Topic of the Week: Sleeving and Expansions

[Acacia]

Twofer here. They feel related subtopics to me.

Sleeving

• When/how much do you sleeve? How do you feel about sleeving in general?

Expansions (some of these are just different angles on closely related questions, sorry)

• How much do you buy expansions? When in the life-cycle do you generally pull the trigger?
• What prompts you to buy? What do you do before pulling the trigger?
• (This has been done to death but) best and worst expansions? Critical ones and superfluous ones? Ones that make a game worse? (just to have it all in one place)
• What expansions have gotten the most play/value for you? How many have you never touched?
• It may be interesting, so are there games you have specifically chosen not to expand, despite the above bullets?

[Acacia]

And I’ll just get quickly on sleeving here. I am generally not opposed. I rarely sleeve but things like Star Realms that have a lot of small-deck shuffling and a manageable card set get sleeved. Star Wars Deckbuilder.

Games with heavily used cards, especially if they are on and off the table frequently (Citadels, Masquerade, Coup) tend to get sleeved. Coup, however, is not as Coup + Reformation barely fits in the box without.

Tucking also leads to sleeving - for instance, my Mottainai player mats are sleeved, though the deck is not. I’m considering sleeving Innovation Ultimate when it comes, but the scale of the game is a bit daunting.

La Granja and Formosa Tea are sleeved as I bought them used that way. I guess this shows I’m not really opposed to sleeves as I won’t unsleeve something once the work is done. (Formosa Tea has dragon backs, and oooh they are nice).

Inducting from the above, my sleeving is quite functionally driven. I generally prefer naked cards and follow the rubric, “if the cards wore out, you got your money’s worth and should buy another copy to encourage the fine people that gave you this treasure.” Sometimes, though, you gotta mash shuffle or get those fingernails around the edges too often, or even slide the cards around, and that’s when I put the bag on it.
*
Recently, though, I had a sudden raw anger at sleeving culture. This was when I realized that folded space box insert has lid lift just becuase this vocal (minority?) of sleevers whines so much (GWT). This leaves me with a largely empty insert and lid lift. I just unboxed Heat and saw how big the box is and, again, how much empty space is there for the sleevers. These are exemplars but not exactly uncommon.

Physical space is important to my collection right now, and overserving the sleevers is disgruntling me. Especially the lid lift situation - everyone’s gotta have lid lift or the sleevers will yell at us in the online forums…?

I’ll get over it.

[pillbox]

@Acacia

Sleeving

• When/how much do you sleeve? How do you feel about sleeving in general?

I mostly sleeve games I play solo. I primarily play solo after everyone else is in bed and riffle-shuffling is, apparently, loud enough to wake my partner and/or children.

@Acacia

Expansions

• How much do you buy expansions? When in the life-cycle do you generally pull the trigger?

I used to be very bad about buying expansions. I’m much better at it now! (practice makes perfect!)

Historically, I’ve bought them as soon as I can budget them in. Lately, it’s been seldom/never because I haven’t been playing much

@Acacia

• What prompts you to buy? What do you do before pulling the trigger?

Usually, it’s concern that they won’t be available later when I need them. However… I’m coming to realize I don’t actually need very many expansions at all! Mostly, it’s just food, shelter, clothing, and health. Board games, if you look closely, are a very small portion of the basic life-sustaining requirements.

@Acacia

• (This has been done to death but) best and worst expansions? Critical ones and superfluous ones? Ones that make a game worse? (just to have it all in one place)

Speaking in general, the best ones are ones that add more without radically changing the game.

The best expansions are ones you can immediately mix in and not have to refer to 8 different rulebooks when playing the game.

The worst ones are “here are 12 modules you can mix/match!” – you’re never going to mix and match those modules, don’t even try. The last time I had any success with that was when I only owed a dozen games or less and we tried all the different modules in my Alhambra Big Box to find our favorites. That was 10 years ago! These days, I’m much more likely to just throw in as much as seems prudent and cross my fingers that it doesn’t ruin anything.

@Acacia

• It may be interesting, so are there games you have specifically chosen not to expand, despite the above bullets?

Surprisingly, I love Alexander Pfister’s games, but, generally, I really don’t like his expansions. They seem over-wrought compared to the elegance of his base games.

Rosenburg can be in the same category sometimes. How many Agricola decks do you own? (me? just the one that came in the box)

[Acacia]

@pillbox

How many Agricola decks do you own?

E, I, K, A, B, C, Wm, Fr.

