10 Played Games for My Gaming Day

10. Pirates of Marcaibo

I love this one on BGA. I want to play it in person and see how that goes. It’s a bit more of a rules teach, but it shouldn’t be too bad to get played. And I think once the game gets going it moves fast. Plus fun theme and easy sell.

9. Lost Ruins of Arnak

Lost Ruins of Arnak is a game I love. I own everything for it. So I want to get it in the big box and try out the new tracks in the game and see how everything works together.

8. Mistborn

Another one where I really like the game and it’s been a while since I’ve played it. That is going to be the case for a lot of the games. I think the people who are invited thus far are going to enjoy a game like this as well.

7. The Great Split

See above, really. But after playing New York Slice for the first time it made me realize that I just want to play The Great Split because that game is a brilliant I split and you choose game.

6. Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition

Yet another one where I just want to play it again. Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition is a great engine building game and good for a longer game day. Like Lost Ruins of Arnak, though, I need to get it sorted out.

5. Strike

I play this one a lot. It’s on the list because it’d be a great group game there. Plus it’s a good filler/take a break from bigger games game.

4. Can’t Stop

The same can be said for Can’t Stop. Though Can’t Stop can’t support as many people. But it works well and it’s an easy one to teach and play. A good filler for when maybe one group finished before another.

3. Trekking Through Time

I’ve played this one two players and I really enjoy it two players. I want to try it with more because it’s just a fun game. It’s also a simple one to learn and play.

2. Skyrockets

You might not even know I played this game. And it is kind of a cheat to be on this part of the list. Played it two years ago at Gen Con when it was still a prototype at the Floodgate Games event. But it’s a fun real time game, so I want to play it again.

1. Heat: Pedal to the Metal

I love this game. It isn’t the easiest I think to learn. But once you wrap your head around it, it’s pretty simple to play. And it is a good game because it plays a lot.

10 Un-Played Games for My Gaming Day

10. The Gang

Now we’re in the new games. This is a cooperative poker game, so I want to give it a whirl. Plus I know it plays at higher player counts so a good one for the list.

9. Critter Kitchen

Critter Kitchen has just been sitting there waiting to get played. I want to take it a lot and see if I can get it played, but I need to open and sort it for that to happen. And it is one I probably need to learn to take along.

8. Maple Valley

Maple Valley is the follow-up to Creature Comforts. I like Creature Comforts as a good simple worker placement game. I am curious to see what Maple Valley does. They are very different games, but same great artwork and in the “same world”.

7. Ruins

Ruins is one that people were talking about going into Gen Con. It is a reworking of Custom Heroes. It is a card shedding game where you upgrade cards throughout the rounds. So I am curious to know how that system is going to work.

6. Ito

Ito is going to be one of the bigger games or party games on the list. I want to learn this one and it seem easy to play. From what I know of it, it is a good ice breaker game as well. Or maybe more of an ice breaker than an actual game.

5. Emberleaf

Emberleaf is the card dancing game. Basically a game where you play cards into a grid and then you activate the grid. The cards then move in that grid, some dropping out, others activating various affects. I like the sound of the game and great cute artwork.

4. Ghosts of Christmas

First of three trick taking games. Ghosts of Christmas sounds like a brain burner of a trick taking game where you play three tricks at once. And depending on how the previous trick goes that determines the led suit for the next one. With a Christmas Carol theme, how will it work for the past, present, and future tricks.

3. The Six of VIII

The Six of VIII is going to be a fun one to try as well. It’s about the six wives of Henry the VIII. And each trick the trump suit is going to be one of the wives. But it is more than that because how long a wife was alive is going to impact how many rounds that suit is trump. I like how thematic they managed to make a trick taking game.

2. Tricky Kids

Now, Tricky Kids is a new game as well. I would have put both Tricky Kids and Cat in the Box on the list, but I’m playing Cat in the Box on BGA right now. It is very possible that Cat in the Box will come along as well. But Tricky Kids is trick taking game where the cards don’t have a value on them. So you need to set the value, but you only have 21 points to allocate over 7 cards.

