For the purposes of this discussion, I’m going to define what I consider to be the “Big Box” trademark. A Big Box edition of a game is a single release that contains the base game, and all the content released for that game up to this point. Think Galaxy Trucker: Anniversary Edition or Istanbul: Big Box or the more recently released Village: Big Box.
Other things have been called big box (notice the lower case b’s in this case, as this is not a title but simply a descriptor). Alea had a big box line which included the likes of The Castles of Burgundy, Broom Service, and Ra. These boxes were somewhat larger at the time, but are what I would consider to be a fairly standard box size these days. Fantasy Flight games had their “Coffin Box” games, like Twilight Imperium: Third Edition or StarCraft: The Board Game. Now those are some BIG boxes. There’s also the storage solution big boxes, like the Wingspan Nesting Box, or the Terraforming Mars big box. These products are generally big boxes with a couple of storage trays for you to “condense” a game and several expansions into a single box. None of those are the subject for today.
Voidfall has a big box, but it’s not a Big-Box
Going back to the capital B Big-Box. When I hear a game is getting a Big Box edition, I assume it’s an “everything” collection. A one-stop shop to get all the content for a game. Every Expansion, extra promos, and the base game, all in one convenient package. Some of these big box games are nearly the same physical size as their base games (like Hansa Tetunica and Istanbul). Others really swell their footprint (like galaxy trucker).
Now, releasing a big box edition isn’t without its criticism. Some argue that releasing an edition like this punishes fans of the game. The ones who bought the game on release, the ones who sought out the expansions as they came out. This is because often the cost of the big box is less than the cost of all the components individually. Another controversial moment is when a big box includes exclusive content. Isle of Skye and Ultimate Railroads committed this sin of releasing new content in their big boxes, forcing fans who want everything to either double up on a game, or sell off their first edition stuff and buy it again new. This situation is probably the one I dislike the most.
One last area where big box games can fall short is when they don’t include all the content. Going back to Isle of Skye, the big box included a new expansion, and one other expansion called Druids. The controversial Journeyman expansion was omitted from the Isle of Skye Big Box. Such drama!
The old Castles of Mad King Ludwig was in the same size box as Suburbia
I recently picked up the Castles of Mad King Ludwig Royal Collectors edition, which at the time had been advertised as containing all the content for the game. Basically a big box, right? Before the game had finished being delivered to all those who backed the crowdfunding campaign, a new campaign launched for a new expansion. No one said you have to buy every expansion to the games you enjoy, but the situation is mildly infuriating.
So, I’ll be the first to admit that I enjoy Big Box editions of games. I generally don’t buy expansions on their own, so getting all the expansions at the same time as getting the base game works well for me. Usually. Games like Hansa Teutonica and Ultimate Railroads were good opportunities to get the expansions that were otherwise difficult or expensive to get up in Canada.
One hidden downside of big box games, is that they present an additional cognitive barrier to getting the game to the table. Not only do you have to pick the game you want to play, you also need to pick which of the included expansions are you going to play with. Sure, we know we want to play Russian Railroads, but should we play the base game, German Railroads, or Asian Railroads? To learn how to play I’ll have to flip around the book, dodging the sections that don’t pertain to how we’re choosing to play.
Ultimate Railroads Rulebook
Something I’ve noticed lately, is that after I acquire the big box of a game, it actually gets played less. I’m less likely to haul it out to a public meetup, and the barriers I listed above can make me sigh at the end of a long day. Sifting through trays and trays of unneeded expansion bits is enough to make me choose a different game. This paradox is a bit problematic, as I do really enjoy the convenience of a Big Box game. From having everything together, to acquiring hard to find expansions at a reasonable price.
Hopefully, just being aware of the Big Box Paradox will allow me to mentally overcome the barriers. Sometimes being able to name a feeling is enough to overcome it entirely. That’s what I’m hoping for!