Sold Z because, come on

[Sexagesimalian]

Sleeving

I sleeved my Terraforming Mars deck when it got too gummy from 80+ plays.
Otherwise, I only skeeve cards when the deck is small and subject to a lot of shuffling/handling.

Expansions
I am trying to break myself out of buying expansions (even if just promos) for games I rarely play (which is the vast majority of my games).

I used to be sucked into to getting a game on crowdfunding when they launched a campaign for a game expansion and I’d get the base game along with it.

I now limit my superfluous expansion purchases to Power Grid since I’ve already decided that I’m just going to get all the expansions for it.

I have a bunch of expansions for Terraforming Mars. We played the variant maps to death. We played Venus a lot. Prelude is a must-have, but I’ve only played the others at cons.

[raged_norm]

@Acacia

• When/how much do you sleeve? How do you feel about sleeving in general?

I sleeve many games, but not all. Generally I won’t sleeve a readily available game or if the sleeves will cost more than 25% of the game itself.

@Acacia

• How much do you buy expansions? When in the life-cycle do you generally pull the trigger?
• What prompts you to buy? What do you do before pulling the trigger?
• (This has been done to death but) best and worst expansions? Critical ones and superfluous ones? Ones that make a game worse? (just to have it all in one place)
• What expansions have gotten the most play/value for you? How many have you never touched?
• It may be interesting, so are there games you have specifically chosen not to expand, despite the above bullets?

I buy expansions for games I like, map expansions are an easy buy. Other stuff requires though. I just buy them, because I have money to buy fun things now.

The best expansion I have is Xeno Invasion. Most of the RftG galaxy stuff gets lots of play, as does the New Frontiers stuff

I have specifically chosen not to expand Quest for El Dorado beyond the first two expansions, and Concordia beyond a selection of maps to account for it’s 2-6 player count.

[SteveB_uk]

I generally only sleeve LCGs or other constant-handling card games. Many, many boxes of Marvel Champions.

Expansions:
I did get the expansion for Canvas, because it a) adds gameplay and b) extends the cover art.
And Unfinished Business for Star Wars: Outer Rim because it seriously improves the game.
Got the Essential Edition for Viticulture, but if I hadn’t I’d have bought the original Tuscany. (As it is I’ll probably get EE Tuscany, but there’s no rush).

I’ll generally buy an expansion if it adds a solo mode.

Expansions I didn’t get: Everdell, but I might buy just one.

[COMaestro]

Sleeving
I have not sleeved very many games. In fact, I think the very first game I ever sleeved was Lovecraft Letter, and that’s only because it came with sleeves in the box!

After that, I did sleeve Inis, because the cards are lovely (and good thing, as a friend spilled her drink while we were playing and it saved a few cards that would have otherwise been ruined). I sleeved Star Wars the Deckbuilding Game because the deck was so big that when I tried to shuffle the cards, they started showing wear almost immediately, so the sleeves felt necessary to not have the deck deteriorate after just a couple of games.

Finally, I started sleeving Unmatched, as I just really like the game, love the artwork on the cards, and the first deck I did was Bruce Lee, which was out of print and supposedly never going to get remade. That said, Restoration Games managed to get the Lee estate and the Ali estate to agree to licensing for a Bruce Lee vs. Muhammad Ali set which will be released sometime next year, so those who missed out will be able to get Bruce, which is a really fun deck!

Oh, and I ended up sleeving Lords of Vegas because the cards were creasing horribly from being played so much.

Expansions
My history with expansions is kind of varied. There are some games where if I find the expansion for cheap, I will pick it up, even if I haven’t played the game yet, such as the Tenno’s Court expansion for Shogun, or Rise of the Empire for Star Wars: Rebellion. Might be able to include Firefly here as well, as while I did solo the base game the one time I’ve had it on the table, I’ve purchased virtually all the expansions in the hopes of playing a big ol’ game of it someday.

Other times, if I have really been enjoying a game, I will buy an expansion for it to give it a bit of variety. First one I can really think of was Lords of Waterdeep: Scoundrels of Skullport expansion, which while not a necessity does add a nice amount of additional content, and we usually do end up playing with one of the two modules. Same with Istanbul: Mocha and Baksheesh, which we always use when playing now, Quacks of Quedlinburg: the Herb Witches, Taverns of Tiefenthal: Open Doors, and Concordia: Salsa. The most essential expansion I think I own, though, is Lords of Vegas: Up! The ability to raise your casino makes the games much more competitive and gives you options even if all the tiles for a given casino get taken or you get boxed in on a block. Legendary Marvel: Dark City is also a critical expansion, as it adds a lot more variety and challenge to the base game, which can be a bit lackluster otherwise.

