This, very much so. I love games that I know will not hit the table often, due to length, number of players or taste of the people I play with. So those factors have a lot of weight.
Also, my collection is very much dictated by what I can find a good prices, and what is available in NZ, which has its perks.
That looks like a good start. Depending on your personal flavour, and circumstances, I think you cannot be very wrong with that list.
Thanks @Marx, that’s great advice. Even though I know it is going to cost my wallet some dollars, thanks a lot for that post.
aka China
aka Web of Power
Not identical, but all essentially the same game.
The newer versions have additional expansions/boards. The Kickstarter exclusives for Iwari came to some rather ridiculous number of variants. I would have backed that, as I’ve never found a copy of Han to upgrade my beloved China; but I disliked the new art/theme so much that I left it alone.
I love games that do more than you expect with a small number of rules, and China has always been high up on that list for me. I love to teach people to play it, because it’s so simple to learn, fast to play, and yet it’s quite delightfully clever and satisfying.
It’s a very different game to Ethnos IMO. I guess the core loop of Ethnos is also simple, but there are so many special-case rules that the explanation was an absolute disaster the first time I tried to introduce people to it (whereas China only has about a half dozen rules).
Both are excellent games, though.
Yeah, Dice Tower just reviewed the new edition of Iwari literally yesterday, and mentioned China as the version they had previously.
I don’t mind the art on new Iwari at all, I’ll keep an eye out for the eventual retail.
That’s an awesome review!
I love everything I’ve read about Nemo’s War except… the difficulty. But we’ll see, there’s no way I’m not getting it to find out.
Edit: The reviews have also confirmed that I very much want Nusfjord and Everdell.
Thanks very much folks 
Nemo is great, because you can adjust the difficulty. For example, your first time out you can claim an upgrade for free (instead of spending ship resources on it), and you can push things back on the notoriety track, which means more dangerous ships get introduced to the game later than usual.
It’s a difficult game to gauge difficulty on really, as the motive you choose dictates how you play, so you might have to play one motive a few times to learn how to best play that style. Either way, it’s a real ride from start to finish. I’ve felt proper tension building up at the end of the game as the finale unfolds.
Yes, it’s dice driven, but it works on mathematical averages, and learning and gambling on when to exert resources is a big part of the game.
Do you know people who can teach you games, or help you out with rules queries?
I ask because I remember the first time we tried to play Agricola out of the box…it was tough, and the learning curve was steep. Dominion, on the other hand, was very easy out of the box.
I don’t, and I don’t have many friends who are into heavier games. But I have a lot of patience for watching full playthroughs on youtube and reading BGG rules clarification threads!
My only real insight here is to stop worrying about covering all bases. If you want X, Y or Z game from X genre, then by all means, look into each given genre/subgenre/mechanism/submechanism/theme/submechanisregenerathematism and go for the one you fancy within its niche. As with any given question the “best” is going to be contentious and ultimately unhelpful. Your friends don’t care what’s the best, they care about what’s fun and what you’re enthusiastic about. That counts for way more than you might think.
Ultimately, whenever someone talks about what they want in a collection, I ask what they mean by collecting. I don’t suspect you’re really looking to build some encyclopaedic, museum-grade collection, but rather want all the bases covered in the best way possible. If that’s the case then my advise is simply to choose a game within its given space that appeals to you the most (and isn’t objectively crap), and which might appeal to your friends/group. If everyone tells you that i.e. Dominion is The One within the deckbuilding space, then you can certainly rest assured Dominion is a strong consideration. But if the basic theme bores you to tears and would fall flat with your friends, what value does it actually have to you? (note: Dominion only chosen because it’s effectively quintessential. No personal bias intended.)
Buy for yourself and your group(s). I bought my partner Trogdor. It is one of the lesser games of note within the cooperative fire-putting-outing space; It’s a glorious hit of magnificence and burnination under my roof.
Tabletopia has Nemo’s War available to play with a free account, if you want to give it a whirl before dropping money on it. That is how I played my first couple of games and realized that the luck factor was just a bit too much for me to want a physical copy. The set up looks like a bit of a chore than I want for that kind of game.
I’ve just got around to looking at Tabletopia. Whoa… I guess I’ll be… some time…
