Why Not Heavy Board Games

Let’s start out by looking at why I don’t generally buy heavier board games. And it comes down, mainly to one thing. They are harder to get to the table. Even the in the case of campaign games, that are heavier, which I do buy, they are harder to get to the table.

Generally there are a few more things, pieces, to the game. And so that is potentially going to make it harder to get to the table. But most of what makes it harder is that the games are more complex. That means that teaching the game is going to take longer with new players. And with the group I play with, often, it means I have a more limited target audience. Generally, for any gamer and game group, the more complex a game is the more you will limit who you can play with.

Side tangent, that isn’t a bad thing. If you really only love heavy games of whatever variety it is that you like, and you only want to play thoughts, cultivate a group to play with. Just know that the group is going to be smaller than if you play lighter games.

Why Lighter Games

So, I already answered this question, some. But lighter games get to the table easier. I can pull out these one off games to play without much effort and teach them really quickly. And generally they aren’t going to be as long, either. That means that you can get in a few games during a night.

I actually did something similar to the Brother’s Murph. I maybe didn’t get rid of light games, but I stopped buying a lot of them because I wanted to play heavier games. But I realized that those slightly heavier games, games that my wife might not be as interested in, things like that, just aren’t as useful to have in my collection.

The question for this is, is it better to have a lighter game that you like and play 10 times a year or a heavy game that you like and play 1 time a year?

And with that question, how well do you remember the rules? I shouldn’t say that heavier games only get played that little, but for a lot of people they do. See the side tangent up above. But often times the less often you play a game, the harder it is to remember how to play that game. That is another reason I like lighter games, even if I play it less often, the rules are simpler so I forget fewer of them.

Why Heavy Campaign Games

But then, on the flip side, I play and buy heavy, big, long, campaign games a lot. And I love my campaign games, but that flies in the face of why I buy lighter games, doesn’t it? And why I avoid heavier games with the longer rules teach and more set-up and pieces and side cases to keep track of. So a campaign game probably is not something I would buy.

But there is a difference for me with a campaign game versus a one off heavy game. The main one is that when I play a heavier campaign game, I play it a bunch. With my campaign game group, it’s every other week. For Malts and Meeples, it is weekly. So, it takes care of one of the issues, namely, heaving to relearn the rules.

Now, even with Tainted Grail, which we have played 30 or so different sessions of, we need to look stuff up every once in a while. But at this point it is rare that we do that, and the core game play, we don’t need to refresh anything on that. So that makes the whole process much faster to get through with the game. There is still a fair amount of set-up, but we don’t need a refresher.

That is very different than a game I play less recently. For example, I know and like games like Blood Rage and Lords of Hellas a ton. But because I play them less often, it is way more work to get them back to the table. And that is for me as the person who owns them. I could still, after not playing Gloomhaven for a while, sit down and teach Gloomhaven easily to people because I was steeped in it for so long.

Final Thoughts on Board Games

There isn’t a right way to buy games or to play games. I always go back to a quote from The RPG Academy. “If you’re having fun, you’re doing it right”. Now there is more to that about breaking rules that makes more sense for RPG’s. But the concept is the same. If you and everyone at the table are having a good time, doesn’t matter if you play a heavy game, a light game, a trick taking game, a campaign game. The point is to have fun.

And really, the most important thing is to know your group. Would I love to play a few heavier games more often, most certainly. I’d love to get Atlantis Rising back to the table soon, but it’s a bit more of a teach. Or Blood Rage or Lords of Hellas, both would be a blast to play again, but also more work to play again. I tend to keep those heavier games off to the side. And I know with my monthly game group, I need to keep it lighter.

So know your game group, Cultivate it to what you want, and maybe keep some games that aren’t quite as heavy on your shelf, if you have a game night like I do.

How do you find yourself buying games? Has it shifted over time?

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So what I wanted to think about, is there a better way to play games or is there a time for both things?

I think that the simple answer is that there is a time for both old favorites and trying new board games.

