(I was really surprised to hear Marie Kondo has two kids)
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Used to be three, but one of them didn’t spark joy?
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I’ll start with the easiest one: Have you bought any games that were a bad fit? What did you do with them?
Yes. Loads. Sold them all or are in the sell pile. I have made a distinct difference between “my collection” and games that I own. Games that I own would have to either fit in the collection or be sold.
Do you have explicit rules for what goes into your collection?
I have certain criteria on what gets into my collection. They don’t need to fulfill them all but they are certainly the ones I look out for.
Player interaction - both positive and negative.
Lean rule set - doesn’t mean light rules. It means that the investment of me learning the rule set will be worth the trouble. The better the returns, the better.
Good mix of strategy and tactics - This is a recent addition. I have this subconsciously in my mind, but I wasn’t aware of it until recently. I want a game that allows long term strategy, but if the game will just let you beeline into it without interference, then I’m not interested.
There are exceptions like Ameritrash games like Fury of Dracula because it evokes a theme that works for me. Dead of Winter was like this too. But the objectives system is just so poor that I can’t ignore it.
“Contemporary Euros” also gets easily filtered out this way. Which brings us to…
What games didn’t make it into your collection? Why?
Multiplayer solitaire Euros need not apply. Simply because they don’t meet the criteria. Much more interesting would be the Euros that actually stayed. Terra Mystica remains an oddball, simply because, for me, it aced the “Good mix of strategy and tactics” so well that I can’t let go of it. The focus on the “route building” on the map and the area majority scoring made it cool to me. Which is why I prefer Terra over Gaia, as the latter took the focus off from that.
Rosenberg games are like this too. The pastoral theme is a strong factor, but Rosenberg seems to be relatively consistent on strategic games since Agricola (while pre-Agricola Uwe is a fun guy!) without making the games bloaty in rules - Feast is pushing it. This is something that other designers don’t seem to get, like Feld.
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If I were to sell on all the games I have not played in the past year, my collection would be about 1/6th the size it currently is. I would also be a lot less happier though.
List of games I have not played in the last year
7 Wonders
Battle Line (never played)
Betrayal at House on the Hill
The Big Book of Madness
Black Gold
Blood Bowl 3rd ed
Bruxelles 1897 (very new acquisition, unplayed)
Carcassonne
Castles of Mad King Ludwig
Catacombs & Castles (never played)
Catacombs
Catan
Chinatown (never played, but relatively new acquisition)
Citadels (never played)
Codenames
Codenames: Marvel (never played)
Condottiere (never played)
Coup
Dead of Winter
Decrypto (never played)
Disney Villainous: Evil Comes Prepared (never played, relatively new acquisition)
Dragoon (never played)
The Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game
Escape from the Aliens in Outer Space (never played)
Escape: the Curse of the Temple
Evolution: the Beginning (never played)
Exit - The Secret Lab (never played)
Exploding Kittens
Five Tribes (never played)
The Fox in the Forest
Fury of Dracula 3rd ed
Galaxy Trucker
A Game of Thrones: Hand of the King
A Game of Thrones: The Board Game 2nd ed
El Grande (just misses out being played within the year)
Hanabi
Hey, That’s My Fish!
Hokkaido (never played)
Inis
King of New York
Letters from Whitechapel
Loony Quest (never played)
Lowlands (never played)
Masque of the Red Death (never played)
Mesozooic (never played)
Mr. Jack (never played)
Mr. Jack Pocket
A variety of Munchkin games
Mysterium (also just misses out on being played within a year)
Mystery of the Abbey
Nuclear War + Proliferation
One Night Ultimate Werewolf
Orleans (never played, relatively new acquisition)
Pandemic
Pandemic: Rising Tide (never played)
Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 (unfinished going on four or five years now)
Quest of the Magic Ring (never played)
The Resistance (never played)
Risk: Metal Gear Solid
Samurai Spirit
Shadows Over Camelot
Shadows Over Camelot: the Card Game (never played)
Shadows: Amsterdam (never played)
Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective (Ystari version) and Jack the Ripper & West End Adventures
Shogun (Dirk Henn version)
Sonar (never played)
Space Hulk: Death Angel
Star Fleet Battles
Star Wars: Empire vs. Rebellion (never played)
Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game
Survive: Space Attack! (never played)
Sushi Go (maybe?)
