Overview and Setup

Part the one
When I was younger I used to love writing but as I got older I gained other interests and dedicated more of my time to other hobbies. That, combined with work, and changing schedules, moving to another state, and just a slew of personal things kind of staved off me taking up writing for fun for a long time. I started with poetry and short stories when I was in my teens, like many other kids have done I'm sure. A lot of that actually helped out when I went to Film school and had to start developing stories/scripts for films/shorts we had to shoot, but I will tell you that once you've read scripts written by a class of like 100 people, you realize just how unoriginal many ideas are.
I've decided to start up again and of course with the internet being what it is today, what better place to practice and just spout random crap than a blog. Evidently google has this built in blog/site to use, I'm a little surprised, so I guess I'll use this. If you've read the title of the blog you could probably assume that rocks and boxes come into play with the topics I intend to cover. Fortunately its not a reference to me being fired on my day off for stealing boxes from work. My newest hobby has been getting into board games, hence the cardboard and obviously my last name.

Part the two
A lot of the information here is cribbed from the Something Awful board game thread.
I've always loved games, of all kinds not just video games. When I was little my dad would frequently go over to his friend Tom's house and play a game they called "Tank", which I recently discovered was a game that Tom had created by himself. Using models of different tanks and other vehicles, assigning movement, attack, and defense values, he pretty much created a tactical armored war game from what I heard(I'm sure there was plenty of drinking and the usual hanging out as well as the gaming too). My dad's interests in that type of social gaming inspired me and so I got into the same sort of things. With the rise of modern technology, my interest in those types of games fell by the wayside and computers/games/programming became my focus for a long time.
Paraphrased from SA(Something Awful);

"However ignoring all of that, we're currently in a board gaming renaissance. Long story short, in 1995 a man named Klaus Teuber made a game called Settlers of Catan, and it was wildly different from previous games. Older board games usually involve a lot of just rolling dice and watching what happens, but Settlers upset everything by redefining the concept of turns and completely changing how players interact with each other. It was a breakout hit, and it caused a resurgence in the genre with the amount of attention it received. Now, more than ever, new and bizarre board games are pushing the limits of creativity, to the point where we often wonder how we got along before this all started.

Why haven't you heard about this? Well, a certain handful of big-name companies happen to have a stranglehold on what's allowed on mainstream store shelves. You can't go to Wal-Mart and buy something that's not made by Hasbro, Mattel, Parker Brothers, or other Good Old Boy companies run by rich Americans that churn out licensed trash. As a result, a lot of these games are relegated to limited printings and specialty retailers. The system doesn't look like it'll change anytime soon (short of some attempts by Hasbro to pick up some of the more unique designs it finds at conventions), but we have lots of ways to get around these particular limitations. There are two big sides of this whole area of entertainment. One side is a more American school of thought that focuses on style, and the other is a more European school of thought that focuses on substance. Ameritrash (Side bar: I have recently heard these games being called Amerithrash, so as to sound slightly less derogatory when referring to them) games usually have high cost, complex rules, and a large footprint on your table in exchange for fancier components, more thematic experiences, and more unique settings. Eurogames usually have pasted-on themes, boring components, and little variation from game to game in exchange for lower cost, tighter mechanics, and gameplay that scales between all skill levels seamlessly. Also, keep in mind that many games fall into a grey area between the two, and the continental descriptors shouldn't always be taken literally."
If the history and background of this new generation of games interests you, check out the documentary "Going Cardboard: A Board Game Documentary", although it only covers up until 2009.

Part the three
So that is what this blog will be about. I'm going to choose one of my games and pretty much describe it and maybe review it for entertainment purposes. I don't plan on trying to make a sales pitch doing reviews for each game, but mostly do a review of my impressions while playing it. If that interests you feel free to read and leave comments. If it doesn't...I don't know. Go read a book or buy a board game. Thanks!