First game purchases of 2019

We made out first game purchases for 2019, not counting thrift purchases and PnP files. In past years, I’ve tried to not buy any games. I didn’t make that pledge this year but I still try not to buy much since I have a closet full of games, even after heavy purging.

We bought one of the Gigamic editions of Difference for our five-year-old and a copy of Kingdomino for ourselves. 

Many years ago, I bought a ding-and-dent copy of the Z-Man of Difference and I still like the idea. Take a picture and make one change for each card, so every two cards have two differences. Simple but effective.

I like the Gigamic edition much more. The cards are more than twice as big and the artwork(which is different) is much sharper. The Z-Man edition had 27 cards with two images. The Gigamic has 50 cards with four images. It’s just better in every way.

Kingdomino is a game I’ve been on the cusp of getting for a while. Truth to tell, I’ve been hoping I’d find a thrift copy but I decided to take the plunge. I don’t know for sure yet but I think it has the potential to be _the_ game for work nights after the kiddo is asleep.

So, fairly quiet as far as purchases go. Instead of going wild, we made careful choices that should serve us well.

Spoiler: I’m planning on getting Kingdomino

I’ve been writing a lot about PnP lately since I’ve been spending so much time both making and playing PnP games lately. However, I haven’t completely forgotten about actual published copies of games or maybe even buying some.

What’s been on my mind lately is if I should buy Kingdomino or just skip to Queendomino. 

Amusingly enough, neither one is on my short list of games to buy. And, of course, I haven’t played either one.  However, they keep on coming up in my online reading and so they are on my mind a lot.

And, even though I am both very space conscious and budget conscious, Kingdomino is both small enough and priced low enough that getting both isn’t an issue. Which is probably what I’ll end up doing.

That said, I’ve regularly read that Queendomino is the deeper, more interesting game and more suited for gamers, which is how I still see myself :P And I already have a lot of short, simple tile-laying games. Is Kingdomino going to be that different than the ones I already have?

Going around and around in my head, I think the answer is really go get Kingdomino now and almost assuredly end up picking up Queendomino later.

Basically because of all the reasons it won the Spiel des Jahres. The tile drafting adds a layer that pushes it over other simple tile-laying games. It’s also going to be more accessible for non-gamers. 

Frankly, I’m hoping that Kingdomino will fill that magic spot of being a game we want to play regularly on work nights when we are tired and frazzled. Not too short and not too conflict heavy. And it will probably be more our four-year-old’s speed than Queendomino.

While it hadn’t been on my list of games to pick up, I’ll probably end up with Kingdomino this year.