It is harder to make your friends play boardgames than making friends playing boardgames.
Join a social club. Join a boardgame club. Look online, sometimes people post stuff on Facebook. And go a couple of times, to get the feeling for the attendees. And never forget:
I rather play a shitty game with cool people than play a cool game with shitty people.
ALttP was my first Zelda on my SNES. The N64 was already released but I had a SNES. I had never played a isometric game before. I loved it. Just this May I played it again on the Anbernic travelling Europe by train. In my memory it took me month to beat. The internet was already there but it wasn’t on my mind to search for help in the early 2000s. I enjoyed the replay. 10/10.