. I try to remember asking opponents upfront to join only if they are willing to take at least one, ideally two turns a day…let’s try to keep this thing moving.

How hard can that be?, I ask myself. We’re talking about relatively simple decisions in a game of, say, The White Castle. Pick a die, pick a spot, take the action. Bing, bang, boom!

And usually, everything starts off well enough. Depending on the game, players select their faction, pick a personal milestone card, select their starting hex, and make other pre-game choices to set up whatever game we’ve chosen. They take their first couple of turns within a few hours of getting the e-mail notification, that simple reminder that it is, in fact, your turn.

But sometimes, players don’t take their turn. Sometimes, they agree to start a new game, and only after joining a game do they chase down a rules video or a full read-through of the game’s manual, helpfully linked right on the game’s main page. That takes a day. They open an e-mail notification, then delete it instead of using the link to take them directly into the game. They fiddle over whether or not to take a certain action, then head off to dinner and drinks before coming back to the game the next morning…late the next morning, at that.

Given my obsession, I go back to the virtual game table from time to time, to monitor the game’s progress. I tell myself I’m doing that to see what other players have done on their turn, to help narrow my own choices when it gets back to being my turn again. I use the notes function (gosh, I love the notes function!) to gauge my thoughts, so that I can quickly take my turn when it comes around again.

But mostly, I sit. I think to myself, Next time, just carve out 90 minutes and play the freakin’ game live. Then you don’t have to obsess over all this, and you can sleep better, because you won’t hit the sack dreaming about “what ifs” tied to your most recent turn.

I think about doing these live plays…then, I don’t. I wallow in my own misery, as I wait for other players to stop enjoying their real life and focus on taking their Board Game Arena turns. Because, that’s all that really matters: my obsession, not your social life. Right? RIGHT??

***

It’s finally my turn again on table #811104232.

I wonder if, this time, I should make everyone else suffer for making me wait so long to take my turn. I click here, I hover the mouse pointer there, I double check that I’ve done everything I wanted to do on my turn before I click the “Confirm” button. (Thankfully, most of the new titles on BGA have both the Confirm action and the Undo Turn action, so that I don’t have to curse the sky because I clicked too many buttons too quickly.)

But then, the cycle repeats itself. My favorite is when I see that the next player in turn order has their “green light” on, indicating that they are online at this very moment. Even though they might be playing any of the platform’s other 1400+ games (nah, they MUST be sitting in this game, just itching to take their turn, right?), I sit there after finishing my async turn, hoping I get to watch them execute their own magic right in front of me.

Until they don’t. Or they do, and after their turn wraps up, the next player is offline. Or the next player lurks in the room for a few minutes, then logs off as if they just wanted to start planning their next turn before going to bed.

Luckily, there are dozens of solo games on BGA, so I can keep myself warm at night by jumping into a quick play of anything from Railroad Ink to Ark Nova. But the thrill of human vs. human competition is the beauty of the platform, challenging players from around the world.

So, I’ll wait around…anxiously.