1. Expeditions

Finally, let’s go with something different and big with Expeditions from Stonemaier games. I like the idea of trying this one in a bigger group, or maybe not with everyone but with some. And I believe that one person in the group owns it and has played it before. It is nice to bring along games like that so that I don’t need to learn the rules. Or more so, so that no one needs to learn the rules because I’m not going to learn them all.

Final Thoughts

Now that is a lot of games to bring along. And I know that all of them won’t make it, but I plan on bringing a big mess of games. There are other smaller games too that are going to be stuck in because they are smaller games. So stuff like Flip 7 or Push are really likely to come along. New games like First-Class Letters and Trinket Trove (as I want to play that one with more) will come along. But this is a good list for me to start planning on what to bring. But it sounds like a good gaming day to me.

If you were to do a full gaming day, what games are you going to take off of the shelf?

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As normal, I am using Pub Meeple to do my rankings. You can find their ranking engine here.

Ranking New Games 35 through 5

35 – KADO
34 – Gold’n Crash
33 – Castellion
32 – Harmonies
31 – Pokemon Old Maid
30 – Karvi
29 – Panda Spin
28 – Unsurmountable
27 – Stalk Exchange
26 – The Royal Limited
25 – At the Helm
24 – Ancient Realm
23 – SpaceShipped
22 – ROVE: Results-Oriented Versatile Explorer
21 – Ext: The Game – Lord of the Rings: Shadows over Middle-earth
20 – Circus Flohcati
19 – A Nice Cuppa
18 – Toy Battle
17 – PUSH
16 – Knister
15 – Luxor
14 – Crafting the Cosmos
13 – The Architects of Amytis
12 – 6 nimmt!
11 – Imhotep
10 – Pyradmido: Forgotten Treasures
9 – One-Hit Heroes
8 – Fromage
7 – Schadenfreude
6 – Symbiose

Quick Thoughts

There are a lot of great games in this section. Everything from Old Maid up I’ll gladly play. And I mainly will gladly play old maid because my kid likes it. Also, I realized I have played old maid before growing up, but I never ranked it. So maybe shouldn’t be on the list.

There are some games where I wonder if they would move higher in other circumstances. Panda Spin, for example, at 29 feels low. But it’s also just okay on Board Game Arena. Would it be a better game in person. The downside of that one is downtime as you might not be able to partake in tricks. But that downtime would be way less.

Also there is a huge clump of Button Shy solo games there in the middle. I like those games. There weren’t any where I thought they were actively annoying or not that great to play. At the same time, there are some that are better than the others, and because it’s just 18 cards, they all fall into that similar feeling category, especially the ones that I’ve played on Malts and Meeples thus far.

Top 5 New Games of Q1

5. Pirates of Maracaibo

This game is great. I love everything that is going on in it and I also love how fast the game is. I wrote up a review of this one already and you can read that here. Just a quick recap, there is a lot going on, but the turns are simple. And there are a ton of ways to explore scoring. I like being able to spend time figuring out new ways to score. And each way to score really does feel good, but you can’t only focus in on one, most likely, you are going to need to get a few working together to do well in the game.

4. The Guild of Merchant Explorers

The next one is another one that I’ve done a review on already. You can read my review for The Guild of Merchant Explorers here. This one I love because I can play it so quickly at two players on BGA, as long as the other player is active. And it is a different puzzle each time you play as you get unique cards for each era. And the scoring objectives, which can easily swing the game, help give the game that more variety as well.

3. Zenith

Yes, another BGA game with a review, but the final of the BGA games, is Zenith and you can read the review here. Zenith is a very fun two player game. And while there are other two player games on the list, the lowest at 34, Zenith stands above with the variety of ways to win the game. It really feels like such a great back and forth two player battle. And that tug of war element where you are trying to get the planets to your side and figuring out how to do that best is great.

