I’ve got a reasonably large collection of board games. Somewhere in the neighborhood of three or four hundred. For people deep into board gaming, this isn’t really as large as it seems, but for most of the general public that represents more special editions of Monopoly than currently exist. For now at least. We won’t, for the time being, include my collection of Role Playing Games in that total.
This collection of games has been slowly acquired over the course of the last ten to fifteen years or so. It started with Settlers of Catan and and branched out into other eurogames from there. There are games about trains, games with auctions and games with camels (two titles at least). I’ve got meeples shaped like people, sheeples, moosles, iguanles, and half a zoo of other animals, people and things.
I’ve killed doctors, invading armies, trolls, dragons, pirates, legionaries and pints of beer. Over the years I’ve collected wheat, sheep, sunken treasure, gold, gems, cargo, magic items, nuclear fuel rods, and animals two by two. I’ve played as plastic pawns, wooden houses, cardboard chits, wooden blocks, stones, and about a hundred different colored cubes of various types.
As for employment, while my day job was, until very recently, counselor to unruly children, during that same time I’ve been an Emir seeking a wife, an adventurer seeking treasure, a settler of a new island, an investor in city infrastructure, a brewer of some repute, the leader of the human race among the stars, an architect building a church, a submarine explorer, a builder of civilizations and a destroyer of worlds.
All that just goes to say that I have experience. I’ve been there, seen that and completely failed to acquire anything like a t-shirt (except for the Mr. X hat one gets with certain editions of Scotland Yard). I’ve been in on every trend in the last 15 years of board gaming. I’ve bucked trends, too and ignored highly ranked games because they didn’t appeal to me either in concept or execution. As such, I have managed to acquire a wealth of advice related to the hobby. It is advice that I wish I had learned and followed earlier, not because it would have made things easier, but because it would have made things even more fun than they already are.
Regardless of how you feel about a game, or how you think it plays, or even what your friends at the FLGS tell you, play the game before you decide to buy it (or not buy it, as the case may be). No game can be properly assessed from the blurb on the back of the box. It won’t match it’s own hype and certainly won’t give you a proper feel for how it actually plays. There are great games out there hiding in otherwise unimpressive boxes (see Caylus). Conversely, there are horrible games hiding in really, really cool boxes (see, well, Dante’s Inferno among others). You won’t know until you actually sit down and play the thing.
Lot’s of games have, ever so briefly, entered my collection only to be almost immediately kicked to the curb simply because, while they seemed cool from the outside, once they got played, or almost got played, they turned out to be real dogs. My exemplar is Sid Meier’s Civilization: The Board Game. Yes, THAT Sid Meier, THAT Civilization and, unfortunately, THAT board game. If you’ve played Civilization, any edition, on the computer, you should know what the appeal would be as a board game. Considering the computer game was originally an implementation of an even earlier board game version of Civilization you’d think this would be a no brainer. It looked great, it had great bits, promised lots of substantive crunch and hours of game play. All things which my group and I liked.
And it failed miserably. We never even got past the reading of the rules because set up for the game took an hour and then getting everyone enough information to begin took another hour and by the time the first turn was taken we still didn’t understand how it was meant to work and no one knew what to do. So back in the box it went and away it was traded. It should have been great, everyone said it would be great, and it wasn’t. Not for me and not for my group.
That’s the thing, though, you aren’t going to know just by looking at the box or reading things online whether a game is really suited to you or not. You have to sit down, preferably with someone familiar with the game, and try it out. Tastes vary, etc., etc., and what works for one doesn’t work for all. What you are trying to prevent is purchasing a game that you then have to get rid of immediately at a loss at worst or by trade at best.
Some good game stores have preview copies of a lot of the games they carry. Both of the stores I have access to locally maintain at least some of their stock for you to sit down and play or, at a minimum, look through. If you don’t have this luxury try attending a game night hosted either at the store or, increasingly, at the local library. If that doesn’t work, ask around, maybe one of the other guys that hang out at the FLGS has the game and would be willing to bring it in to play.
If you are still stuck for a way to try before you buy, hit YouTube. Many gamers have started putting play sessions online in video form for others to see and all it takes is the name of the game followed by the word gameplay to turn up a video. Wil Wheaton’s Table Top is becoming an actual game play resource as well.
Failing all that, you can try looking for a version of the game to try online. Resources like Brettspielwelt or Board Game Arena allow you to open a free account and try out a number of games. Not every game in existence has this option, but some of your main choices are readily available.
So, if you want to build a collection that is enjoyable, fun to play and promises years of enjoyment, the best advice in gaming is to try before you buy.
