My name is Randy Buehler and I am a Gamer.

With a capital G.

In particular, I like turn-based strategy games that reward one's ability to think. I see "thinking games" as a genre that spans across many platforms including card games, board games, and digital games. My goal in starting this blog is just to have a place to talk about all the things I like to play: Magic, German board games, Civilization, poker, etc.

Games have played a truly central role in defining who I am for pretty much my whole life. I left grad school in 1997 to play Magic: the Gathering professionally (and eventually made that game's Hall of Fame). I parlayed my Magic-playing career into a 9-year run working for Wizards of the Coast. I keep up with my friends from college mostly through a fantasy football league that I founded in our dorm almost twenty years ago. I keep up with my current friends by playing German board games and/or "Turbo Hearts" multiple times per week. I saw the country for the first time while road-tripping to College Bowl tournaments and then saw the rest of the world thanks to Magic.  I've sat at enough "gamer tables" at weddings to testify first hand to the power of conversations over games to form life-long friendships. I've also watched enough friends succeed in businesses of various kinds to know that strategy games are also quite good preparation for professional life as well. (Significantly better, in my opinion, than the team sports that have been embraced by the American school system.) And now I'm getting to experience games through the eyes of my 4-year old daughter, enjoying every moment as they teach her how to think too.

Like I said, games have always helped define who I am. Hopefully there are enough of you out there who are enough like me that this blog will turn into an ongoing two-way dialog about games, gamers, and the things we think about them.