Takenoko
Talisman 2nd ed
They Who Were 8 (never played)
Tokaido
Welcome to the Dungeon
World Monuments (never played)
Now, could I part with some of these games? Yes, I think I could. Some are games that I have played and they are just okay, so I don’t really crave playing them. Others are games that were random gifts that likely have not been played. But so many of them are games I do really enjoy and am sad they have not been played more. Many of the unplayed games are ones I really do want to try out and am eager to play, but finding the time and people to play them with can be challenging. Some of those would likely get added to the “okay to sell” list after trying them out, but I want to know that before just passing them on.
I do think it would be a good idea to try to thin out my collection a bit, but I really just don’t want to right now. At some point, it will likely be a necessity, just to ensure I have space for the games I definitively want to keep (and to make room for more), but that day is not quite here yet.
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I have real trouble getting rid of things just in general - if I can reasonably throw it out, that’s one thing. But if it is still usable, especially if it’s something that someone else might conceivably enjoy, then I need to get it somewhere where someone else might be able to get some use out of it. And since I don’t drive, it’s a giant pain to do so, plus if I might actually be able to derive some money from it, I need to sell directly to another person (second hand shops never give you remotely real value for your stuff since they want to make a profit). And that means shipping, which is an even bigger pain, and trying to figure out what someone might pay, which I loathe. So while I need to clear out some boardgames it has not happened so far.
In general there’s very little I’ve actively found disappointing in my collection - if I’m not sure about a game, my general philosophy is not to buy it. The main exceptions would be The Doom That Came to Atlantic City (it’s fine, but while it’s better than Monopoly it’s not really something I need to play ever again) and Agents of SMERSH, whose premise (Tales of the Arabian Nights but coop and super-spy based) was and is terrific, but whose production and writing are…less so. Which is, alas, a bit of a major flaw in a heavily writing-based game.
Everything else, I’ve enjoyed to a greater or lesser degree (or have never gotten to play). But with limited space, I think there are some games I clearly should pass on because I haven’t played them much and have no burning desire to play them again - Zombicide, Galaxy Trucker, Castles of Burgundy (a classic, but…I’d just so much rather play a Lacerda or Mindclash game or a non-euro), a few random Kickstarter things I’ve never particularly gotten into. Probably Patchistory and Ares Project, which I got ages ago for terribly cheap and have never worked their way to the head of the queue to actually play.
In general, I quickly abandoned any sense that my collection should be representative of anything but games that really appeal to me. They largely fall into the camps of thematic coops, heavy euro from the previously mentioned sources, or some sort of worker placement, with the occasional deckbuilder. Waaay heavier on the coops than anything else. I don’t especially feel the need to have a selection of light games (I don’t get much out of most of them, nor do I like to do a bunch of small games in a gaming session, I’d rather do a full session with something long and complicated), or train games (I guess I have Empyreal now, technically), or party games, or vicious competitive games, or hidden role games or whatever. I wouldn’t play them, and I wouldn’t invite people over to game if that’s what they’re looking to play. There are other venues for that. Nor do I necessarily feel the need to have the very best games in any given category. Which is really subjective anyway. I just want to have games that when I watch someone play them, I go “I need that in my life”. I do try not to do too much duplication, though. I skipped Hour of Need and will probably skip Marvel Champions LCG because I already have a superhero coop card game I really really love in Sentinels of the Multiverse and neither game seems to be so different that I need it alongside Sentinels. (And while Marvel Champions does at least have that license, I have some concerns about how richly thematic it can be with less than half of decks being specific to a hero. While I didn’t see anything compelling about the Sadler bros’ comic book universe.) Similarly, I have quite a few fantasy dungeon crawls at this point and while I feel like Sword & Sorcery, Gloomhaven, Too Many Bones and Altar Quest (plus arguably things like Folklore and Oathsworn) are doing enough differently to hang together, it makes me very picky about any future ones.
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Then there’s me. My collection consists pretty much entirely of games which I never play. There’s about ten that I play sometimes, about 50 that I don’t.
This is because I have a lot of friends with boardgames, and boardgames with friends, so whenever I’m playing a game, it’s one of theirs. Mine are reserved for my family, and myself. I do enjoy a good 4-handed game of Fortress America once in a while.
The bulk of it, though, is just things I like to know that I own. Like I’ll probably never play TI2, but it’s good to have for the sheer history of the thing. I’ll probably never need all the expansion s for Tanto Cuore, but I like to know I have them all.
