About this blog
Board games are the whole point—not a side topic.
sanketnainani.com exists because modern board gaming deserves a clear, honest voice in India: what to buy, how to teach, where to play, and why sitting around a table still beats almost everything on a screen.
Why board games?
Board games are social technology. They give strangers a shared language, give families a reason to put phones down, and give curious people a low-stakes way to learn strategy, negotiation, cooperation, and patience. The hobby has exploded globally—gateway titles, heavy euros, party games, solo modes, Indian designers, café culture—but newcomers still hit the same wall: too many boxes, conflicting advice, and no one to ask except a Reddit thread from 2019.
This blog treats board games as the central idea, not a category tag. Every article is meant to move someone one step further: from “I only know Monopoly” to “I know what I want on my shelf,” or from “I’ve heard of Catan” to “I know which meetup in my city is worth showing up to alone.”
What we do here
Review
Honest takes on games that matter in India—price, availability, player count, and whether a title earns its shelf space.
Learn
Explain mechanics, compare similar games, and capture what forums and cafés are actually saying so you learn faster.
Spread
Share meetup guides, founder stories, and city listings so the hobby grows beyond a small insider circle.
Educate
Family guides, kids-by-age picks, gateway lists, and “first game night” advice for parents, couples, and curious adults.
The archive already includes 54 published articles—reviews, India buying guides, kids and family roundups, meetup playbooks, and city-by-city board game nights. Browse the full list anytime.
A guide for newbies—and the almost-newbies
“New player” doesn’t only mean someone who has never rolled dice. It also means the friend who owns three games and wants a fourth, the parent who needs something for a six-year-old that isn’t Candy Land, or the couple looking for a 45-minute two-player game that won’t end in a rules fight.
We write for that audience first. Jargon gets explained. Gateway games get priority. We say when a hyped title is wrong for your table, when to skip the deluxe edition, and when showing up to a public meetup is the best move you can make. If you’re new, start with our gateway and family guides; if you’re organising, start with the meetup playbook articles—then bring one game you can teach in ten minutes.
Community needs tools—not just articles
Great communities don’t run on enthusiasm alone. They need discovery (where is tonight’s game night?), trust (who is hosting?), logistics (tickets, capacity, venue), and repeatability (so organisers aren’t rebuilding every event from a WhatsApp group). Writing about board games pushed us toward building the missing infrastructure.
That’s why this blog sits alongside tech we’re building: lightweight platforms, listings, and workflows that help hosts publish events, sell or confirm seats, and understand what’s working. Articles bring people in; tools help them stay and come back. We care about both sides—storytelling and systems—because India’s tabletop scene grows when organisers spend less time on admin and more time teaching Splendor.
Lights Out Latte
lightsoutlatte.com is our community event management platform—built to connect people with real-world gatherings, from board game socials and café meetups to fan screenings and other local experiences. Organisers get a clearer way to list events, manage ticketing, and reach an audience that’s already looking for something to do offline; attendees get a single place to discover what’s on and book a seat without chasing scattered Instagram stories.
The name nods to that shared moment before an event starts—lights out, focus on, everyone in the room for the same reason. We’re growing it from Ahmedabad outward, alongside the same communities this blog writes about. If you run board game nights or hybrid social events and want a proper home for listings and checkout, that’s the product lane we’re investing in.
About the founder
Sanket Nainani started this blog as a way to document what Indian players actually need: practical reviews, meetup culture, and guides that respect both budget and time. He’s not trying to catalogue every game ever printed—he’s trying to reduce friction between “I heard board games are fun” and “I had a great night and I know what to buy next.”
Sanket writes and edits the articles on this site, talks to organisers and café owners for city guides, and builds products like Lights Out Latte so community energy has somewhere to land. You’ll see his byline on playbooks and long-form guides; the voice is deliberately direct: useful first, hype never.
Off the table, he’s a bit of a tech nerd at heart. Frontend and Shopify development, content platforms, and the kind of small tools that make communities easier to run—that’s the other half of how this blog and Lights Out Latte exist. He likes turning messy real-world problems into clear software, and he’s always up for collaborations that mix tabletop culture with thoughtful tech: meetup tooling, listings, apps for organisers, or anything that helps more people find their first game night.
For client work, Shopify apps, and the broader portfolio, see tech.sanketnainani.com. For board game listings, community ideas, or product partnerships, use the contact details at the bottom of this page.
Contact
Questions about a game, a city guide, listing your meetup, partnering on an event, Lights Out Latte, or a tech collaboration—send a note and we’ll get back when we can.
- Events platform
- lightsoutlatte.com
- Portfolio
- tech.sanketnainani.com — frontend, Shopify, and web projects
- Founder
- Sanket Nainani