As board gamers, we’re all acquainted with the idea of a ‘Shelf of Shame’, or ‘Shelf of Opportunity’ if you’re looking to put a positive spin on your pile of unplayed games, but recently I found myself thinking about my Shelf of Dust. The games that have gone the longest since I last played them, and yet, they’ve survived multiple rounds of culling, selling, and trading.
What are these games that are just gathering dust on my shelf, and what are the qualities that keep me from moving these games out of my house? I think first I need to examine why I move games out of my collection.
The primary reason for me to move a game on is space. I have a game closet, and the agreement with my partner is that I keep all of my games in that one closet. Now, it’s full, but definitely not bursting, but if I want to acquire a stack of new games, I need to make room for them. The second main reason I move games out is for money. If I can sell a game, I turn around and use that cash on a new board game acquisition, and I love getting new-to-me games! I recently sold Massive Darkness, which I had last played in 2018 for $150, and used that cash to buy Castles of Mad King Ludwig: Royal Collector’s Edition. A worthwhile trade in my opinion.
The third reason I move games out of my collection usually comes down to the fact that I’m just not playing those games anymore. Games that I feel like I’ve played enough, and I’m not likely to be pushing my game group to revisit, gets the boot. I’m lucky in that I haven’t had to re-acquire any games I’ve gotten rid of (yet), as I feel like I have a pretty good handle on knowing when I’m done with a game.
So, what are my dusty games and why have I kept them around?
Some games are just so small, that I literally have no reason to move them along. The Castles of Burgundy: The Card Game was last played on August 5th, 2016, but the box is less than the size of a paperback book, and I’m not exactly going to reclaim a lot of space. There’s no real point in getting rid of it, but if I’m not playing it, there’s no point in keeping it, right?
Other games are fairly precious to me because they were fairly influential in my origin as a board gamer. Forbidden Desert (last played on October 6th, 2018) was the first cooperative game that my wife and I got REALLY invested in. We have a ton of coop games now, but every time I consider which games I want to get rid of, I look at the metal tin and immediately think “Not that one, moving on!”
Some games are games I’d really love to play more, but my current game group just doesn’t allow for it. Games like Tak (last played December 24th, 2018) and Le Havre: The Inland Port (Last played June 12, 2020) are because I’ve pretty well stopped playing 2 player games. I used to play two player games a ton with my wife, but since our kids were born, we’ve both been too tired in the evening to play a game against each other.
Writing this post has encouraged me to pull a few games off my shelf and put them up for sale. Games that I KNOW I’m never going to play again (The Settlers of Catan, Apples to Apples, Harry Potter: Codenames). There is great value in keeping a well curated collection. More choices aren’t always better, and if you’re not going to play these games, getting them out of your space gives you more room to manoeuvre. Maybe you’ll feel less stress when you look at your games as they’re precariously stacked and crammed into every spare square inch. Less stress means you’re more encouraged to go to your games and pull one off the shelf!
What are the games in your collection that have sat dormant the longest? What’s kept you from moving them out of your collection to make room for new games? Let me know in the comments below, especially if your games are dustier than mine!
I think I’ve mentioned it before, but we recently welcomed a new child into our household. He’s our second kid, and what’s different this time around is my partner is now self-employed, and is not eligible for parental leave, meaning I get to be the recipient of 35 weeks of parental leave. To celebrate, I’ve refreshed my top 100 games of all time, but the in the process of doing so, I was left pondering how I rank games, and how to generate this top 100 list.
I know a lot of people swear by the Pub Meeple ranking engine method. For those who don’t know, Pub Meeple is a website that lets you import your BGG plays and helps you rank them. It shows you two games at a time, and you simply select which of those two you like more. It’s a great system, but I’ve run into a couple of flaws that made me not want to use it this time around. First, I’ve played too many games. To generate a list via Pub Meeple, it would take around 2,500 comparisons. It took me, like, 4 days last time, and what’s weird, is that my feelings about certain match-ups would change from day to day depending on my mood! It’s a great system, just, not for me anymore. Side story, I recently had my mom use it to find her top 50 games (we’ve only played 50 games together) and it took her, like, 20 minutes. Eventually I’ll share that list, but not today.
