Well that took longer than expected, but this finally turned up in my FLGS!
(Although they would seem to have forgotten that they were supposed to call me, and I hadn’t been in for a few weeks, so I’ve no idea how long they’ve had it for.)
This one is still in limbo…
I traded Akrotiri for Pandemic The Cure. Been a while since I’ve played Cure. Had a great time with it, but it was always too expensive to buy myself.
Akrotiri is nice, but I want to prune out the ‘fine’ games.
Cthulhu Death May Die (thank you tax refund!). Its hard not to buy the expansion as well.
“We don’t know when Calico and Unmatched will be here, can we send you the other stuff(1) by courier(2)?”
(1) I had ordered some stuff for friends as well…
(2) the city currently pays for bike couriers to support small businesses
Courier arrives. Guess Calico and Unmatched arrived at the shop today 
They are a little weird, and sometimes they annoy me but on the other hand 
I am off to check out Calico (I previously only played on TTS…)
PS: my worries about Calico printing quality appear unfounded. But the box could have been smaller…
Heh. I’m pretty sure I posted it in the perfect box sizes thread. 
Would it have killed them to just take off two or three centimeters off the height?
After packing Inis into the Seasons of Inis box I’ve been thinking how box size impacts perception of a game. Smaller box most often means smaller game and is easier to “sell” to my fellow players. Having too large a box may just raise expectations in the wrong direction.
The Unmatched box also seems a bit on the large end. I would have expected something half that size. I mean it’s four small decks of cards… but at least if I like it a lot of expansions will fit into that box.
I suppose it’s the perception of value for money. Big boxes meant historically bigger store presence (there are of course games that need the size). I wonder what the most expensive box to price ratio is and what game, splotter have got to be up there as are some other small run games.
The canonical example being Splendor of course, but I seem to recall some photos of something that came as a big A4-sized box with a little pack of cards and some counters hiding in the corner.
I look at it like this: any smaller and the boards/tiles would need to be scaled down as a concession. That would be to the detriment of the game in my opinion (they’re about perfect for readability and tactility). The height of the box could have probably been lowered just a tad I guess, but that gave me just enough room to squeeze in a couple of little boxes to keep the (annoying) cat bits separate.
As for the size of the box being relative to the perception of weight, I’d generally agree on both ends. But in Calico’s case I’m not sure a centimeter off the top is really going to make too much a difference in that regard. The lil sleeping kitty helps too.
Funny you should say that.
My FLGS doesn’t have all that much space for boardgames (one aisle as opposed to 4 or so four toys which apparently bring in more money and also make it so they are surviving the lockdown). So they put the new games in their own little corner and on those shelves the small to midsize boxes are at eye-level while the big boxes get put up so high I cannot reach and need help.
Though admittedly Calico is probably right there on the “look here this is a nice family game” table right next to the entrance. (In theory one can call ahead and ask for an appointment and actually go into the store to browse again)
They probably could have reduced the size of the boxes for Unmatched, but I like the way they packaged it. The inserts fit everything wonderfully, and well organized. Really, it’s the boards that seem to force the size of boxes for a number of games. You can only fold them down so much. If you toss the insert, you can certainly fit most if not all of the expansions in one box, but you would need to come up with your own organization method (which I know you do) and it probably would not fit all the boards due to the minis.
A guy that comes to Games night with me has a funny story about Splendor, how he ordered a travel size version from one of the Chinese online sellers (I cannot remember which one) and they sent him the normal size one. At least on the claim he got the money back and kept the game.
That reminds me of Pictomania. When I bought that, it turned out to be missing one of the two plastic stands for displaying the cards (also indicating which symbol goes with which card). We worked around it easily enough by drawing the symbols on a couple of envelopes, and just propping the cards up against the box, on top of the envelopes).
It would have been nicer to have the proper stand, though, so I emailed to request the missing component and, for whatever reasons, they considered it preferable to send me an entire new copy of the game and not ask me to return the one I had – which meant I’d ended up with a free copy of the game which, while missing a component, was still completely useable. (My parents got a free game out of that.)
My pre-ordered copy of War Chest Siege arrived today and I had to put a ticket in with AEG immediately. From what I can gather a small number of the earliest prints had a known issue (appears to be an offset thing) and the coin backs are terribly mismatched.
I’ve needed to deal with AEG for an offset issue in the past (first run Shy Pluto had the same issue) and was dealt with promptly, so I’m not too concerned. More concerning however, is the lower quality of the product in general. The card stock is of lower quality and also has colour issues (no gameplay affected here at least) and the general print and production of the coins feels of decidedly lower quality than the previous releases. Right down to the poorly formed vac tray with a lid that won’t close and which seems to have been scaled up juuuuuuust so it can’t fit in the base box.
Grrr.
Hoping the new content is good, at least.
Such a fun game! Hope it serves you well!!
Friend did his first bg collection cull. Bought Spirit Island with Branch & Claw and Jagged Earth 
Bought The Crew: Flight to the ISS and Imhotep: Sun Ship Tiles promos too.
Bought Paleo, sounded like good co-op fun
On the heels of my recent sell-off extravaganza, here’s the other side:
Rallyman GT - everything including 2x GT4/5 packs and 5x extra dice.
Set and Match - awesome pure dex game, completing my flicking trifecta.
Picked up X-Men Mutant Insurrection for some Elder Sign Light and put in an order for Burgle Bros 2
I cannot resist that.
What are the other two?