Continuing the retrospective - and I know we do this in onesies and twosies throughout the year - but what is the landscape of your culling and downsizing over the last year? What went? Any hard choices or regrets? Happy?
And closely related, demurrals. what games did you get close to acquiring but decided not to pull the trigger in the end?
Managed to cull a couple of Munchkin sets last year, so that was nice. I had my fun with them back when, and they just aren’t really what I am looking for in a game at this point in my life. Got more to go, so hopefully this year.
As for demurral, Wyrmspan. I was very close to picking it up, but figured I had enough unplayed games and no idea when it would get to the table.
The only game I can remember selling is Minecraft: builders & biomes. Bought for the kids, but they didn’t really click with it and I found it boring.
The recent big purge:
Newsboys
Radlands
Car Wars (the reprint of the pocket box)
Mars Attacks Dice
Ogre Battlefields
Illuminati + expansions
Dice Hospital + Community Care
Coup Rebellion G54
Crossfire
Terminator Dark Fate
Kodama Duo
New Dawn
Tile Chess
Statecraft
Tell me what happened with Radlands? It’s not on the cull pile but also didn’t grab me the way I hoped it would. Curious how it arced for you?
Too many spiky special cases, basically, meaning a constant friction of rules-thinking getting in the way of actually playing the game. I like the colour palette but the actual card art was unappealing. I have Air, Land & Sea and Riftforce already and it doesn’t seem to offer anything that those don’t.
Full review at RogerBW's Blog: Radlands .
Geekgroup app informs me of a bad year in collection growth. Due to a number of Kickstarters delivering. My small games acquisition was also quite bad. Overall I had about 55 games added to my shelves (not counting expansions) versus 26 removals:
I culled
I also rebought the following games:
Games I added last year I already know are duds (for me):
There are some others that will probably see culling. But not yet.
I have a huge stack for the next kleinanzeigen sale. The excel with the info is ready. The boxes to mail games in are in the basement. But recent bad news on kleinanzeigen vs privacy has not made me look forward to this. Also I need some serious energy to get going with that. Which I don’t have right now.
There are a few games that are almost on the pile but not quite decided.
Regrets: see about repurchases above. Sometimes regrets get alleviated by games appearing digitally.
In spite of the above and other culls, my collection still grew from 185 to 199. Oh well.
I have decided I can have as many games as I have space for in the game room. I am considering just adding another shelf 
Still games that really just take up space I do want to get rid of. I have enough games I keep as collectibles already.
Box size definitely plays a role in how fast a game gets culled.
Been on a culling journey for 4 years. Started recording things 2 years ago. “Good but not great” and “I don’t need it in my life” became normal things to say. This started to bleed into other things. Started giving away my books that I don’t want to keep.
I got my big games under control at the start of last year and continued culling in 2024. It was the small box games that I focused last year.
What went? A lot. Mostly card games
Any hard choices or regrets? Kingdom Builder. SPIEL have the super duper deluxe edition for sale and a slight enabling from a friend allowed me to have this game again.
A lot of hard choices, definitely. War of the Ring wasn’t being played so it left. Inis, Tigris & Euphrates, Imperial, Through the Ages, and Hansa Teutonica are some examples.
Happy? Totally.
I think I would buy a game that was just the deduction part of Alchemists
Yes indeed! It felt when I payed it as though they had this neat idea for a deduction puzzle, then felt they had to glue generic euro mechanics on the side because CGE.
I am much more enthused by Turing Machine.
Paint the Roses is still my go to deduction game
My favorite deduction remains Cryptid. But I like Paint the Roses as well and still have it. Turing Machine got sold on to a friend of a friend. Too much hassle with the cards.
I think some of the charm in Alchemists is the fact that the deduction puzzle isn’t how you win; you win by pushing your luck on the deduction puzzle. I love the game, but pure deduction it is not.
Cryptid is also my favorite deduction game. But it is very dry and I can foresee struggling to get enough people to want to play it with me.
The Search for Planet X is my favorite solo deduction game; not because it’s the best, but because the fiddle-factor is lower than others and it’s a good puzzle with a decent solo mode (despite being app-driven)
Also-rans for “solo deduction game” include Turing Machine, which is amazing as a game, but feels like an activity (a fun activity) and the setup/teardown is kind of a pain. Another is Awkward Guests: The Walton Case which is, honestly, pretty good. A great drop-in replacement for Clue/Cluedo as a multiplayer game (I assume, haven’t actually done that yet), and yet another app-driven solo mode – honestly it’s pretty good solo, just not as good as others.
Deduction is one of my favorite things in gaming, but I am mostly surrounded by people who don’t feel as strongly about it as me, so most of my exposure to that style of game has been and will likely continue to be solo.
Hm, for some reason I was under the impression that your collection was much smaller than that.
Well, I mean, by forum standards… I don’t even have one copy of Roads & Boats.
Me either. Makes me feel like I barely belong here…
How’s culling going?
Well, it could be worse 
It could also be better.
I do have some games marked for culling. Not enough, but hopefully I’ll get some games played this year and identify some culling candidates and then do an auction to try to clear them out all at once, since my Geekmarket listings aren’t getting a ton of hits.
There’s something about you having 1500 dead on, rather than 1497 or 1513 that makes me happy
