I’ve also just been given a very late birthday present of Oriflamme: ablaze 
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Went out to play D&D today, so did my duty of spending over £2.50 in the shop by picking up The Great Dalmuti, as the art looked cool.
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Could not resist Sheepy Time
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Firmly in my try before I buy list.
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I finally managed to trade Neon Gods and put the proceeds toward Lords of Xidit, which had a sneaky blown-out corner that wasn’t visible until out of shrink. Unfortunate, but it’s taped up and fine.
Xidit probably won’t get played any time soon, but offloading Neon Gods marks the “end” of my two-year long cull and I’ve got room for a game that will only come out so often (I’m down to just a handful of these now). I had wanted this for quite a while.
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Lol at the normal-sized box contrasted with the ridiculous one. Finally here after over a year!
Also in the background: Lets’ Make a Bus Route and Railroad Ink, bought second-hand for my daughter.
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So when can we expect the custom Vassal mod of TGZ?
Although Heavy Cardboard had it in a ‘weeknight top 20’ as it’s a 2 hour game so hopefully you’ll get to play this one in person.
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My 2 hander went rather quickly 
After the learning phase.
Congrats. That’s a real shopping spree!
I admit I knew only the Roads&Boats box size and was pleasantly surprised by the neat bookshelf sized box for TGZ.
ps: Can you explain the German copy of what I think must be Bunny Bunny Moose Moose?
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Yeah, TGZ is not a 2 hour game. Much faster.
Bunny Bunny Moose Moose used to be very hard to get hold of. Iirc, when I was in my Chvatil honeymoon period I ordered it direct from CGE, and they only had German copies.
Games sit around on the table for a bit after a play request. Might have been months ago. The reasons/occasions to tidy are few these days.
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I’m looking forward to the Iello release of that, one of my few must haves for next year I think
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re: Let’s Make a Bus Route
Same here. I hope it lives up my expectations? I heard about it on the Dice Tower and it seems to be fitting into that small category of route building roll & writes and I am still playing the Railroad Ink app almost every single day…
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Why do you have to spend over £2.50??
Eh, don’t get too excited. It’s fine. I only bought it because it’s something I thought my daughter would like.
It’s a flip and write, with a fixed board and a fixed card distribution, so I can imagine it doesn’t really suit the typical roll & write niche. The competition on the same board is the key draw, of course, making it more of a typical boardgame, but it really doesn’t seem to justify the buzz around it.
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It’s basically the “fee” for playing at the shop. Rather than charging for use of tables, etc, the owner just asks that everyone buys something worth at least £2.50.
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Yeah, I suspected the buzz about it was more to unavailability (in the US and Europe) than anything else.
Downgraded on the wishlist
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Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to experience, and I’m sure it’s a good game for someone. But I’m always looking at what you have to do to get better at a game. You always know the 10(?) cards that will come, and the board never changes. The variety comes with start position, card order, and 2 public goals, with each player board having the same 5 moves mixed up and linked to different card colours. So the only way to get better is to get familiar with the board, and optimise your route around it, especially as the potential card draw narrows down towards the end. Getting better at those two things doesn’t really interest me. Maybe there’s an endgame of player interaction around getting a route first to look forward to, I’m not sure.
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But when you’re looking for ways to stop buying, hearing neutral comments helps a lot.
I still want to play it at least, but maybe I won’t rush and buy it on the hope that owning = playing
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Life’s been a bit crazy and I’ve now entered my “I’m not going to buy anything in December, in case anyone is shopping for me from my wishlist, and I only buy things on my wishlist”. But, I do need to catch up on a surprisingly active November:
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Acquire – finally tracked down a copy of this for less than $50. I know most people don’t think too highly of the Hasbro editions, and perhaps that’s why I was able to grab it for a good price. Looking forward to this one; I recently read that Acquire may have played a huge role in boardgame design in Germany during the 70s and 80s, making it, potentially, the progenitor of this, our hobby.
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Asgard’s Chosen – Mark Bigney is to blame for this one. My local FLGS has had a “Clearance and ding&dent” copy of this for about 2 years on their clearance rack… For $28. I got this and Acquire, with shipping, for less than that. Looking forward to checking it out solo.
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18DO: Dortmund – Kickstarter arrival! It took a while, but I’m really in no rush – I won’t be doing in-person 18xx gaming for quite some time. Beautiful production, despite the errors.
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Set a Watch: Swords of the Coin – Kickstarter arrival. I kinda bounced off of Set a Watch but felt like it had potential to be really interesting. I mean, interesting in an Excel spreadsheet filled with formulas sort of way. This expansion adds more… and hopefully that’s what it needed (it felt like it, but it’s hard to tell). And, if I don’t particularly care for it after trying this out, I should be able to move it along fairly easy.
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Tokyo Metro & Osaka Metro Expansion – Yet another Kickstarter arrival. I’m reluctant to get involved with Jordan Draper productions after being rubbed the wrong way with the Import/Export Kickstarter project. But Tokyo Metro has enough positive buzz and feedback from trusted sources that I felt it was worth a pledge.
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Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy – Epic space 4x game? Check. Playable (according to some) at 2 and 3 players? Check. Giant box and over-production: unfortunately, also check. Oh well, it was a “grail” game that helped me turn a mental corner when it came to buying less games.
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1848: Austrialia – this was a GMT P500 pre-order. I tend to like Orgler games; I haven’t played enough of Ohley’s games to know how they strike the palette. I think this one caught my eye because of the different track gauges and the Bank of England mechanism. Really looking forward to this. GMT track tiles are way too thick.
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Loopin’ Chewie – I threw a lowball bid on this, only to then have to pay shipping which brought the total cost of this to slightly more than I was comfortable with. But I look forward to playing it with my kids… who won’t know what a Stormtrooper is or who Chewbacca is… but they’ll eventually learn. I guess I should have just bought a new copy of Loopin’ Louie… which would have been way cheaper from Target or Walmart
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Cargo Express – took a gamble on this and underestimated the size of the box (it looked like a small-ish box when I was doing research) – I expected it to fit in a regional rate box and ship for less than $10, but it ended up costing almost half again as much to ship. Oh well, the auction was raising money for a good cause. I don’t know much about it, but it seems to have its fans in economic-game circles.
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Obsession: Useful Box – I preordered as soon as they became available; a lovely update to a lovely game made by a lovely man who is literally the best publisher in the hobby.
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If you have two Loopin’ Chewies and a 3d printer, you can make a six-player version.
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That sounds awesome!
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