Showing posts with label Time. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Time. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 13, 2017

Play the game you have or spend time looking for another?

There've been a number of threads of Boardgame Geek about managing your game collection. Actually, there are threads about that almost all the time. And it's been an ongoing concern for me, in part because my collection got out of hand and I've spent years both purging and cutting back on buying.

The driving forces behind me getting my collection under control have the space and money more than anything else. Mental health too. However, time has also been a big influence as well.

At the height of my collection's size, it was blatantly clear that I was never going to play all of my own play games, let alone play too many of them more than once.

The real value, monetarily speaking, have a board game is in how often you play it. I like to use a movie ticket as a yardstick for value per minute. There are some games, that I have played a lot, like Ticket to Ride, that have ended up having a fantastic return value. But I ended up taking a loss on all too many games.

A game that brought the time value of a game collection to the forefront of my mind is Quicksand. It's a so-so game but it's one that's worked well with casual gamers so it's hit the table a surprising number of times.

I am sure that there are other games that would also shine with casual gamers and non-gamers and I am sure that some of those games are better than Quicksand. However, I already own Quicksand and have experience with it.

There is a got of catch them all element to buying lots of boardgames. There's also the desire to find the very best games. After all, life is short so why waste it with mediocre games?

However, you can end up spending a lot of time chasing that mythical perfect game. Having something tried and true and reliable so you can just spend time playing games ends up being a very good thing.

While I am currently taking a hiatus  from buying games, I know that I will, of course, and up buying more games. I do have games that I am very happy with but there is always the desire to experience more. But I want playing to be my real focus

Saturday, June 11, 2016

Games without turns

I don't go out of my way to look for real-time games, games where speed and time are a factor and you usually don't even have turns. My earliest experience with games like that was probably Slapjack. Which was fun but didn't leave me with a lifelong craving for more.

However, whenever I start thinking about real time games, I start coming up with more and more good ones. What about Falling, I ask myself. That was the first real time designer game you tried and that was good. Oh, and what about Light Speed? That's always fun. And what about Jungle Speed and Ligretto and Spot It? Oh, Escape! Escape is brilliant! And there's Pit and Ricochet Robiots and...

You get the idea.

There are two lessons that I feel I really should be learning from this.

One, arbitrarily ruling out a family of games is a bad idea. Just because you don't like one game doesn't mean another one won't take the same ideas and give them to you In a package you will enjoy.

Second, real time is a big concept with a lot of variety. Some real time games are reaction games like Jungle Speed or Spot It. Others are timed games like Space Alert or Escape. Some are free-for-alls like Light Speed or Ice Towers. Still others do unusual things with time like TAMSK or Falling.

While categorizing games is a useful tool, it can sometimes make me blind to the bigger environment.