Recently, Prashant Maheshwari chanced upon what has turned out to be the secret to a happy marriage. He stores about 50 of these secrets in cupboards and shelves around his Agripada residence now. "Every couple runs out of things to talk about at times. Whenever that happens to us, my wife and I pick out a board game to play," Maheshwari confides.

The 28-year-old importer is the co-founder of Mumbai Board Gamers, a year-old group. His passion for these games started when he was struggling to clear a level on the iPhone game, Settlers of Catan. A little research led him to the original board version and connected him with fellow founder, Mohit Goel, an IIT and IIM alumnus, who was then among the few Indian members of global online forums for such games.

Maheshwari's wife Radhika was not always thrilled by the recreation but was coaxed into trying it. "Ours was an arranged marriage and board gaming just sounded like a strange hobby. But it grows on you." She is an avid player now and part of the group whose numbers have swelled from 20 to 200 since last March.

Members range from teenagers to people in their 50s including students, engineers, management professionals, designers, accountants, expats and housewives. They hurriedly wrap up work to make room for gaming time. For the bigger meets, some even take days off. These "mega" meetups are monthly affairs with 30 to 40 participants and multiple sessions that last an entire day.

Regular gamers, who meet each week, help out the new entrants. "Most strategy games are understood easily if we use monopoly as an example to explain them," says Goel. Patience is important because while the simpler games wind up in an hour or two, deep strategy games can last up to six hours. The last few hours of the meetings are reserved for party games "when no one is in the mood to really think".

He admits that a small number of newcomers are particularly difficult to teach. "They usually come in thinking it's a way to meet singles. We ask them politely not to return." The group is now 65-meetups-old and some members have since moved and formed similar teams in Bangalore, Ahmedabad and Pune.

In the United States, parents encourage children to take to board gaming because it is seen as an educational activity. It also lets them spend time with the children. The pastime witnessed a slump around the late '90s and early 2000s as more modern video games attracted people, but it made a comeback during the slowdown, when it was viewed as a cheaper recreation.

As a hobby in India, it is still young and fairly expensive. Buyers are not used to spending more than Rs 500 to Rs 1,000 for a set, says 40-year-old Goel, who also distributes these games. The rarer games are shipped from the US or Germany and are priced at Rs 1,500 to Rs 6,000 apiece. "Compared to the Xbox, where apart from spending on the console, you also have to buy game DVDs for Rs 3,000 each, this is not too costly," Goel observes.

People are not required to bring games. Maheshwari and other collectors have opened up their stocks of about 200 titles to members, who are surprised to discover that the realms of this hobby stretch far beyond Monopoly, Scrabble and Ludo into games that span continents and different ages in time. Players can contest elections, wage battles or raise prehistoric families. With smooth, shiny cardboard surfaces and tiny soldiers, animals, coins and timers intricately fashioned out of wood and plastic, the imported games are of a decidedly better quality than the ones available locally. The group also has a set of Twilight Struggle, currently the world's highest-ranked board game is based on the Cold War.

Collectors in the group use boardgamesgeek.com, described variously as "the Bible" or "the Wikipedia of board games," to discover popular titles and track upcoming releases. Yet they are careful to distinguish themselves from geeks. "People think board games are only for children or geeks and rocket scientists. Truth is anyone can get hooked," says Gaurav Agrawal, a chartered accountant who's a member.

Maheshwari has one regret after starting the group. "I have never won a game since," he says adding that playing in a group teaches one to lose graciously. "It also teaches you to savour every victory," Agrawal counters with a laugh. After the initial thrill of discovering and learning the game, it seems likely that the games would grow dull. But, "just when you think you've mastered a game, someone new will come up with strategies you had not thought of," says Radhika.

The group is still ironing out issues of space for big gatherings. They need places with tables, chairs and refreshments close at hand and malls or restaurants are not too comfortable. They have managed to make arrangements with two cafes in Matunga and Bandra as well as a mall but fewer venues have kept the frequency of meetups from increasing.

It was decided that there would be no prizes, just bragging rights. Still, group members are happy to find company in the unique pastime that has replaced predictable plans to watch movies or eat out over the weekends. Board games, it seems, can help understand how to run governments or conserve resources. At other times, they help make friends and break the ice with spouses in arranged marriages.