And now to figure out my own answer 
My game acquisition is anything but orderly. I strive to make it more orderly but I would be lying if I said it was.
Buying stuff at a whim happens
- at FLGS I sometimes buy games on a whim. I call that FLGS tax.
- sometimes I really really do not want to pay for shipping and so if a game I want doesn’t make it beyond the minimum amount required I end up buying “Versandfüller” the most recent such game was Beacon Patrol and that was a really good one.
- at SPIEL, sometimes I test a game and then immediately buy it because it was fun this does rarely put the game on my table a lot to make it worth buying (Alubari, Jetpack Joyride, Barony, Dice Settlers)
All of these have a huge likelyhood for being disappointments -.-
Who brings games to my attention in the first place?
- This place
- FLGS people
- Reviewers I losely “follow” (SUSD, NPI, SVWAG, Spacebiff, Zee Garcia, Tom Vasel) but it’s less and less often that I actually follow… lack of time on my part and also perhaps having figured out that my taste mostly differs from theirs and that I have a vastly different gaming environment and need to tailor what I buy to that.
- BGG:
- SPIEL-Preview (yes it has begun for this year)
- The hotness… before I realized how that worked it led to some really big disappointments–staring at you Black Angel (I will give it another chance soon…) and I also still blame the cover for that one
- Just trawling the games entered into BGG for the current or next year or checking out geeklists
- Seeing a well-done crowdfunding campaign (I admit to still regularly checking both Kickstarter and Gamefound.)
- The Feuerland newsletter. Having begun with Terra Mystica as their first game I have a certain fondness for them as a publisher.
- The cover as seen just somewhere in the corner of my eye. My achilles heel is the color I call “nebula” (a mix of purple, pink, blue and black tones). I have a hard time resisting games with a cover like that (examples: Black Angel, Tamashii, Unsettled, Vampire Vendetta)
Will I actually get this to the table?
Step 0: Pros and Cons, easily checked on BGG
This gets rid of a lot of games.
Cons: Some games are just unlikely to hit the table
- 2 player only is a big one. In the past most of those have been played disappointingly few times
- 3-5 players, I have mentioned this a lot because I have a few of those on my shelf of shame and can’t get them down because I fail to learn them properly.
- Extremely long or short play time
- Very heavy weight games 4+
- Looks busy on the photos posted on BGA (I am looking at Bitoku, Arborea and Woodcraft here)
- Weirdly games designed as pure solo games are questionable for me. I have a couple but most fall flat and the ones I have… I could do without.
I also check “best with” player counts and often enough this means a game is not for my table.
Pros: Criteria that make it far more likely a game gets played
- Solo-Mode (especially one that is not an automa) --Patchwork is getting a solo mode in the upcoming anniversary edition
- Favorite mechanisms (tile laying, polyominoes, tech trees, board growth eg Spirit Island or Terra Mystica, deck building, route building/finding) this is one of the most important things I check on BGG
- Mid-weight games between 2-3.5 (BGG weights) seem to hit my table most consistently outside of solos.
- Pretty art, I am a sucker for a game that looks good on the table
Step 1: Buddy Analysis
To figure out some of these, one of the first things I do these days is check my BGG Buddy Analysis for a given game and a lot of interest stops right there. I don’t always agree with most “buddies” but the more I check the better I know how their taste differs from mine. I have searched for people with similar tastes on BGG and also added a lot of reviewer accounts as buddies–but not all of them rate and review consistently on BGG–to get a quick overview.
Step 2: Check what I already have
I also try to figure out what other similar games I already have and if it is worth adding another one. I use geekgroup.app for that. I have grouped my games by certain criteria and can quickly filter against a bunch of parameters. Sometimes when I find comparable games in my collection it turns out they are not getting played and then I wonder if maybe maybe we just don’t like Hidden Movement as a mechanism.
Step 3: Forum
If a game is still in the running, I also sometimes ask in the Has anyone played… thread even when no answer is forthcoming and a search through the forums also doesn’t turn up anything, that in itself is telling and recently helped prevent me buying Skytear Horde.
Step 4: The ephemeral stuff
I cannot claim to always consider all of these things. But I really should:
- Is it an easy teach? I mostly teach new games on my table so am I willing to teach this?
- Good rules retention? See above. Both of these can be checked by reading or at least looking at the rulebook.
- Fiddliness? I will do the setup of the game, probably coaching other players… how much upkeep is there how likely are people to knock over their stuff and destroy the game state (because they do)
- Production, fitting box size, etc. are some of my personal niggles
- Games with lots of downtime for players are bad for us. I have 2 people who regularly grace my table who are very prone to AP. Even in games with synchronous play they tend to hold up everyone.
- Party games that require more engagement than Just One (e.g. Spyfall) just fall flat. This is really difficult to grasp but a certain type of game just doesn’t work with my nerdy surroundings
Step 5: Close Study
I very rarely get to this step in the “process”. To get here I have to have significant doubts often due to cost involved or past bad experience with publisher/designer and these often lead to not buying the game in question:
- play with TTS mod
- play on BGA
- actually read the rulebook
Finale: Did it work out?
My success rate is middling I guess. My collection is large and the games I really truly love are few and far between:
Some of the best games I ever bought
- The best game I ever bought on little to no research: Terra Mystica. It has hex fields, that was enough for me, I also thought it was very pretty (go figure, it was 2012)
- The best game I ever bought after a rules teach at SPIEL: Spirit Island. I hated the cover but there was so much hype around it that I had to check it out. I knew minutes after sitting down at the demo table that this was my game and I’ve been chasing that feeling ever since.
- The best game I ever bought after playing it once at a friends’ table: Terraforming Mars. One of my all time favorites even if most of my plays are on the app I have to have the full physical copy.
- The best game I bought recently: Daybreak. A gamble on the description on the crowdfunding campaign, the theme and Matt Leacock’s name.
- The designer consistently delivering great game experiences for me: Uwe Rosenberg.
- The best 2 games I bought on FLGS recommendation: Dixit and 7 Wonders
- The best game I bought after seeing a video review of it: Gloomhaven
Some sources for disappointments
- Crowdfunding campaigns that preyed on FOMO (Dwellings of Eldervale, 7th Continent)
- Various (video) reviewers & podcasters gushing about games or not even gushing but repeatedly mentioning games
- Various reviewers having access to vastly different types of groups than me. Lots of party-type games fall flat in my environs: Spyfall (SUSD), Cosmic Encounter (basically everyone), QE (Tom Vasel)
- Games that look great on photos and I never bother to read the rulebook
- Buying stuff after 1 demo game at SPIEL (Barony, Dice Settlers)
- Not realizing that some mechanisms are not as fun for me as others (mostly hidden movement style games and 1-v-all)
- Not all Knizia games are good games for me
- Falling for the Hotness (Black Angel cured me of that one. It was very early for me in the hobby)