(Author's Note: This is a reprint of an article originally appearing at http://gsa.thegamernation.org/2012/08/01/the-best-advice-in-gaming/)
This collection of games has been slowly acquired over the course of the last ten to fifteen years or so. It started with Settlers of Catan and and branched out into other eurogames from there. There are games about trains, games with auctions and games with camels (two titles at least). I’ve got meeples shaped like people, sheeples, moosles, iguanles, and half a zoo of other animals, people and things.
I’ve killed doctors, invading armies, trolls, dragons, pirates, legionaries and pints of beer. Over the years I’ve collected wheat, sheep, sunken treasure, gold, gems, cargo, magic items, nuclear fuel rods, and animals two by two. I’ve played as plastic pawns, wooden houses, cardboard chits, wooden blocks, stones, and about a hundred different colored cubes of various types.
As for employment, while my day job was, until very recently, counselor to unruly children, during that same time I’ve been an Emir seeking a wife, an adventurer seeking treasure, a settler of a new island, an investor in city infrastructure, a brewer of some repute, the leader of the human race among the stars, an architect building a church, a submarine explorer, a builder of civilizations and a destroyer of worlds.
All that just goes to say that I have experience. I’ve been there, seen that and completely failed to acquire anything like a t-shirt (except for the Mr. X hat one gets with certain editions of Scotland Yard). I’ve been in on every trend in the last 15 years of board gaming. I’ve bucked trends, too and ignored highly ranked games because they didn’t appeal to me either in concept or execution. As such, I have managed to acquire a wealth of advice related to the hobby. It is advice that I wish I had learned and followed earlier, not because it would have made things easier, but because it would have made things even more fun than they already are.
Regardless of how you feel about a game, or how you think it plays, or even what your friends at the FLGS tell you, play the game before you decide to buy it (or not buy it, as the case may be). No game can be properly assessed from the blurb on the back of the box. It won’t match it’s own hype and certainly won’t give you a proper feel for how it actually plays. There are great games out there hiding in otherwise unimpressive boxes (see Caylus). Conversely, there are horrible games hiding in really, really cool boxes (see, well, Dante’s Inferno among others). You won’t know until you actually sit down and play the thing.
Lot’s of games have, ever so briefly, entered my collection only to be almost immediately kicked to the curb simply because, while they seemed cool from the outside, once they got played, or almost got played, they turned out to be real dogs. My exemplar is Sid Meier’s Civilization: The Board Game. Yes, THAT Sid Meier, THAT Civilization and, unfortunately, THAT board game. If you’ve played Civilization, any edition, on the computer, you should know what the appeal would be as a board game. Considering the computer game was originally an implementation of an even earlier board game version of Civilization you’d think this would be a no brainer. It looked great, it had great bits, promised lots of substantive crunch and hours of game play. All things which my group and I liked.
And it failed miserably. We never even got past the reading of the rules because set up for the game took an hour and then getting everyone enough information to begin took another hour and by the time the first turn was taken we still didn’t understand how it was meant to work and no one knew what to do. So back in the box it went and away it was traded. It should have been great, everyone said it would be great, and it wasn’t. Not for me and not for my group.
That’s the thing, though, you aren’t going to know just by looking at the box or reading things online whether a game is really suited to you or not. You have to sit down, preferably with someone familiar with the game, and try it out. Tastes vary, etc., etc., and what works for one doesn’t work for all. What you are trying to prevent is purchasing a game that you then have to get rid of immediately at a loss at worst or by trade at best.
Some good game stores have preview copies of a lot of the games they carry. Both of the stores I have access to locally maintain at least some of their stock for you to sit down and play or, at a minimum, look through. If you don’t have this luxury try attending a game night hosted either at the store or, increasingly, at the local library. If that doesn’t work, ask around, maybe one of the other guys that hang out at the FLGS has the game and would be willing to bring it in to play.
If you are still stuck for a way to try before you buy, hit YouTube. Many gamers have started putting play sessions online in video form for others to see and all it takes is the name of the game followed by the word gameplay to turn up a video. Wil Wheaton’s Table Top is becoming an actual game play resource as well.
Failing all that, you can try looking for a version of the game to try online. Resources like Brettspielwelt or Board Game Arena allow you to open a free account and try out a number of games. Not every game in existence has this option, but some of your main choices are readily available.
So, if you want to build a collection that is enjoyable, fun to play and promises years of enjoyment, the best advice in gaming is to try before you buy.
(Author's Note: This is a reprint of an article originally appearing at http://gsa.thegamernation.org/2012/08/01/the-best-advice-in-gaming/)
