It Started With
Six People and
a Copy of Catan.

In 2019, Mark Pellegrino booked a table at a pub in Fitzroy, Melbourne. He posted on a local subreddit: "Free board game night, Thursdays, 6pm. Bring nothing. I'll bring the games."

Six people showed up the first week. Eight the next. By month three, it was twenty-five regulars and Mark was hauling two IKEA bags of games on the tram every Thursday.

The group called itself BoardGameBro — part joke, part identity. It was never meant to be a business. It was a bunch of people who'd rather argue about Brass: Birmingham's canal era than scroll their phones.

The Pub Years

For three years, BoardGameBro ran weekly meetups across Melbourne — Fitzroy, then Brunswick, then a rotation through Collingwood and Richmond when the group split into regional chapters. At peak, there were four concurrent Thursday night sessions pulling 80+ people total.

Mark kept it simple: show up, play something new, don't be precious about winning. The regulars self-organized into subgroups — the "Heavy Table" for Lacerda games, "Gateway Crew" for teaching new players, and the "Solo Corner" for people who wanted to play Spirit Island in public without judgment.

COVID shut the meetups down in 2020. Mark ran remote game nights on TTS but it wasn't the same. The group scattered. Some moved cities. Some drifted out of the hobby.

Going Online

When meetups came back in 2022, Mark realized the community had changed. People were texting him for game recommendations. They wanted a place to post session reports. They wanted honest reviews that didn't feel like sponsored content.

So he built this site.

BoardGameBro is the same community it always was — opinionated, generous with advice, and fundamentally uninterested in being polite about mediocre games. The forums are where the real conversation happens. The game database is for finding your next obsession. And the newsletter is Mark sitting at his desk at midnight, writing about whatever game is currently ruining his sleep schedule.

What We Believe

• No game is universally great. Context matters. Player count, group chemistry, and the time on the clock change everything.
• Honest beats positive. We'll tell you when a $90 game isn't worth $40. We'll also tell you when a $15 card game belongs in every collection.
• The hobby is for everyone. Heavy eurogamers and party game enthusiasts are equally welcome. ADHD brains and neurotypical brains both deserve games that fit how they think.
• Community over content. The forums come first. The articles serve the conversation, not the other way around.

About Mark

Mark is a former software engineer who left tech to run board game events full-time. He lives in Melbourne with his partner, two cats, and approximately 400 board games that he insists are all essential. His BGG collection is public and he has no shame about rating Catan a 6.

You can reach him at the contact page or find him in the forums as @mark.