2. Clank! Catacombs

Next we have Clank!: Catacombs. We already know that I love Clank in all it’s forms. I’ve streamed the digital app this year as well, but Clank!: Catacombs is probably the best version of Clank!. And that’s really driven by the fact that the game is going to change every time. You don’t know how the tiles are going to come out, and you could decide to build things so it goes off into the distance. That is going to make it more replayable without any expansions, and I think it also makes it easier to have expansions.

1. Marvel Dice Throne: X-Men

The final one is another game that I’ve kind of already played, much like Clank!, but it’s Marvel Dice Throne: X-Men. And this one is great for me because it has two of my favorite players. Beyond that, it is still just more Dice Throne, and I love Dice Throne. I need to pull out my other Marvel characters and have everyone battle together and see who comes out on top. That’s another great thing about Dice Throne, it’s really built for a tournament or competitive play. I wonder if there are any shops around me who are doing the Dice Throne league, that could be something fun to join.

Final Thoughts

That’s all of the new to me games that I’ve played this year. And I know that I’m going to play even more. I am trying to learn new games each week on board game arena and I’ve done a very good job of that thus far. It might become harder later, but I think that I can do it.

Based off of these games, are there any that I should be looking out for in 2025 to tryout? Obviously these aren’t all the games that I’ve played, so I might have played your suggestion already. But let me know those down in the comments. And let me know which games you’ve tried for the first time this year?

Looking around me, I have games like Knarr, Finca, Thunder Rolls, Bomb Busters and a whole lot more that I’ve had come in this year. And there are kickstarters as well, like Dragon Eclipse, Lore, Star Realms, Andromeda’s Edge, and The Dark Quarter that I need to get played as well. So I’m at no shortage of games to get played. And I hope to get a lot of those games played this year, plus the oh so many more that have been on my shelf of opportunity for even longer.

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Top 5 Board Games of 2022

5. Village Rails

Village Rails is a game that stands out to be because it takes a concept I like in Village Green and iterates upon it. In Village Green, by a different designer, it is a tough puzzle to crack. With Village Rails you are still filling out a grid of cards completing rail routes, but it’s not as restricting. You decide how much you want to optimize how you score points on the route.

And I think the whole concept of route building is a lot of fun. This distills it into something that’s much smaller than a big train game, and offers more interesting decisions than a game like Ticket to Ride. All with just a deck of cards. You score points for the routes and the engines that you place on them, and it’s really just a clever and enjoyable system.

4. The Isle of Cats: Explore and Draw

This is one that is more built upon another game than my first one. But Isle of Cats: Explore and Draw is a roll and write version of Isle of Cats. The game plays in a much faster time and offers interesting other choices that the board game version can’t because of how it’s set-up. I think I like it better than the big box version, but it is close and I need to play the bigger box more.

In this you are still trying to rescue cats from the island. But you activate a column of three cards each round. Those cards can be cats to place on your boat, same rules for that as Isle of Cats. Or you can get scoring cards which you track which ones you’ve activated on a sheet. The game plays much faster, that is for sure, and offers still a lot of good choices. Plus you have powers you can use to break the rules and optimize a turn, which is fun as well.

3. Ready Set Bet

I own this one now, I own all of them on the list, but it took me a while to get Ready Set Bet. Ready Set Bet is a horse betting and horse racing game. There is an app that can call the race for you, but otherwise, someone does and everyone else is tossing down bets as the race goes on hoping to make as much money as they can.

There is a real time aspect that is needed for this game. It gives you that tension that I can only assume is like being at the track. You are watching trying to get a bet in at the last second on a sleeper who is making a move towards the end so you can win big. But if you hold onto your bets too long, the odds of betting on the favorites becomes worse. It’s a clever, light, and exciting system.

2. First Rat

First Rat is a game that I think the Dice Tower crew talked about well, it looks like it shouldn’t be that thinky a game. But First Rat, a game where you are collecting pieces to build a rocket ship as a rat to get to the moon that is made of cheese, it works really well.

You get a lot of options of how to move and optimize your strategy. But each player can have their own strategy. I pushed up on the lights track because I wanted, when I moved up the main track, it to be even more powerful. To collect resources faster. Other players pushed up for resources faster but had to be okay with getting fewer. There are a lot of fun things to play around with on the system. And the theme makes what is basically a resource collection game so much more fun.