What I did instead was to revisit all the games I’ve played and give them a 1 to 10 ranking. I more or less follow the BGG standard for user ratings. A 10/10 game is ‘outstanding, always want to play and expect this will never change.’, a 7/10 is a ‘Good game, usually willing to play.’ and a 3/10 is ‘Likely won’t play this again, although I could be convinced. Bad.’ You get the idea. Some other reviewers have their own ratings scale, like Blue Peg Pink Peg have a 0 to 6 rating for all their games, where a 0 is a terrible game and a 6 is a collection essential. I’ve seen everything from a binary thumbs up and thumbs down, to 5 stars, to a 100 point rubric system where each part of a game gets a score and the final rating the sum of those scores.
If you’ve read any of my reviews before, you may have noticed that my rating for a game is absent from the review. And this is because I feel like putting a number rating on a review doesn’t tell the whole story. A game for me might be a 10/10, but it’s a real-time game, which automatically makes it a thumbs down for someone else. I try to make my game reviews a more nuanced discussion where I talk about what I like and dislike in a game, and hopefully give you enough of my opinions to make an informed decision whether it’s a game you might like to play as well. But I’ve gotten off-topic.
I went through all the games I played and refreshed their ratings. I then sorted the games by their ratings, with 10 being the highest and 1 being the lowest. Then, within each ranking, sorted each set of game based on which ones I like the best. Not all 10s are created equal, you know! The end result was a list of over 100 games, roughly in the order that I prefer them. I’ll start posting my top 100 in early March, so look forward to it then.
One thing that quite surprised me about my top 100 games, was that there were a significant number of games that I ranked an 8/10 that didn’t even make it into my top 100! We live in an age where a game can be a Very good game that I like to play. I’d probably suggest it and would never turn down a game, and still not be in my top 100. Too many great games is a good problem to have.
Want to hear this post in a podcast? Check out the Talking Tabletop Podcast Episode 4 to hear my voice read these words, amongst other great contributors!
I feel like this post may be preaching to the choir, as I suspect the intersection of person who reads a board game blog and person who takes an active role in teaching and introducing new games is close to a circle. Regardless, it’s something that’s been on my mind lately, and for those of you who listen to this and aren’t the primary game teacher, I hope you appreciate the person you have in your life for the role they fulfill.
Firstly, my background. I am the primary rules teacher for our game group, and our usual cadence is that we meet on Wednesdays at one of our houses (we rotate who hosts for the evening). Usually on Monday the host will drop a couple game suggestions, and everyone will give their opinion on what they’d like to play, in addition to confirming their attendance.
That’s a lot of rules…
I am usually the one who pulls up the rulebook and give it a read through. Then, on game day, I generally take the rulebook and give the abridged version to the group. If any questions come up, I usually know where to find them in that book, just due to the fact that I’ve read the book at least once, so I’ll read out the rule as written, and sometimes we’ll debate the meaning of the rule.
I don’t always learn well from JUST reading a rulebook, and in fact, I learn best when I have the game in front of me and I can move pieces as I talk through the rules, that’s how I best internalize rules, by doing. Over the years, I’ve gotten pretty good at teaching my friends how to play, one of the tricks I’ve learned works well is to get everyone’s hands on pieces during the set-up. Get one person to shuffle cards, get the next person to sort components, get the third person to place tokens on the board, things like that.
That said, by the time game night rolls around, I’ve generally already spent 30 minutes to an hour researching the game, even if it is just reading a book and looking for FAQs and Errata’s. It’s a hidden time cost, one that doesn’t always get recognized. Depending on the complexity of the game and the quality of the rulebook (Hansa Teutonica, I’m looking at you), that can flex in either direction. Personally, I find it incredibly difficult when rulebooks have thematic names for all the different aspects that’s only mentioned once at the start of the book and never again. Like, the first time I read the rule “For 1 action, a player may displace another player’s trader from a house along a trading route (not from an office). To do so, he removes the other player’s trader and replaces it with his own trader or merchant from his personal supply; however, the displacing player must pay a penalty by moving an additional trader or merchant from his own personal supply back into his stock.” I had to stop for a second and just shake my head. It makes sense when you’re actually playing Hansa Teutonica, but out of context, just as words on a page, it’s hard to make sense of it.