I’ve also got the 7 Wonders: Leaders expansion which we typically use, though we haven’t played in quite some time now. Also a map expansion for Concordia. Oh, and all of Everdell since I have the Complete Collection box.

Sadly, I have a number of expansions that have never been used. Star Wars: Outer Rim: Unfinished Business (though I really want to, it’s already sorted into the base game, I just haven’t had it on the table since), The Bloody Inn: The Carnies, Ghost Stories: White Moon, 7 Wonders: Armada and Babel, the aforementioned Firefly expansions, and recently the two expansions for Tokaido, Matsuri and Crossroads. Probably some other ones that aren’t coming to mind.

Oh, there’s also all the various decks for Marvel Champions, where I have some which I have not played yet, same for things like packs for X-Wing or Imperial Assault, or scenarios for Arkham Horror TCG. Have used some, but certainly not all of them.

[BertFill]

I do not sleeve cards. Ever. I hate the things and just don’t see the point.

Ok. I sleeved one game. I did get sleeves for Robinson Crusoe - because I got some expansion cards that were a slightly different size and they all clumped together in shuffling. But I disliked the sleeves so much I unsleeved everything and just chucked away all the expansion cards.

Speaking of expansions. I pretty much wish they didn’t exist. I buy them of course, loads of them, far too many. I’ve ruined several games by getting expansions that have just added so much extra fiddle and faff, or extra setup options, that I’ve never played the game again until I’ve removed the expansions. Village (Port) and Fields of Arle (Tea and Trade, is it?) come to mind in this category.

@Acacia

Coup + Reformation

That’s another one I shouldn’t have got. Made a lovely straightforward game all unnecessarily fiddly. Binned it!

Much as there are several expansions I do enjoy, I can’t think of a single game I would be dissatisfied with if the expansions didn’t exist. Or if I’d never been aware of them. Of course as they do exist, and I am aware of them, and have them, I’d now miss them if they were taken away.

I do like having loads of Carcassonne expansions. We play Carcassonne quite a lot, and it’s nice to be able to say ‘Let’s use the bridges and the phantom today,’ or play with Traders and Builders one day and the Count the next.

[mistercrayon]

Sleeving: no, just feels like it puts too much emphasis on the object rather than what the object is for.

Expansions: every one I’ve purchased is a regret except tickets to ride.

I feel like ticket to ride bucks the trend for expansions for me because I know the rules extremely well which means the new bit is usually one complication on top of almost nothing. Whereas most other expansions are complications and fussiness on top of something quite complicated and not memorable enough.

There’s a trend that crops up now and again where instead of expansions you get variations which look like they could be expansions but just consolidate that into a single smoother product. I think great western trail did this and I think it was a better choice than trying to shove mechanisms into something that was smooth already.

[yashima]

Coming from MtG… I sleeve. Some games.

• Favorites: Spirit Island, Gloomhaven but only the character specific cards…
• Games that need a lot of shuffling aka deck builders: Clank!, Star Realms, Imperium X (but only decks I have played)
• Games also need to get played enough to get sleeves.
• I‘ve been sleeving less and less. I have a preference for matte sleeves and over here I can only get one brand that I like and it gets expensive.
• Terraforming Mars despite being a favorite has not seen so much physical play on my personal copy that I am willing to sleeve and also right now I have all the expansions (except the new automa) in the basegame box. With sleeves that would be impossible.
• Ark Nova got sleeves. The box is big enough for that.

As for expansions…

• I tend to buy expansions. Usually all of them.
• The Everdell Complete Edition I just sold taught me that there is such a state as too many expansions that ends up keeping me from playing
• So the goal would be to only buy expansions when I have played the game so much that I „need“ more stuff for it.
• And yet: I sold my copy of Arkham Horror 3rd for a nice sum because I had the rare OOP expansion… so the collector in me is screaming to buy them all.

