I have since played Fluxx on the narrow ledge of an airport bar, and Dobble at 30,000 feet. It all started during a snowstorm-related overnight Heathrow layover when, bored and exhausted, I was relieved to be invited to play Uno with other strandees from Milan and Beijing. Then I discovered the joy of travelling with small box card games, and loved being able to go from buying new games abroad and bringing them home in my carry-on to literally carrying them onto the plane in my hand and playing mid-flight. It wasn't until I started looking for more portable board games as an adult that I realised there was a whole world of games without boards, games where the cards create the board, and games that make you put on flimsy prop futuristic sunglasses and say, “Boards? Where We’re going we don’t need… boards.” I even thought Uno was some kind of imposter version of ‘Crazy Eights’, which I knew you could already play with any old card deck you found at your grandparents’ house.
When I was a kid I thought that the concept of ‘card games’ consisted entirely of the games you could play with an ordinary pack of red or blue Bicycle brand playing cards.