In Hansa Teutonica, cubes are traders and discs are merchants.
Going a bit further, game teachers have an extra cognitive load to bear. In addition to playing their own game, developing their own strategy, they also end up being the arbiter of the rules, watching each other player’s turns to make sure no rules were missed. If rules questions come up, the teacher needs to stop thinking about their strategy and pivot to looking up the specific question in the rule book.
Now the ugly part. With new games comes rule mistakes, and sometimes, hurt feelings. I get an awful, sinking feeling in my gut when I teach a game one way, only to realize halfway through that we’ve made a critical error. Sometimes it comes up on a player’s turn and I get a “I didn’t know that was a rule! I wouldn’t have done this if I had known that!”. I get it, it sucks when the wind is taken out of your sail because of a mistake. Thankfully, no one in my group gets really heated, we all know it’s just a game. We’ll debate how best to rectify the situation, either play out the rest of the game with the rule as we’ve been playing it, or undo turns to make the aggrieved party whole
Leaning and teaching a new game is difficult. There’s a lot of nuance that you don’t always glean from just reading a rulebook, sentences that don’t make sense when taken out of context of the gameplay. I recently had someone tell me a story of a time they taught a rule wrong at a public meet-up, and one of the players threw a bit of a fit and just… left.
There’s a lot of stuff in the Voidfall box
The inspiration for this post mostly comes from my recent Voidfall experience, whereby the time we took the first turn, I had invested like, 6 to 8 hours in unboxing, organizing, re-boxing, learning, and setup. 6 hours of my time that I’m spending, so our group can have a better experience.
In the end, all I’m trying to say is, if you have a game teacher in your life. Say thanks! Acknowledge the effort they’re putting forth for the group, and if they make a mistake, be lenient.
And if you’re not willing to be lenient, then take on the task of teaching the games. Be the change you want to see in the world.
I know I’m not alone when I say that I don’t get to play board games as often as I would like. Between being a parent, a husband, and an employee, my hobby time feels like it’s constantly shrinking, and it’s the first thing that I choose to cut when something comes up.
My first fallback when I’m experiencing a drought of board games is Board Game Arena. Personally, I don’t really like playing with random strangers, so I never join games unless I’m invited, or it’s arranged outside the site, such as on a discord server. I don’t know why accepting an invite from someone on The Nerd Shelves Discord server is different as opposed to just joining an open table for the game I’m wanting to play, but it is.
Actually, I do know why it’s different. It’s because every time I join a random open table, I get obliterated. In both Race for the Galaxy and Tobago, I would join an open table, excited to learn a new game, only to be matched up against someone with hundreds if not thousands of games under their belt. Those experiences kind of chased me away from playing games with random strangers.
I wonder how many days it would take to play all these games, assuming we were playing games for 12 hours a day.
All that being said, Board Game Arena isn’t a long-term sustainable fix for my board game habit. Eventually, I yearn to have the physical pieces in my hands. And when I can’t play games, I start to seek ways to acquire new to me games. I constantly have to remind myself that buying games does not equal time to play games.
When I can’t play games, I sometimes feel like the only way that I can engage with the hobby that I love is by buying board games. Retail therapy is a real thing that taps into my little lizard brain and gives me a rush of happiness. Adding items to my board game bliss cart, or popping into my favourite friendly local game store, can make me feel the same happy feelings as I felt when I was last playing games with my friends. Unfortunately, these feelings aren’t an adequate replacement for the hobby that I enjoy so much. And it can even kick off a downward spiral of shame when I’m staring down a shelf full of unplayed games.