Favoritest expansions:

• Everything for Spirit Island. But Branch & Claw really is required.
• Terraforming Mars: I will not play without Prelude. The extra maps are great. Venus is fine for some variety. The rest… my friends really really like the parliament one. But we haven‘t managed a game together.
• Ark Nova: the improved actions are a must have
• Star Wars Outer Rim: seems half the game is in the expansion. Must have.
• Tash Kalar: the expansion decks are fantastic. But only needed once you‘ve grokked the game and played the other ones enough to want more. It‘s not like the game doesn‘t work the same without them.
• AFFO: I haven‘t played this as much as I would like to have time for. But the Norwegians expansion made the solo so much better and I expect 2 player would be equally improved. The actions are just … tighter? (It‘s been a while sadly)
• Menara: a) the expansion box is smaller and everything fits in it and b) the tiles from the expansion are just MEAN and therefore great
• Mischwald: only played with the alpine expansion but it‘s got lovely purple tags and really improves and balances the strategies despite my complaints about the butterflies. Have yet to see the new expansion in play
• Leaving Earth: the expansions just complete the solar system and the space race. Even if the game with all of them becomes unwieldy… they are a must have.
• 7 Wonders Duel: Pantheon provides nice variety will always add. Agora is too confrontational. Not keen on using that one again.
• Arler Erde: at first I hesitated to include it but now that I have played with it, I won‘t play without again. It is not required but it improves a great basegame organically.
• Obsession: Upstairs Downstairs. New worker types. Yay In a game that is about worker types that is just nice.

There is more but these are the ones that come to mind. I generally tend to buy „more stuff, (almost) no new rules“ expansions that just add extra decks or cards or maps like Nusfjord, Faiyum, TM Maps, Mischwald. That just add a bit of variety. I will not list all of those in detail. Most of those are fine. They just add a bit of variety. Though too much can be bad too.

Expansions I should probably not have bought:

• Clank! in Space: but that goes for the whole game because right after I acquired this Clank! Catacombs came out and improved the whole formula with a variable map. I think I need to sell the space one. It is definitely a case of too much stuff making the game unwieldy and unplayed
• Everdell: I enjoyed the base game. And then I had all the expansions and I was overwhelmed. I think one of them might be fine. I would probably go for Pearlbrook as that adds something but largely leaves the basegame as it is. Which is why I now have Farshore.
• The extra chapters for Gloomhaven with the extra character… something something Circles
• 7 Wonders: everything after the first two expansions (Cities & Leaders). The extra wonders are fine. But Babel, Armada and all that stuff…. nope.
• West Kingdom Trilogy: I have all the expansions for all 3 games and I never much felt like using any of them in any games. I think I could have gone without. Overall my WK games haven‘t seen the table as much as I had hoped…

Expansions I am buying as a collector:

• Dixit
• Dune

Might think of more tomorrow.

[Chewy77]

Sleeves!

I have only sleeved cards on games that I bought second hand and arrived sleeved. Namely The Pursuit of Happiness, Bunny Kingdoms that I can think of. I am considering sleeving my battered copy of Love Letter after 50+ games, but making the set bulky sort of takes away some of the charm of how easy to pack that game is.
Games that can benefit from shuffling large decks like Bunny Kingdoms or Pursuit of Happiness I can see the point of sleeving, or if they get a bit worn out. Other than that, I cannot see the point of the extra expenditure.

Expansions:
I buy less expansions than I used to. I tend to buy down the line of needing more, like I have with games like Root, Firefly or Spirit Island, or if they have been kickstarters and there was a lot of expansions in the offer, as I have done with Everdell (which I regret), Bardsung, Witcher Old World (these I sort of not regret because I have used plenty of their minis in D&D) and ISS Vanguard.
What prompts me to buy is a mixture of completionism (KS) or needing more (Firefly, Spirit Island), and I tend to carefully consider the pros and cons a lot more with games I already own than with KS. But I hardly get kickstarters these days, so I guess I buy way less these days in this manner.
Best Expansion: Hard to say… Branch and Claw adds a lot to SI, but also makes it longer than I like it to be… I like simple ones like Breakin’ Atmo from Firefly, which add more missions and hardly change anything in the rules. Worse expansions?? Hard to say… I think some games like Firefly with all the expansions suffer from making the game way too big. From a nice 2-3 hours to half a day is way too much.
Better value? I’d say small ones like Exiles and Partisans from Root, that really improve the gameplay with very little change. Or Flamme Rouge expansions, which tightens the game with weather and cobblestones, and new cyclist types. I have too many untouched to count, namely half the ones from the Everdell big box and the Marauders one from Root.
Games that I have decided not to expand have been any of the Garphill Games I own (Architects or Raiders). I think they are good as they are.