1. Stars of Akarios

Finally, you got to see me play this one on Malts and Meeples. We have Stars of Akarios. An epic, massive, space exploration and tactics game. I love this game because it does so much. You want tactical space combat, it does that. You want to explore a planet, you can do that. And it has choose your own adventure story in there as well.

I’ve talked about this game a lot. I thought that I’d like it, and I do, indeed, like this game a lot. The story is engaging. It isn’t as polished or deep as some, like Tainted Grail for example, but it is a fun story. It has that early 2000’s SyFy channel vibe to it, or something like Farscape which is just fun to play in. And the tactical space combat is so cool and puzzly to figure out. And then you get little breaks with the story and exploring planets before you launch off and try again.

What Are Your Favorite Games from 2022?

I had 16 different board games on the list. And I did exclude Marvel Dice Throne from my rankings because it is just more Dice Throne. But that would be my number one otherwise. I love Dice Throne. But it has been a really good year for games. I don’t on my list have Oathsworn because I haven’t played it yet. I want to play Lands of Galzyr. Just missing was Batman: Everybody Lies the Detective System game and Long Shot the Dice Game. So it has been a story year for games. What is your favorite?

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Calico is a game that I’ve only recently gotten to the table for the first time. I haven’t done a full review on it, but I feel like I get the game to some extent. You can see my Beyond the Box Cover for Calico – here. This game has a cute theme and great artwork. For some people, the theme might not do it, but for me, I really enjoy it.

What Game Should I Talk About Next?

Let me know in the poll below what game I should talk about next.

All of them I think will be interesting and probably the next six or so that I talk about. Which is the one that you’d prefer to see sooner rather than later?

What’s Coming Up Next

So for Malts and Meeples, we have on Monday at 8:30 PM Central a conversation about Crowdfunding. What is good value, what might not be, how I pick the games I back and whatever questions you might have.

On Thursday at 8 PM, not the day change from Wednesday. I am going to be streaming more Aeon’s End Legacy that I’ve been for the past few weeks.

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The Problem

So, there is a reason that I want to talk about this. This is something that I’ve been harping on for a little bit with people who are entrenched in the hobby game scene. We often forget what it was like to start playing board games. I know that I don’t love a game like Splendor anymore. Why, because I’ve played it enough times and it doesn’t offer enough variety for me. But Splendor is a great game to introduce people to.

It’s common to kind of turn up a nose at Catan now. And I get it, there are a million different versions and expansions of games like Catan, Ticket to Ride, and Munchkin, all games that a lot of people got started. I don’t get excited when they announce a new version of Catan, but again, Catan is a game that got so many people into the hobby.

And all of those games, we played them a number of times. It wasn’t like we played them only once. I played Catan probably 20 times at least while I was getting board games. The same goes for Ticket to Ride. I can’t even begin to think about how many times I played games like Skip-Bo, Dutch Blitz, Uno, and more while growing up. But now that I’m a game, there is a temptation to push people along fast.

So What Is the Right Pace?

Unfortunately, that depends on the perspective gamer. Some people move through games like Catan really fast. Others never stop playing Catan. Now, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t introduce new games, but it means that there is no perfect formula.

How Do You Know When?

1. Ask the person
   It can be as simple as that and it should be as simple as that. The person you play the game with, ask them. They might say no, and that is okay. Play those introductory games longer.
2. How often do they win
   Not everyone knows when they are ready to try a new game. So another sign can be how often the other player wins. If the person wins most half the time or often enough, maybe introduce a new game. Ideally one with similar mechanics but I’ll get to that more.
3. Amount/how often you play the game
   This might be the biggest one. Now not everyone wants to play a game all the time. But if you go from playing a game a lot to playing a game less, it might mean that they are ready for another game. They know the game and now they want to try something new.

What Do You Play Next?

This is another big question that you need to answer. What game are you going to play with them next. Now, I’ll point you back to that Top 10 list that I linked at the top and streamed yesterday. I think there are a lot of good options in there. But that doesn’t answer the question fully.

