Man you know what sucks? Not playing games. I don’t mean not having opportunities to play games, I mean having the opportunity to play games and just not being able to get a specific game to the table even though you definitely want to…or at least you think you want to. In many ways this feels like a hard topic to broach because its hard to write a lot about games that you haven’t really played. I think I want to write and talk a bit about the games I have in my collection that have gotten no play, how I came to own them (if I can even remember), and what I plan to do with these games.
Age of Steam (1 play, trade for about 2 years back):
To give my basic history with Age of Steam it was introduced to me back when I was in university by the Grad association board game group. Now you should notice I never actually got a Graduate Degree…never even tried to, but I enjoyed hanging out and playing board games with them back when they still ran the group. One of the days the organizer put Age of Steam in front of us. I don’t remember much of the play other than the fact that I got absolutely trounced and everyone went pretty deep into debt pretty early. More than a decade and a half later I had the opportunity to pick up an old copy of the game (probably a similar version of the game I played) in a trade. In the intervening years I dabbled a bit in cube rails, enjoying both Wabash Cannonball and Irish Gauge (though the latter is up for trade currently) and enjoyed them both which led me to thinking that maybe this is the not quite full jump over to 18xx that I was looking for (I mean you don’t have to buy trains…I think). Unfortunately my memory of the first game is still there and I remember it taking quite a while and me doing horribly and I can’t find a proper spot to introduce my group to this game. We game about once a month and its hard to put something in front of them that I don’t feel like will be a winner in the entertainment department. I think I will keep this because I do enjoy it but I really do need to find a way to get it to the table.
Verdict: Keep
King’s Dilemma (0 plays, owned for about 4 years):
Ughhh…..This one just hurts. Every time I look at this I really want to just go and play it, but for the longest time my game group has been 3 people during this time (if it was even that). And I know that it functions by far the best with 5 people. This one just falls under the idea that I want a campaign game that maybe isn’t as big. Do I see campaign games any time soon? Nope! But guess what I get to keep 1. Though I guess that means I should really get rid of KD:M (its not going to be it’s own item but that is definitely going to be looking for a buyer soon).
Verdict: Keep (But get rid of all the other campaign games I own)
Furnace (2 plays, owned….for a long time):
So this one is kind of the game that started this idea. You see every time I look at furnace I go, yea I think I remember enjoying that! And then I turn around pull out It’s a Wonderful World instead. Just to double check I actually brought this out to play. My group basically agreed with me, we liked it. We all enjoyed it, it was a fun game but I feel like we all rather play a different engine builder (almost literally in this game) than Furnace. On that note I think I’m also going to get rid of Res Arcana basically for the same reason, I feel like there are just always other games I want to play instead of it, not that it is a bad game when I do get to it.
Verdict: Cull (and Res Arcana as well)
That’s it for today. A short post about my feelings about game. Not anything particularly strong but I also haven’t posted much lately so an attempt to put some thoughts down that some might find interesting.