I’ll add Pax Pamir here. I was over on r/boardgames and someone posted their top 50. I clicked through; that’s what we do, right?
Anyway, I was dialed in on this guy. Tigris up in the top 5, Isle of Skye ranked almost indefensibly high, Cyclades up over Inis or Kemet. A lot of it could have been my list.
And there at the top, Pax Pamir, a game I had never heard a whisper of before.
Of course I had to dig into this possible El Dorado of gaming gold. But this was prior to the reprint, so there was comparatively little information out there. But the Coming Soon was already up on Kickstarter, so I signed up for notifications.
Now, present day: I’ve only played Wakhan (the solo mode) twice. I found the manual a poorly organized wreck, the BGG forums haughty on rules clarifications, the rules themselves to be a (small) warren of exceptions and edge cases, and Wakhan herself to be a mess.
The experience of playing Wakhan was uninspiring. The cards felt same-y, having only the same six actions in different combinations, and yet the market rarely had the resources I needed to pursue the strategy I wanted. The first quarter of the game is Wakhan button-mashing to dump a bunch of pieces on the board, the second quarter is interesting, and the final half is rote as you cruise to victory.
But I’m hopeful! I’m hopeful that a full table and real opponents still hold the gold. We’ll see.
Rhino Hero - played as a quick fill in between games, three of the participants ordered it during the game. I dearly love the game, so this excitement lastedz
Codenames - not me, but I would say about half the time I’ve introduced people (mostly non-gamers (whatever we mean by that)) to this, they have bought the game and then spread it further. I suppose I’m saying Codenames has a high R rate. Personally I enjoy it but the long silences can be agonising. I’ll happily play it, but I’m usually sad that we’re not playing something else.
It’d be easier to list the games I’ve bought after having played them at least once. I used to buy blind or with just advice from FLGS staff, nowadays I do my own research. But the following were bought after at least one play:
Mandala, played it at our board games café. Wound up playing it five times over the course of the evening. Bought immediately after;
Bärenpark, played it the same evening and purchased it right away;
7 Wonders Duel. Technically not, since we’d only played the basic version, but the game had caught our eye.
So Thurn & Taxis goes here. This happens more now with BGA games that take several days. Totally fell in love about halfway through the first game. I’m in my second now and it’s even stronger. I tried to buy it during the first game and then again yesterday.
However, here in the States copies are running about $75, so I couldn’t in good conscience. To add insult to injury, it looks like German ebay is flooded with unwanted $10 copies!
I dont do this now. I usually buy the games that I know I will like. But the exception for the past 2 years or so must be Undaunted. First play and I thought it’s pretty cool. The 4 player extension of Reinforcements was a good encouragement to get it
I have had my eye on Thurn & Taxis for a long time. I’ve always loved the theme and setting (because I’m a nerd), but when I discovered (quite recently) just how respected the game is… and then hearing people I trust talk about how it’s a great game… well, I just wish it were easier to track down in the US.
I bought a couple of the well-known games without having played them before: Everdell, Viticulture, Santorini, and I don’t regret it. But I also bought Caper, and I just can’t get into it (at least that one was a cheap xmas present).
I will totally be buying a Crokinole board even though I haven’t played on one yet.
You can buy the tools and supplies to make a crokinole board (wood, router, sandpaper, varnish, polish, drill) for less than the price of a board. Takes a few days of part-time woodwork, but it’s not hard. Did it myself as my first woodworking project and came out pretty good (if I do say so myself!)
I’ve purchased the majority of my games without a single playthrough of them… back in university I had a group of gamer friends and we would play each other’s games, so there was no need for me to have a copy of, say, Ra, because my buddy Bill had one and we’d just play his.
These days I watch reviews, read reviews, listen to podcasts, talk to customers and listen to customers when it comes to game selection, and as a result the majority are purchased without playing them first. A customer talked me into buying Strike which I picked up and thoroughly enjoy. Another customer talked me into a copy of Curious Cargo which I like a bit more than 7 Wonders Duel in that same weight class… and so on.
I suppose I bought Star Wars: Outer Rim after demoing it at Adepticon back in 2019… I was going to buy it anyway, but sitting down to play the first four turns definitely cemented it.
I think that might legitimately be it, though. Everything else I either played multiple times before buying it (Ascending Empires, War of the Ring, Race for the Galaxy…) or were purchased sight unseen (98% of my collection falls into this category).
There aren’t many gaming convention in Southern Ontario, and the ones I go to are usually for specific games (Infinity or Star Wars Legion tournaments, for example), so there isn’t that much opportunity for me to try games I don’t own. Ah well!
I think failure to spot this is one of the classic failure modes of early-stage board game acquisition: I played game X, I will buy a copy of game X! But the people I played it with go to the same game groups that I do…
I spend a lot of time at work trying to reinforce this.
With some games, it’s easy! MicroMacro is a great example: telling people to buy one and then get their friends to buy the other seems to work about 75% of the time (the other 25% just buy both at the same time… I can hope they pass them along to others in their circle, though).
For everything else… just one copy among the people who you play with is more than enough. But getting people to grok that… tricky.
In the BeforeTimes, I also spent a lot of time trying to convince people to play a game at least once before they buy it. Board Game Cafes, once a rare specialty available only in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, have sprouted up like delicious weeds in every city I know, especially if that town has a university. Go there! Try the game! If you like it, come back… it will probably still be in stock (this time of year all bets are off. We got 144 copies of Cascadia in the last week of October: the store has 3 copies left as of yesterday, and I suspect there are none left now since we are open on Sundays as well).
The Ra situation with Bill is funny, though… I actually forgot that it was his copy of the game that I had in my house for… twelve years? He eventually asked for it back, and that was a shock… but when the re-release was announced, I didn’t jump on it. I love Ra, but gosh that’s an expensive reprint. Hopefully the retail edition will be more manageable.