[Brattyjedi]

Sleeve

Marvel Legendary - it’s my favorite game, I play it a lot and the base cards were starting to show wear so now everything is sleeved

Hidden information cards - anything where even one card being slightly marked would ruin everything. Especially the role cards in social deduction/ traitor games

Expansions

Everything. I love expansions. I buy them all. My husband is a big believer in playing with everything all the time. I have to convince him that teaching someone Terraforming Mars or 7 Wonders for the first time while also including every expansion is too overwhelming.

Some favorite expansions

Backstage for Shakespeare - radically changes a core of the game and I love both ways to play. Happily switch between with and without expansion all the time

Norwegians for Feast for Odin - massively improves crafting and farming, making them truly viable competitive options

Salsa for Concordia - forum tiles are my favorite part. Salt as a wild resource for some reason made my husband much more willing to play

Expedition Leaders for Lost Ruins of Arnak - individual player powers make it so much cooler

[Acacia]

@Acacia

• How much do you buy expansions? When in the life-cycle do you generally pull the trigger?

I think too much. Part and parcel of the larger problem. A stat, it appears roughly 30% of my collection is expanded (but not everything has expansions).

I would have said too soon, but the largest subgroup is, indeed, games I had already played (and possibly played out) before purchasing. That said, it’s the largest SUBGROUP, not a majority.

I think there are four drivers:

• I love the game, or am close to playing out the game
• I found a good price
• Additional player count or new modes of play that appeal to me
• Popular opinion suggests it is good or essential

More stats:
31 expansions for games I either love or had played enough to have a justified interest in expansion content. Note for games I love, like Keyflower, I may never play Merchants or Farmers but because it is a favorite game the Librarian in me needs it to be complete.

25 expansions because I found a good price and thought what the heck (Masquerade??), or I was afraid I would never be able to get it in the future (SidCon Bifurcation) or had a wave of completionist passion that I chose to satiate (Silver). This is the “bad bucket.” Though not everything in here will prove a mistake, the process was out of control.

13 bought prematurely but based on solid popular opinion that it was quality or even essential content. See Spirit Island Branch & Claw, RollFTG Ambition, Outer Rim Unfinished Business, Odin Norwegians. Looking down this list I don’t have any meaningful regrets.

8 Big Boxes / Deluxe Editions and 2 used bundles where everything came together. I’m a sucker for this. Only 1 or 2 of these qualify as games where I was ready for the content, most of them are premature. But if the box is reasonably sized, the price was good, these bundles are a more acceptable way to feed the completionist.

That leaves about 8 collections where the collection is the game. Imperial Assault, Exceed, Memoir 44, etc. Dominion. In all of these cases I have significantly more than I’ve gotten to. However, most of these are also “late to the party” used bundles.

I’ll add here that my best purchases have been for variety, rebalancing, or modules to extend the life of a game. A few winners that add a layer of complexity to give a game two faces, one for the easy teach and one for the interesting play. I generally need a game to match the people I have available to play, as opposed to finding people to play what most interests me.

The biggest mistakes have been expansions bought to fix a game I wasn’t really into (Oh My Goods, Planet Unknown come to mind.) Don’t double down on a cullable game, just cull it! Fortunately I’ve been able to recoup the cost in the secondary market in most cases. That and out of stock panics like Village Inn and Lancaster New Laws, which are both expansions I’ve never touched and at this point worry don’t add to the game.

@Acacia

• It may be interesting, so are there games you have specifically chosen not to expand, despite the above bullets?

Since I aggressively expand, these cases may be of interest.

• Bullet♥ - Not sure if I’m going to keep this one, and made some good decisions on that front
• Barrage - Barrage is enough, and I feel it will stay that way. For 2 players I have Birm and Pipeline.
• Paladins of the West Kingdom - I think this may be a solo only game and I like it the way it is
• Tigris & Euphrates - fun tidbit, my copy is so old the expansions weren’t in the box yet. I haven’t bought a whole new game just to get the alt maps and monuments.
• Parks - also might cull and was able to stop myself from trying to fix it before making that decision
• Quest for El Dorado - works as it is. Also have 1e. The 2e expansions tempted me but I stayed put.
• Barenpark - This game works in its niche. I’ve almost gotten Bad News Bears twice but I think just keep Barenpark Barenpark?

Of course there’s a lot of other expansions I don’t have but these stood out where I’d specifically considered or been tempted and demurred.

[Acacia]

@BertFill

@Acacia

Coup + Reformation

That’s another one I shouldn’t have got. Made a lovely straightforward game all unnecessarily fiddly. Binned it!