To do that there are a few things that you need to think about, the most important being, what do they like about the games they know? Do they like being really competitive, work that direction. Maybe they like solving a puzzle, lean that direction.

Let’s actually take a dive and look at Catan. What all does Catan have in it? Catan has resource management. It has city/route building. It has a luck to it and probability. Which of those elements does the person like? Let’s work off of my list of games from yesterday.

Resource Management

Century Golem Edition would be my top choice. It has you manipulating your resources more than Catan does, but you are pushing for certain groups of gems to get your Golem. And there is more control over what you are getting as compared to what Catan does. This will cut down on the randomness and add in more strategy for a Catan player.

City/Route Building

I think that Draftosaurus would make some sense for this one. You are collecting different groups of things, but it is fairly different. I also think that Marvel United oddly enough could be interesting or The Lost Expedition. You aren’t building your own city or route. But working together you are creating a chain of things, either actions or a path you take. But Draftosaurus would probably be the best.

The Odds

Sagrada would seem like the likely option. It has the dice rolling in it, but I’m not sure I’d put that at the top. In think that Silver might actually be best. With that game it has a bit more push your luck to it. And I think that is what some people like with the odds. So both Silver and Sagrada would be great options for the next step on that side of things for Catan.

So you can see how different games might work better. I think the big thing is give options, but not too many. And talk about what they like or maybe don’t like as well about a game when picking the one for the next step. And expect to play that next game a few times. I have friends who I can pull out a new game with them every time I play, but new gamers, those aren’t the people to do that with.

What do you do to pick a game? Any tried and true tips that you have for helping new gamers try new games?

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The three things are the age range, the game length, and the player count. All of these can be wrong for different reasons. Some of them might even be out of the publishers control, and well, they are just lies. Let’s get into them.

The Age Range

We start off with the one that publishers lie about the least. In fact it might not even be the publisher that lies on it. You see a game that looks like it’s for young kids, but it has an 8+ range on it. That number is more indicative of the size of pieces in the games. There are standards for toys so that they aren’t choking hazards or dangerous to a certain aged child. That is why you see on toy cars, dolls, anything basically, an age range for it.

Generally publishers do a solid job of aging it up, if the material, story, in the game is more mature. So I don’t know that many publishers lie on the age range. However, they know that some people think age range talks about complexity, and it doesn’t. That is a lie we consumers tell ourselves. Some publishers have even started to put a complexity scale on stuff, now, with that, sometimes they lie.

This, though, is also not completely intentional. For a war gamer, and easy war game will warrant a lower complexity on BGG or on a box. But for someone who has played Ticket to Ride and wants to jump into a war game, the complexity scale is different. This actually goes back into my board game classification article two weeks ago, which you can see here.

The Player Count

This one also gets lied about some, but not all the time. There are two ways that the lie can go, they can say it can’t play at a number or that it can play at a number. The latter of the two is by far way more common. The case where a number isn’t listed basically happens in cooperative games with shared information. It might take a lot of effort, but Pandemic isn’t a game that has solo play, but it can easily be played solo just controlling two characters if you wanted.

The way more common way of lying is by saying that it can play at a player count. This is most common in games that have a lot of downtime. So the more players, the more time between turns, maybe even the fewer choices people have to make in the game, and it ruins the fun. This is pretty common where a game will say it goes up to four players but doesn’t work well with that number. It can also go to lower numbers. This happens in social deduction type games. It might work with three players, but will it be fun at that number.

So why do they do this, because it sells more. If a game can play up to 4 or 5 people, that looks better. That works better for more groups. If a game can play with 2 or 3 players, that means you don’t need to get as many people together. Now, it might not be a good game at those counts, but it’ll sell more copies. Which is a bummer because a game could be an A with 3 players but a D with 5 players.

The Game Length

Finally, the biggest lie. Rarely do board games accurately portray how long a game will take to play. They will say 30 minutes, it’ll take an hour. They will say 20 minutes per player, it’ll be 30. And this is a really common problem. Generally I would say, look at the time and multiply it be 1.5 or 2 and that’ll be more accurate in terms of length.