As for selling games, I usually leave it up to convention/local math trades. There are those few weird things that don’t trade, though, and eventually I will need to pull the plug on them. Like I really have no need of a 3m copy of Point of Law, or the original Wheel of Fortune board game from the 80s. Got that one in a “white elephant” exchange, but now with everything cancelled, it’ll be a whole nother year to get rid of it.
So I’m still holding on to a lot of things from gifts/auctions/exchanges that may work for a future trade.
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Sounds like Bruce and I have a similar approach. It’s funny you mention the bed thing, but there’s another quotation I stick by that comes from a young Romanian doctor I used to know:
“There are 4 things in life which should always be comfortable: Your feet, your back, your money, and your genitals”.
He was very frugal in almost all aspects of his life, but then he would spend big on his socks, his bed, his wallet, and his underwear. I now do the same and I think he was onto something.
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Someone apparently gets a hell of a lot more sleep than I do.
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Well, his exact words were “You live in the damn thing! Money is no object!” because he’s a crochety American futurist, but yeah.
I went with his logic on the bed (and on a real chair) and think it’s a genuinely important thing to do. I then completely ignored his logic on other objects, because (as we’ve said) clearing out 80% of your house only really works if you’re a writer who lives alone and travels a lot. But the bed thing is real.
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I am dreadful with GAS (gear acquisition syndrome in photography circles, works just as well as game acquisition syndrome as well). My ever growing volume of RPGs is vast… boardgames much less so… and I think that I might try and adopt the one in and one out approach now I have built a Kallax stack… ha ha, we’ll see.
We have a very good boardgames selection at the city library, and my approach is going to be to borrow a game, play the game, check if anyone I know owns the game, and then review… I can always borrow them again from library.
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I’m up to about 75 games according to BG Stats. I think I’m going to have to start getting rid of games once I near 100, which seems like an easy-on-the-brain limitation, in a year or two. I feel like I’ve built up a fairly stable collection which I’m not too keen on culling but there are a handful that should go at some point. Marie Kondo’s “does it bring joy” is a fine benchmark for me, there are a few games that I just don’t care about. Any largish boxes are first to go, I’m far kinder to games that take up less space.
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A lot of responses to Gaming Goals for 2021 involved buying fewer games, or in my case not buying any at all. That has come about from a lockdown inspired splurge last year and from wanting to know my own tastes better.
The game I am not buying at the moment is Beyond The Sun . Oh my this has got rave reviews from SUSD, SVWAG and Board Game Barrage. A lot of talk is that it has similarities to Innovation , which I am a big fan of.
There is no online implementation unfortunately.
The reasons I’m giving myself for not pre ordering are a) I’m not buying new games b) I’ve disagreed with all of those reviewers before c) I’ve not played anywhere near enough Innovation yet and d) it’s published by Rio Grande and a reprint, plus the first expansion is being discussed.
I’m hoping I will get a chance to play this, either with an official TTS mod, or in person post Covid. I’m hoping that Rio Grande will keep the print runs large enough that if I love it, I’ll be able to get hold of it next year.
Or I can ask for it for my birthday 
Seriously, on that last bit - I’m still going to ask for games for gifts, but if I’m only going to get 4 games this year I’d better make sure they are the right ones.
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I am of the “buy less” variety.
I make lists.
- Lists of games I want (see my geeklist in the anticipated games thread, not linking here)
- Lists of games I have: https://delusions.de/boardgame-collection/ completely wip as of now. I need to see which of my personal categories are already overflowing and I need to do this away from BGG
- Lists of games I play or don’t play
- List of games to trade for instead (especially older games )
And I’ll just have to do my very best to not do impulse “bad day” buys.
I have all the best intentions of trying to play games before I buy them. 2020 was bad for that and I do badly teaching myself things on TTS… but after a 2 (one and a half) year game buying spree I need to slow down and one way to make sure that games I buy are at least no terrible surprises is to learn them before I buy them. Rules are usually always on BGG and even if there is no TTS mod reading those may help convince me not to buy something.
And in general I am starting to trade away or donate about ~50 games from my collection…
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There’s not a lot I want, and everything I want I’ve preordered.