You’re likely thinking of Rebellion! And all fronts agree on that one. It had like 22 personalities that weren’t curated to work together and destroyed any meta.

Reformation only has one alt character and additional cards to expand the player count. It replaces the Diplomat with the similarly abilitied Inquisitor to shift the meta. I think it also has team rules to make larger tables more manageable.

[bort]

I sleeve most of my games. Games are expensive (especially here in Australia). And I like the way they shuffle (I don’t know how to shuffle any other way but the mash).

[BertFill]

No, it was Reformation! We didn’t need more players, or team rules, or, as it turned out, the decision of which character to use, so we just had too many cards and added clutter and choice. I know it’s actually only a small amount of clutter and choice, but proportionally it was enormous! Anyway - it spoiled it for us, so off it went.

[BertFill]

Nusfjord is currently illustrating how tempting I find expansions.
I do not need two more decks of cards for Nusfjord. It already has three, which is two more than it actually needs, and two of which I haven’t even used yet.

And yet, and yet… they’ve reprinted the ‘Salmon’ and ‘Plaice’ decks, and the handy box containing both of them is now in shops.

I do not need these by any stretch of anyone’s imagination, but it’s taking a lot of willpower to not buy them anyway…!

[RogerBW]

Sleeving: mostly not. I don’t tend to play with people who are hard on cards, so even though I have archivist’s instincts the faff and expense and environmental cost usually put me off. Though I fear the Nokosu Dice cards are getting a bit chipped…

A thing that doesn’t seem to get mentioned much is the two major sorts of sleeve: the entirely transparent type that does its best to go baggy at you and often binds sleeve to sleeve while shuffling, and the much thicker type, usually with an opaque back, that’s much easier to shiffle and much more expensive. I’ve bought a few games second-=hand that were aleeved by the previous owner, and usually it’s been the latter type.

Expansions. Well now. I am a completist by nature, and so my preferred approach is to get the base game, make sure I still enjoy it after a few plays, then get everything else for it. With a kickstarter that usually means I’m all-in, because there are so many games that the chances of being able to get the more obscure expansions once the KS has delivered seem quite low. I assume I’m not the only person who feels this way, since companies keep having lots of extras.

I find I often end up playing the introductory version of a game with different people, so the expansions don’t get used much. This happened with Automobiles though now I’ve taken to mixing the cards up a bit more; similarly Furnace where I rarely use Interbellum.

Two of my early much-expanded games are Flash Point Fire Rescue and Firefly. Both of these grew expansions over an extended period and suffer from the problem of a bunch of separate rulebooks, and they were the first inspirations for what’s now the Roger’s Rules project: the individual books aren’t bad, but they’re all separate, sometimes even separate paper sizes, and it’s not immediately obvious where to look when trying to check how something works.

Aeon’s End is sort of its own thing: you can have any combination of sets as long as there’s at least one core box involved. I really should stop buying this but I keep demoing for Indie at Spiel and getting anything I’ve missed as part of my demo pay.

Colt Express: Marshall and Prisoners gives you an entirely new game mode, a slightly harder game with different goals for the most experienced player. I believe the Bioterrorist mode for Pandemic does something similar, but I didn’t play it.

Coup: Reformation for my money overcomplicates the excellent baseline Coup. I generally play at the smaller end of the possible player count.

Dice Hospital: Community Care (three mini-expansions) arrived just as I was burning out on the core game so I’ve never really tried it.

The two expansions for Evil High Priest, which were Kickstarter extras, are specifically described in the rulebook.

Most of the Onitama expansions are just new cards, which is fine; I like the base game and I rarely play with the twiddly extra bits like the wind spirit or the lanterns

I have all of Railroad Ink in the great big coffin box… and I hardly ever play it. But the worst for that is Cities of Splendor, which I bought and then for whatever reason haven’t played my copy of Splendor since.

I suspect Taverns of Tiefenthal would have been more popular if the seven microexpansions had simply been baked into the core rules. I’ve played the core game as recommended for the first play, and we were all thoroughly unimpressed.

[mistercrayon]

@RogerBW

Sleeving: mostly not. I don’t tend to play with people who are hard on cards, so even though I have archivist’s instincts the faff and expense and environmental cost usually put me off. Though I fear the Nokosu Dice cards are getting a bit chipped…

I think it’s this middle state of damage that’s possibly the most problematic - some stuff looks borderline pristine and some stuff has just enough identifying scuff.

The only solution is to play more and more!