There is an additional factor to consider as well. The first time you play a game it is going to take way longer than subsequent plays, or at least it will a lot of the time. Why, because you are learning the game. You don’t know your strategies, you don’t know all the rules. Now you are stopping to look things up, you need to read every card.

For example, the first time I played Ascension, there was a lot of reading. I have played Ascension a lot of times now, both on the app and in person. I don’t need to look at a card text to know what it does anymore. While a newer player will be reading and increase the game length, a group of veteran players of Ascension could knock out a game fast. So that lie isn’t intentional, it should just be known. So the first game might be twice as long as your next play, it just depends on the game.

So Are They Fixable?

Honestly, not really. The age is because of safety regulations, not complexity. It might look like that, but it’s not that. I recommend to help correct that one, read the back of the box, see what the game sounds like. The player count, publishers could and should change that. However, they won’t. Why, because it makes them money and someone might like it at that count. And the time, again, underestimating the time helps games sell. Faster, easier to get to the table games well more. And the sample size of players, the play testers, they get to really know the game. So a group of very veteran players of a game might be able to play that fast.

So why talk about it. I think a bad experience is often a deterrent for new players joining the hobby. So I want to get the information out there that shows how to read a box. Will this get to everyone needs it, unfortunately not, but I hope some people can spread the word and we can talk about actual expectations for game length, player count, and more in a helpful way.

Which of those lies bugs you the most?

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Now, both have benefits in terms of your game collection. So I’m going to talk about the pros to both, and probably some cons as well, but when it comes to gaming, for me getting more games you can play is never going to be a bad thing.

The Argument for Exapnsions

So the argument for getting an expansion or starting to focus more on getting expansions is that you’ll probably play their content more. For a lot of games, Small World, Pandemic, Sagrada, and others, you’ll often just find yourself always having the expansion in the game. So if you are playing those games often, you’ll get more use out of that content.

It also can increase the replayability of those games. Stuff like Pandemic and Small World are great for introducing new people into board gaming. But it can end up feeling like you are playing the same game over and over again. So getting new roles in Pandemic or getting new monsters and abilities in Small World that can create combos or new strategies to try, those things will freshen up a game for a player who plays those games a lot.

Sometimes you can also not increase the number of boxes for the games by getting expansions. If the expansion can be stored with the base game, or vice-a-versa, you don’t add any new boxes to your collection that take up shelf space. Now, this isn’t always the case so sometimes you’re just adding boxes like normal, but if you are tight on space, that’s one reason to consider an expansion over a new game.

The Argument for New Games

With a new game one of the big selling points is that you can try something new. Sounds obvious, but it might allow you to find a new type of game or a new favorite game by trying out something new. Or you might find an improvement upon a game that you already like, if you like something like Splendor, trying Century Spice Road or Century Golem Edition might give you a game that you like better or that people in your group will like better, even though the feel of the two can be similar.

A new game also allows you to fill in gaps in your gaming collection. Now, everyone will have different types of games that the prefer, but sometimes you might need a party game, and you might need it so that you don’t get stuck playing a party game that you really don’t like. Or maybe a euro or deck building, or whatever it might be. So filling in some of those areas that you might not have enough of for your gaming group and to keep it interesting is important as well.

The Arguments Against Expansions

While I talked about the added variability, one thing to be slightly concerned about with adding more is the addition of complexity to a game. So you might take a game that is relatively easy to get to the table and make it harder by adding in additional rules or roles to explain. So while technically the game has more replayability because of those things, it will see the table less because it’s harder to pull out with a group of new to the game players. I have a friend who has several expansions for Galaxy Trucker, but because it’s harder to teach with those in the box, they raretly get played with.

Also, an expansion might not add in that much more to a game, so kind of the opposite of the one above, but if it just adds in a few more cards or a modular board, or something like that, it might not feel like it changes up the game that much, so it doesn’t add to the game play or it getting back to the table again.