There, the article is done. But not really, because I think there are traps that we can fall into as board gamers that we should be aware of with old and new games.

With new games, I feel like it’s pretty simple. As they have put it on the Dice Tower and other places, it’s the cult of the new. The idea for that is that whatever is new is clearly a lot better and everything that came before it is bad. Obviously there can be several issues with this. The first being that you buy games faster than you can play them. I think that is inherently an issue, depending on the type of game that you like to play. If you just play euro games, you can probably keep the games on the “shelf of shame” to a minimum, because playing the game once is a separate experience. There are a lot of games now that have a campaign in them, and with that, now you need to play through several games to either get the idea of the story or to complete the game. So you can end up with a big shelf of unplayed games. The cult of the new can also lead to buying games faster than you can play them, not just because of length, but in general, and in that case, you’re never going to get to them all, and I think for some people that’s fine, but for others, it can be an issue. It goes back to hobby versus collection. Finally, the issue with cult of the new is cost. One groups like The Dice Tower and Rolling Solo Facebook groups, people are always talking about new games. So there are so many games that seem interesting out there, and that is spendy.

Now, I talked about that as a negative, but I think sometimes people push back on it too much. This can be one of the issues with the old favorite. There’s nothing wrong with Dominion, a game that I’m not a fan of anymore, but if you are excluding playing other deck builders because you like Dominion so why bother, that’s a bad attitude as well. There are a couple of issues with this mindset. The first being that it’s possible you’ll be alienating yourself from your play group. They are probably going to put up with playing Dominion for a while, but if that’s all you’ll play or if you only have a handful of favorites, they might want to branch out and that will mean branching away from inviting you to game nights. Also, it’s going to keep you from finding other good games. I can, again, understand not wanting to have to learn new games all the time, but doing that to the exclusion of other games is an issue.

Tied into that, but another issue can be treating the game like something more than it is. The idea is that because something like Dominion was the first big deck builder and now is liked less, you feel better because you still like the original. This comes with not being willing to try new games and keeping you from finding new good games because it might be a deck builder and Dominion is a deck builder so why do you need more. However, there are many deck builders out there that do a whole lot more than Dominion, so the elitist attitude that there is no reason to try more keeps you from being able to branch out into more interesting games. Let me quickly clarify my last sentence, while personally think there are deck builders that provide more interesting choices and themes than Dominion, what I meant there was additional interesting games.

Finally, I think that people often stick with old favorites because of the amount of board games in the market. If you got into Dominion, Catan, or Ticket to Ride when they first came out, the board game market was much smaller. So some people keep from jumping in further, because they don’t know where to jump in. Instead, they just defend the old favorite and only want to play that. That can be because of the number of games or a bad experience with the wrong new game. If someone liked the idea of Legacy games after playing Pandemic Legacy and then played Seafall, they might not want to play another legacy game after that, but don’t let that color all future legacy games. I think, now, we have enough resources to keep the overwhelming number of games or a bad experience to keep you from trying new games. I feel like that is more of an excuse than a reason. With top 10 lists on different types of games from The Dice Tower or The Brothers Murph, and tons of other locations, you can see what games other people like. Also, there is Board Game Geek that has all games listed there, and you can search either by an mechanic that you like, or by a name and you find out information on a game. So yeah, you are still going to find a dud, but between those things, you’re going to be able to find games that are more likely you’ll like. Board Game Geek even has a nice resource now that recommends games if you like one game, so that helps you find more games as well.

Right now, we live in a world where some people hang onto old things too much and other people are too happy to rush forward and never look back. This is a trend in board games as well. For board games, and for my collection, I feel like I need to walk that line, being discerning about adding new things, and being willing to try new things, but at the same, coming back to the old games again from time to time. And again, this depends on whether you want it to be a collection or a hobby. So for that reason, I want to go back to old games, because I want to walk that line, where I have a hobby, but also a large number of board games.

Where do you fall with this on board games? Are you into the new board games? Do you only want to play old favorites? What are some new games that look cool, that you want to try? What are your old favorites?

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