What about the games that survived the purge

 I’ve written a fair bit about purging games when we prepared to move across the country. But I forgot to write about what I didn’t sell or donate. So let’s look at what I’m actually keeping. 

Plenty of factors that I had to ask myself. Do I want to play it?  Can I get other folks to play it? How much storage space does it take up? How hard would it be to ever get again?

 

When I switched my thinking from what to get rid of to what the keep (which made getting rid of games a lot easier), the first thing I thought was that we were going to keep every Ticket to Ride map we have. Since I first got the US map in 2004, that franchise has been possibly my most consistent gaming experience. I can count on playing Ticket to Ride.

(And, no I don’t have all the maps. Far from it. But I have enough to keep us happy)

Ticket to Ride helped define my criteria. Family weight games that take less than an hour that I know folks like to play. Not every game checks every box but that was the basic idea. Generally, games for a family game night where bedtime is enforced.

(And smaller size did go a long way towards being a tie breaker. Storage space was the biggest drive towards this purge after all)

One criteria that didn’t get much traction was getting rid of games with the idea I could get them again. I had thought about getting rid of Take It Easy and Settlers of Catan’s and getting them again when I wasn’t worried about packing space. But I realized that was silly and wasteful. And my wife wouldn’t let me get rid of Catan.

What I did find myself asking was ‘would this game be impossible to get again?’ Which didn’t save a lot of games but that did save Discworld: Ankh-Morpork and Take It To The Limit.

At the end of the day, I still have a couple hundred games. It’s not like I stopped having a game closet. I’m just trying to have one that I’ll actually use.