The Argument Against New Games

The most obvious one is that you might not like the game, as simple as that. It’s an unknown commodity to you and there’s a risk/reward to factor in to it. Now, the more you’ve played games and played a variety of games, the odds of finding a complete miss aren’t that high, though it might not be something better than you already have on the shelf.

Speaking of shelves, space is also a concern. Because it is something completely new, it could take up a chunk of space and if you are limited in how much space you have, it might be the case where you won’t have room to store a new game. Now this can be rectified by getting rid of a game, but you might love all the games that you have, so then you have to make a choice if you decide to get any new games.

So, is there a better option, getting expansions or a new game? I don’t really think so. I think expansions can breath new life into an old game if you get them, but if you’re enjoying the base game, there’s no reason to. I think that new games can help you find things that you love and new favorites but probably have a higher chance of being a dud. It depends on how people play their games. Normally, I’m writing this mid Covid-19 Pandemic 2020, I play a lot of new to me games and a lot of different games, so having a good variety is great and something I really enjoy. But if you’re with a group who likes their handful of games, expansions are a great way to keep that feeling fresh.

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Greenbriar Games

So first I ordered from Greenbriar games, during Gencon use the code GENCANT to get 50% off your order. The game I ordered from there was Champions of Hara, this game is a competitive and cooperative game with two different parts. The first part each player race to protect the lands of Hara from monsters and rifts that are opening and completing goals in order to get a wish of their fulfilled. This can be done with combat of both monsters and the other players. The second part is that the winner gets their wish and then they have to, along with the other players deal with the fallout of that wish. This game just seems like a lot of fun as you level up skills and get new cards to play giving your already unique character even more unique things to do. I like that it has the two modes as well.

Checkout a playthrough from GloryHoundd that sold me on this game:

Cool Stuff Inc

So Cool Stuff Inc normally has a big booth selling random games as well at Gencon even though they aren’t a game development company. As a sale they have a code GENCON5 to get 5% off your order. Since I’ve bought a fair amount from them, I also got an additional 3% off my order.

The first game I am getting is Sonora a flick and write game from Pandasaurus. In this game you are doing two main things, you are flicking disks around a board to try and land in specific areas. These areas then translate into what you are filling in on your board. What seems fun about this game is that you can strategize some with your flicking or knock people out of a spot where you’d want, but then when filling in things on your board, you have a ton of different options which can then lead to getting more things filled in on your scoring sheet. There are four different areas there and four areas on the board, and each scores well, and you can really focus in on a single area if you want or maybe two, and score well in those, but if you try and do everything you might spread yourself too thin.

I’m also getting Dig Deeper and LA Crime expansion for Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game. I have really enjoyed my playthroughs of that game, and we’re going to be getting back to it shortly, so I just want to get some more games in of it, and I think more cases are going to be great for it. I like that these are smaller box expansions as well, so I don’t need to get everything for it again, I can just get more content without it feeling like a whole new game. I’ll let you find more of why I love that game here.

Finally, I got Camel Up. This is a camel racing game, but one that is light and silly. On your turn you can guess who will be the lead camel at the end of a round, you can put a booster or something to back-up a camel on a track, you can bid on who is going to win or lose overall, or, you can roll the dice. When you roll the dice, you shake a pyramid that has all the camel color of dice, plus a die for the two crazy camels, and whatever die falls out falls out. So there’s a lot of randomness with that, but what makes it even sillier is that the camels can stack on top of each other. So if the blue camel ends up on top of the red camel, and then the red camels die is rolled it moves with both itself and the blue camel on top of it, and whatever camel is on top is the leader. It’s a silly game, but it can play a large number of players, so I think it’ll work well for game nights coming up.

Which of these games seems the most interesting to you? Do you have any of them in your collection?

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I think for some people that’s a very important question, for different reasons. For some people, it’s because they collect board games as much as they play board games. They like to have that large collection that they can show off, which is why they want to preserve them. For some people it’s because they might have a decent size collection, but they have something that is rare or extremely sentimental to them that they want to protect. And for some people, it’s because they only have a few games that they like, so they only ever play a few games.

