I've seen similar questions like this before, and it's always a difficult thing for me to answer, as I can't remember a time when I didn't play games.

Born in '75.. Earliest I can recall playing games was probably in 1980, where I would play Monopoly with my brothers. We had other games, like Perfection, Booby Trap, Scrabble (which I played later), Sorry, Frustration, Mad Magazine Game (which was like reverse Monopoly), Pay Day, trivia pursuit. All these games we played here and there. We also got the very first Canadian Monopoly edition. This was far far before Monopoly was heavily licensing their product for other "versions". At around 1983 or so, my friend and I and his brother really got into playing RIsk at his house. I never had a copy back then. This was old old style Risk, where the armies were not little figures, but odd shapes, like an elongated Astericks

Eventually I got games like Fireball Island, Pictionary, and so on. In 1984 (or 85?) my oldest brother got "BattleTech" and "Starfleet Battles". He taught me BattleTech and I in turn taught my friends. My other friend also got "Fortress America" at this point, and by 1987 I was starting to dabble into Role Playing Games. I also got "Dungeon" and "Mage Stones" around this time, and enjoyed both of those quite a lot, as did my friends. Around 87 or 88 I got "Thunder Road" which was a mad max style game. I loved it, and it somehow disappeared from my collection in the early 90s, only game to have vanished. I believe I loaned it to someone and never got it back, but I am not sure.

In the 90s was typical games, Lots of RIsk, but Taboo, Pictionary, Scrabble, and so on. The odd Battletech game for nostalgia. I got the first Lord of the Rings RIsk at this point as well.

In 1996 I started hearing about Settlers of Catan online. I discovered Board Game Geek around this time. I googled "top 10 board games" figuring "Ok, RIsk, Monopoly, scrabble" will all be on that list. (this may have been late 90s sometime. I forget exactly when.)

What I saw was a list of very strange games I had never heard of. Puerto Rico? WTF was Puerto Rico? I started to investigate more, and was convinced that I needed to get my hands on Settlers of Catan. But no where sold it near me. That was until a comic store near me (that had just opened) got a few copies in, because they had several customers asking about it.

I bought it, invited a friend who loved games as well over, and we were in awe of it. Shortly after that, we got Munchkin, Carcassone, and various expansions.

From there, I have kept buying games, but I keep it as close to a minimum was possible. I know how easy I can get out of control with it. I probably have about 40-50 games right now, and have two cabinets filled, although many of these are older games too that I can't yet get rid of.

With young kids, and a busy schedule, I find it hard to get together with friends and play games. I wish I could do it each week, when I was dating my wife, we used to play a weekly Risk game each Sunday Night with my best friend. I miss that. I wish I could have a monthly get together, but that seems near impossible. Right now It's about once every 3 months, but as of now, we played once back in may, and before that was last october.. So we've gone through a dry spell lately.

Although I do play occasionally with my family...

I know the rules are bad when I can only get through 3 of this list of 8. Wow, when did Warhammer become a party game for non-gamers and their wives?

I can understand cutting back the rules and making it easier. It actually makes sense because Warhammer is now in a time of a highly competitive board game market, many of those board games include miniatures and combat. So it's easy to see people look at Warhammer and sigh, thinking that they have to pay lots of money, get their friends to pay lots of money, paint and assemble all those figures, read this huge rule book, and then play this 2-3 hr slug fest. It can be daunting, and of course there are fans that eat that stuff up, but in a market where you have to gather more and more people to your game, you realise at a point that your market is saturated and it's harder to find new people to play your games.

Offering a rule system that is easier to understand and learn is actually smart, but rules like this? they're laughably bad.

Way too many for my own good... sigh, and this fall looks like more to come, here is my current list (off the top of my head) - if I think of more I'll re-edit this.

Current Shows

Downton Abbey (last season starts this September. Good to drop another show off my list)

The Walking Dead

A Game of Thrones

Doctor Who (whenever that starts back up)

Sherlock (also whenever that starts up)

Orphan Black (casually watch)

Star Wars: Rebels (Occasional - watch with kids)

Agents of Shield

Arrow

Agent Carter (will there be a second season?)

Orange is the new black

Archer (on Hiatus?)

Mythbusters (Hiatus?)

Big Bang Theory (may drop this, just not funny anymore)

Modern Family (same as BBT, may drop due to not being good anymore)

New This year:

Sense8

Daredevil

The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

The Flash

New This Summer or Fall:

Fear the Walking Dead

Jessica Jones

Guilty Pleasures

Survivor

Amazing Race

MasterChef: Australia (far superior to any other version)

MasterChef US and canadian editions (watch these occasionally)

Amazing Race Canada (occasional watching)