Meet Jonathan!

Welcome residents of Meepletown! Our wise leaders, Dean and Jon, appointed me scribe of our little village. Boy did they screw up! There’s a reason they don’t let me on the podcast and videos; its either because they’re afraid of people comparing my dashing good looks to theirs or because they’re concerned about keeping the family friendly moniker. It’s definitely one or the other.

But since they’ve already made the grievous mistake of appointing me to this illustrious position of power, I might as well introduce myself. My name is Jonathan Mullins and I’m a geek. Or a nerd? A dork perhaps? I struggle with the difference and it’s possible I’m all three. I grew up playing games of all sorts. If you didn’t see me on the field (baseball) or a court (basketball) then chances are you’d find me camped out in front of the TV playing the latest, greatest video game or reading another Star Wars book. Dad bought us our first console (NES) used sometime around my fifth birthday. Dad and I spent hour after hour trying to beat a brutal top scrolling tank game called Iron Tank. Some of my fondest childhood memories center around us playing games together. Games like Super Mario RPG, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Ken Griffey Jr. Baseball, Battleship SNES, Mega Man X, Star Wars: Rebellion, Star Craft, Twisted Metal, all the Final Fantasy Games, and eventually every FPS (especially the Halo series) had a profound effect on my life. The RPG games (and Starcraft) especially set me up for my future as a board gamer.

My family played card games, particularly the trick taking variety, like it was going out of style. I can’t tell you how many games of Spades, Hearts, Canasta, Progressive Rummy, Nertz, Presidents, Bid, etc. I’ve played over the years (though I’d love to have those numbers!). We also played the gamut of mass market board games that existed. I especially liked Life and Pay Day (and secretly Mall Madness – though if you tell anyone about that I may have to pound on you a little bit). At some point we also played a long-standing game family game of poker where we kept little bags of pennies as a running chip count. Our family had (correction: has) a reputation for being overly competitive and I’m the worst one. Winning!

So how did I land such a lucrative position here in Meepletown? Nepotism of course! I’ve known Dean for what feels like an eternity. I want to say sometime around 2002 or so but I could be completely wrong about that. I know I was in high school at the time and we all know how kiddos struggle with a self-centered lack of perception. I believe Dean was finishing up college at the time – he old – and I met him through my sister. Jon and I met in 2018. He took over as preacher at the church where I grew up and I had to listen to my dad talk about how awesome he was for what felt like an eternity before finally meeting him. My addiction to board gaming started largely thanks to Deans influence in the first place. He’s personally cost me a lot of money over the years! But for that story we’ll need to hop in my time machine back to somewhere around 2012.

2012. What a weird time. The Mayan calendar ran out, but the world kept on ticking. Scientists in China discovered a species of turtle that urinates from the mouth. Venus crossed our path for the last time until 2117 and “Gangnum Style” became the most watched video in internet history. And finally, Jonathan Mullins played Catan. For years I heard a select few friends talk about a game called Settlers of Catan. My dad and I actively avoided playing it because it sounded like a giant snooze fest to us. Despite my best attempts Catan finally caught up with us. I played for the first time with some friends of ours and my wife. My wife won and promptly retired as undefeated champion. Literally. But I was hooked. My dad bought it for my family as a family Christmas gift that year and an addiction was born. We rarely played all those classic card games anymore (at least when it was just our family). Instead we hammered away at Catan. Over the next three years we played Catan hundreds of times. We played every variety, every expansion, every home brewed ruleset we could find. I even dipped my toes into the design world (and keep in mind that we were blissfully ignorant that any other modern board games existed) by designing an expansion for Catan myself. It didn’t go over well, but that’s a story for another time.

I should amend a previous statement about not knowing other modern games existed. We also played A Ticket to Ride, which I hate, and Carcassonne, which I’m strongly indifferent towards. But Catan made up 90 percent of our play time. Dean tried and failed a couple time to hook my family into the hobby around 2015. We played 7 Wonders, which I liked but my dad hated. Then he taught us Sheriff of Nottingham which I liked, but my bro-in-law hated. Then he had us play Puerto Rico, which we all hated (I’d probably like this now but wasn’t ready for it at the time). Every attempt to get us further into the hobby failed. Then one day Dean brought over a little game called Blood Rage, and the rest is history.

Blood Rage hooked us like no other game before. The strategy was deep. The miniatures, especially his painted ones, were beautiful. The production drew us in and the gameplay kept us coming back for more. From there I opened my BGG account and started researching board games like a man possessed. I can’t tell you how many hours I spent watching Miami Dice that first few months. I dove into the deep end and basked in all it’s glory, soaking up the combined knowledge present on BGG and trembling before the mountain of games suddenly at my fingertips. The long journey of playing Catan quickly morphed into an obsession with the latest and greatest. We spent a lot of time with certain games (Marvel: Legendary) but for the most part I burnt my family out by forcing them to play new game after new game. I would eventually find several groups of other people to play with, start going to conventions, etc. but that first year in the hobby was a complete whirlwind. I can’t imagine starting now, just a few years later, after the avalanche of new games hammering the hobby each year. But that’s where Meepletown comes in.

That’s my background in a nutshell. I still love Blood Rage, but the last few years refined and altered my tastes quite a bit. I still consider myself an omni-gamer, but I do lean more towards mid-heavy euros. I’ll play almost anything though. Almost. The only games that really don’t do it for me are the ones with heavy doses of social deduction, lots of push your luck, or dice rolling sans mitigation. I still love dice, I just prefer them to be draftable or placeable instead of deterministic results of combat.

Let me pause to answer the question burning in all your minds: What will you see from my future blog entries for the Meepletown website? The actual content I provide will largely be subject to change at the whims of my masters, but for now I plan to focus on written game reviews and the ever popular Top 10 lists. Even though I’ve played hundreds of modern board games to this point, I still consider myself to be in the exploratory phase of the hobby. My appetite for new to me, not necessarily newly produced, games hasn’t waned.

I would love to interact with the community and am open to any and all suggestions for things you’d like to see from future posts. I’ll try and cover as many new games as my #dadlife allows, but I’ll also explore older games that I love and looking for hidden gems. If anyone out there sees a game they’d love reviewed, new or old, I’d love to hear about it and see if it’s something I’d find interest in covering. Hopefully this website and everything we post on it will increase your enjoyment of this awesome hobby we all love. I look forward to meeting each of you and thanks for coming down to Meepletown!