I’m not buying Red Dust Rebellion. It’s looking to be a 2022 release and I’m not sure where I sit on the whole COIN genre, still. Some sort of hard Sci Fi Mars territory control game is appealing though.
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Two things slowing my buying down in 2021:
-
I’m not going to have people to play with reliably while the UK is a mess, and looking at unused games on the shelf is no fun.
-
I am absolutely not buying any game that hasn’t been reviewed extensively. No kickstarters, unless I can see a lot of gameplay and some detailed thoughts. I’m just not spending the money blind on anything over £30.
So my method for curating is: only games that have been on my list for nearly a year already and are widely acknowledged as great, and solo games.
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Anyone got good strategies?
I find my own niche and keep it at that: I’m still a sucker for area control/area majority and economic games. Even here, it’s a difficult sell if it’s a first printing with no reviews. Designer/publisher is also a big factor - the only bit that would make me get a game brand new. Checking my watchlist for 2021, I’m glad I kept it within the criteria I’ve set.
Although, I am very tolerant on small box games due to their size, cost, and how easy to convince people to play it with me. Easy to boot out if I don’t want it.
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No need for all the excuses. You couldn’t buy it if you wanted to! One of the most in demand/lowest distributed games around right now.
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You have heard of a thing called “preorder”?
2020 made me
preorder this, so it doesn’t fall into my 2021 restrictions. Oops.
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Find a store offering a preorder
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Vic’s back with a long one (and a part 1, for Pete’s sake!). TL;DR: boardgames.
I can’t believe I never actually posted to this thread. I’ve gone through a few collection “refreshes” now, once back in about 2013, and now twice since 2018. 
…lessons were learned.
When I first started getting into more regular boardgaming I had a fairly small, fairly mundane, but very beloved collection of games. Catan, Ticket, San Juan, Lost Cities, Pandemic, etc. It wasn’t a flashy collection, but filled with what are now bonafide classics. When I decided to flip/refresh this collection (with games amassed since around '99) starting around 2012-2013, it was because I had gotten my fill.
Starting around 2018 I was ready to do it again, but for entirely different reasons. My partner and I had started to game more frequently and were still developing our tastes as a duo; I was in a different province with different friends who had (wildly) different priorities with respect to spending leisure time, and up to this point I had made no effort to expand my gaming circle. As a result I had amassed a (larger than before, smaller than today) collection of exciting boxes… sitting idle. Oh and I rebought Ticket.
Cull 1: Lesson #1 - you sure about that one buddy?
Cull 2: Lesson #1 - who you gonna play with, fool?
I had put a pretty good chunk of coin into the new stuff, so rather than culling the dead weight, I finally started to branch out and look for gaming groups online. This got my games played! …Once. Always once. If I was lucky enough to play a game more than once, it just meant I was teaching it again.
Cull 2: Lesson #2 - Cult of the New is real, and it is strong.
Now, I love teaching games I’m enthusiastic about. But when your weekly game is an endless rotation of new players, you aren’t gaming anymore, you’re an instructor. This literally became a role I (willingly) took on at my main meetup group, so you might wonder where the problem was. Well, simple: I wasn’t seeing any difference at my second (non-instructory) table. When you want to sit down and play a competent, focused game of Root, that guy that sits down to take a poke at the cute game is really draining.
Worth noting is that by this point I was actively buying hot titles because I knew I could table them at least once and then flip if needed. And yes, this meant that by this point I was tuned into the great hype machine that is BGG and Youtube. Gross. Now, I’ll still never turn down a request (opportunity) to teach an enthusiastic person a game, but there was a lesson here, and lessons get line breaks and bold treatment.
Cull 2: Lesson #3 & 4 - play for yourself & find your group(s).
Then I ran out of space.
Cull 2: Lesson #5 - A.B.C. Always be culling.
Then I finally let myself fall down the Kickstarter rabbit hole.
Cull 2: Lessons #6-8 (ongoing) - Time is a loop; My imagination will destroy me; Time is a loop.
Then lo, did the pandemic hit and entertainment expenses did disappear, and said Kickstarters did delay, and tremendous overlap did occur.
Cull 2: Lesson #9 - Cull 3 started, like, a year ago you dufus.
I’ll post separately with my (current) “state of the collection” and my (current) philosophy about where I want it to be, but for now hopefully serves as a (massively condensed, seriously) little spiral into mania.
Cull 3: Lesson #1 - Tune in next time.
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