Whatever, the reason, how do you protect board games so that they don’t get worn? And do you need to do that?

We’ll start with the second question first. Do you actually need to keep your board games from getting worn down? For some people, the assumed answer is yes. They like to have a massive collection, and they don’t want a game to look rough. But I, in my response argued against this mindset. Those people with the larger collection and growing collection, are like myself, where I might only play a game on my shelf every couple of years if I’m not careful. And I’m still adding more games, though, I’m trying to cut down on games that I can’t play solo, so that what I do buy gets to the table more often.

So I actually don’t think that someone like myself needs to be too worried about protecting my games. It’s possible with some fan favorites, something like Sushi Go! Party where you are handling the cards and that’s what the game is, I could sleeve those cards, and I might end up doing that eventually, but something like Gloomhaven, I’m not going to sleeve all of those cards, even though I love that game and the times I’ve had playing with it. And I have a solid reason for why I don’t put that extra money into my games to protect the components.

Games are meant to be played. Simple as that, that means that someone might spill some water/wine/beer/pop on something eventually, but that’s okay. Because that means that I’m enjoying my games and I’m not stressing out about the condition of my game when that happens. But more than that, it’s because I am getting new games. With something like Sushi Go! Party, that might be a game that I always want to have around, but it’s cheap when it’s in print, so not that big a deal to get it again. But there are a lot of games that run their course and then I move on from them well before they are destroyed. A great example of this is Dominion, when it was the original and only deck builder, it was fun, but now there are a lot of better deck builders out there that do more than Dominion. So I got rid of my copy, and even though it was played several times, it wasn’t destroyed when I got rid of it. But less about being destroyed, I was able to find games like Clank! In! Space! and Xenoshyft to replace Dominion. Even if Dominion had been beaten up and falling apart, there are going to be new games to replace it.

What about that category where it is a sentimental game of yours or rare?

Now, rare is a different case, because I don’t know that much about that, and I wonder if you’d actually play it that much. But a sentimental favorite game for some reason, because of who gave it to you, who you’ve played it with, or whatever the reason might be, do you take care of those games?

I think that is where I would put extra effort into protecting the game. And it depends on the game how you do this, but I’ll lay out a few options.

1. Limit the snacks/drinks at the table – It’s not always possible to limit them away completely, but if you have room, put drinks off to the side. And with snacks, don’t ask people to bring, plan snacks yourself. Stuff like pretzels are way better than Doritos for keeping a game clean.
2. Sleeve Cards – Yeah, I mentioned that I’ll probably not sleeve cards, but sleeving cards does save on wear and tear. And double sleeving does more so. Double sleeving is when you sleeve on direction and then you sleeve the other direction over the top of the first sleeve, that just makes it harder for those drinks to mess it up.
3. Laminate Player Boards/Boards – This one is out there and expensive, but it’s possible to do that to create a near indestructible copy of your game. I think that with roll and write games that this can make a lot of sense. Instead of having a game that you need to get more sheets for, you have reusable sheets.
4. Put in Place Rules – This one is the most extreme, but it would go beyond don’t have drinks/snacks at the gaming table. It would be asking people to not do stuff with the cards such as shuffling them certain ways, or whatever it might be. For me this is really extreme and something I wouldn’t do. If you decide to do this, just remember to give people leeway when they forget.

Now, I’m sure there are more things that I’ve forgotten for keeping a game from getting wear and tear. And one thing that I didn’t address was the fact that some people don’t have money to spring for new games and want to protect the games that they do have. I think that’s completely valid and I understand that. In their case, I think that suggestion #1 is going to be the ideal one for you, but if it’s a small game and you can single sleeve it, #2 could be useful as well.

In the end, I think that there are too many people who forget that board games are really just awesome toys for adults a lot of the time. Or toys for the whole family. It isn’t the end of the world if something happens to your game. So, when eventually a game wears out even with your best effort or an accident happens, be understanding. Games are meant to be fun, so don’t take away the fun from people to keep the games in your hobby looking perfect, otherwise, it will just become a collection that just sits there.

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