Oh Jesus. What was I thinking?
It’s very late, and I started this at 11. Setup just finished.
SETUP
This thing looks preposterous and insane. Perhaps I need to think about my purchases more carefully?!
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Definitely let us know if it is “realistic”! Interesting!
Wonder how it compares to other similar themed board game!
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I’m just going to imagine that this is the horrifying reality faced by each newly-elected US president, something like Star Trek’s Kobayashi Maru.
"Congratulations, Mr President. Now, if you can just win this game, everything will be ok.
Nobody has ever won."
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I’ve not played Wayfarers yet so can’t say this with any certainty, but I don’t really see the similarities being that significant. Wayfarer’s focus on tableau building, dice workers where you can manipulate what they represent and lack of set rounds already make it seem vastly different. I’ll hopefully get a game in soon and be able to make a better comparison.
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Did a website survey for a supplier at work, got an Amazon voucher as thanks.
Trailblazers turned up
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One step of first activation phase of the game done. Russia went mad, developed anti-missile tech, invaded Afghanistan, tried to claim the arctic, started a disinformation campaign in eastern Europe, and sent destabilising spies into the eurozone. Then it got grumpy and shifted to a cold war footing. Think I need a break before my actions!
Maybe this will need it’s own thread
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Yes, yes, but what happened in your game?
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“To resolve armed conflicts, simply set up your copy of Campaign for North Africa, with these house rules…”
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So Houston, we may have a problem.
Here’s some recent acquisitions, holds, backs, and pre-orders:
- Mountain Goats
- New Frontiers: Starry Rift
- Incan Gold
- Worldbreakers
- Trick of the Rails (Brasil release)
- Hallertau (more on this…)
- Fields of Arle: Tea & Trade (this has been out of print so long! Miniature Market did an inventory and found a stack of them in the warehouse and then started selling them for $24. Sometimes you win…)
- The Wolves
- The Gallerist
- Chicago Express
- The Barracks Emperors (sometimes you know 20 words into a review that a game is for you. Furnace is the last I can remember. This is the new one. Read @captbnut’s account and visited spacebiff and there you go)
So what’s the problem? Well, first off:
What’s this? Has Acacia gone Roads & Boats crazy? Maybe. But in this case, Zatu was selling this thing for $28 US. $28. With $30 shipping it became just a moderate deal. So I bought three to resell two, and I should net ~$30 out of pocket. Worth it (though no one is buying this at $60 yet, which is below market… soon I’m sure. It only takes one. Or two, in this case.) I’m a bit grumpy though because three copies brought the shipping up over $50. If that’s what it is, that’s what it is. But it showed up on my doorstep 36 hours later in a box 5x too large for these boxes. I have to believe Zatu could have gotten them here cheaper.
OK, what’s the other problem? The other problem is that my collection was, for all intents and purposes, “complete” around the start of this year. I didn’t need to fill in any niches and I didn’t have a big wishlist awaiting sales and restocks and stuff. I figured I’d pad the corners here and there but from first principles there was nothing I wanted or needed.
From 2021 to 2022, my spending dropped by about 25%. I expected it to drop by another 50% this year. Now I’m reconciling and we’re up almost 70% year-over-year. Now, at an absolute count I’m sitting at ~50 per year and most spending fluctuations have been based more on game cost than game count. This year has suffered from inflation and has included 2 Lacerdas, John Company, and a handful of $100 kickstarters. But still. I’ve bought more games this year than last.
I think there’s a couple of things going on. One, we went February to May without childcare, which meant a rotation of family and in-laws, plus PTO and just ducking out of work. June to now we have a baby. It’s been a lot. Yes, there’s the dopamine hit from a new find and a new purchase, but for me I think the bigger thing is I hit a tough yes/no question, don’t have the time or energy to make it, and figure I’m less likely to regret $50 than a game that I later decide I DO want and it’s unavailable or much higher in price. This reasoning is fine occasionally. Multiply it out across the year, though, and the logic breaks down.
The other issue is that I used to have a structured wishlist. Here’s 30 games I’m interested in. A sale comes up, check against the list, here’s the 2-3 that hit, so I get them. Here’s some new hawtness, it’s similar to another item, swap them out. That was the project for a few years. Now each thing is a one-off decision and, as above, one offs are easier to justify and harder to rank order. Well, now we’re at 50-off.
The last problem is that I have a practice of buying games when they are cheap, and then “funding” them in the future. Get a bonus, a birthday gift, sell something, whatnot and I “accrue” a game out of the drawer. It helps me get the best prices and not worry about stockouts when the time would normally come to buy something. My current backlog, I think, will take about 2 years to “earn.” That’s too much.
So I think it’s time to treat this as an addiction. Or more appropriately a compulsion. Something that’s not helping me. I do have an actual wishlist of 7 items that I’m going to keep, that list has been considered and curated. Outside of that I’m going cold turkey until next year’s Nerdzday (which is when I expect two of those items, Heat and GwT:NZ, to go on sale). That should be enough time to reset and reevaluate and we’ll see where we are then.
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“This all seems very normal.” – pillbox
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This needs to be an award.
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I did a double-take when that appeared – for a moment I thought it was part of the board :)
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Uuuhhh… I had a look at travel-games.
- Hipparchus - from the strength of Ptolemy
- Colours of Kasane - you have to use the US spelling if you’re gonna search this in BGG
- Robotrick - okay. I heard good things so I had pick this up.
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I often suspect this about people on boardgaming sites, but to say it out loud can net some very negative reactions.
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I think the best rule for whether a behaviour is a problem is whether it is making you (or people you live with) unhappy.
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Or causing a financial strain.
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It’s always a bit of both with these things, innit? That’s why we keep them around for a while.
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Pretty much the definition of addictive/compulsive behaviour is that while you remain ignorant of the problem, you think (consciously or otherwise) it is necessary to do it to be “happy”.
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Just in today is Dream Home: 156 Sunny Street, the out of print expansion to Dream Home. I picked it up secondhand for a great price; fairly unusual to find people selling expansions and not the base games either bundled or at the same time, but fortuitous for me!
And, fortunately, Dream Home and its expansion fit nicely in the much smaller expansion box.
The expansion adds support for a 5th and 6th player, a couple of extra modules, and a solo mode. Is solo Dream Home going to change my life, with it’s whopping BGG “weight” of 1.66 – no, not in the least. But I do think it looks charming and it’s a very straight-forward “tile” drafting game (where the tiles are actually cards). A Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig, without the Between part, and houses instead of castles, and peaceful suburbia (insanity) instead of (German Royalty) insanity.
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