I tell myself that I get a lot of joy out of unboxing and organizing my new games. I love the feeling of punching out the cardboard tokens from their sprues, and the satisfaction of having a game perfectly organized and ready to play it. I justify my purchases by saying “I’ll play it solo!” but honestly, my solo games are few and far between.
This did not feel like joy. This felt overwhelming
What really inspired this post was when I considered my board game acquisitions over the past few months. At the end of November my partner and I had a baby, and I’ve only been out to my regular game group, like, once since he’s been born. But in that time I’ve bought, like, 12 games. 5 of them I bought used for a really good price, and 5 of them came in via a math trade, but now my shelf of shame has grown dramatically during a period where I’m just not playing many board games
I don’t even really have a conclusion for this, I have no solutions to anyone who may be suffering from the same ailment as I do. The best I can offer is to look for opportunities to engage with this hobby in ways that make you feel connected. If you lack a regular gaming group and are filling your hobby needs with consumerism, consider joining some board game discord channels or engage with your favourite board game content creators on social media. This is inherently a social hobby, and engaging with others who are equally as passionate about board games as you are creates some special bonds that can lift your spirits when life otherwise gets you down.
New (to me) games I got in Janurary’s math trade
Just be aware of the FOMO that comes when those creators go to large conventions and post their ‘haul’ pics. It’s absolutely unreasonable to go and buy 30 to 50 games at one time. If it’s not obviously disclosed in the haul pic somehow, I highly suggest asking for clarification on which games they received for free and which ones they paid for themselves. It can help dispel the illusion that buying dozens of games at one time is reasonable or sustainable.
Prefer to listen to my voice instead of reading these words? This post is available on the Talking Tabletop Podcast Episode 2, amongst other great board game contributors!
This weekend, I was chatting with my cousin about our new year resolutions in regard to our favourite hobbies. She mentioned that she read 170 novels last year, and is hoping to top that number in 2024. I asked how she managed to read a book every other day, and she reported that most of her reading were generic romance novels that were entertaining enough while being easy and quick to consume. My own reading habits are nearly the complete opposite. I read 3 novels in 2023, one of which left me emotionally devastated. My reading habits skew much more to the quality over quantity side of the spectrum, but it got me thinking about my main hobby and the rate at which I consume board games.
Books and board games share a problem with most forms of media. There is simply too much content to consume. There are an estimated 500,000 new books each year, 18,000 movies, 10,000 new video games, and 4,500 new board games, there are millions of hours of new content created every single year that our backlogs have absolutely no hope of keeping up, let alone going back to catch up on the gems we’ve missed. Under this deluge of content, I can see why we seek to put up some guardrails on our hobby time.
Of course, no one can experience all the content. We naturally winnow those astronomical numbers down. We ignore products that we know aren’t interested in (the entire horror genre gets ignored by our household). We count on reviews, both professional and user generated, to steer clear of stinkers. We push products made by our favourite creators to the top of the lists, and through these measures, we find ourselves with a much more manageable list of exciting new releases to spend our time, money, and energy on seeking out.
In 2023, I recorded 328 plays of 132 different games, 54 of those being new to me. A respectable showing, a little down from the previous year, but still a good year for board games. A few of the new to me games were big hits (like Akropolis and Cat in the Box) while others were stinkers in disguise (Beast and Shipwreck Arcana come to mind). Most of the new to me games fall in the “That was pretty good. No complaints, didn’t set my world on fire. I’d play it again if someone requested it” category. It’s not a bad place to be, it’s just where the average game falls in my estimation.
Akropolis was my favourite new-to-me game from last year
When my cousin told me she read 170 books over the year, at first I was amazed, then I began to consider the parallels between her reading hobby and my board game hobby. Most of the books she read didn’t set her world aflame. They were content that got consumed, then placed aside. A number in a spreadsheet, an entry in Goodreads. She wasn’t changed by the book, her world view remains unaltered. Likewise, I played 54 new board games last year. None of them broke into my top 10 (in fact, shockingly few of my top games of all time saw a single play in the last year) but a few are peaking into my top 50. This isn’t to say that they are bad games, just that they didn’t shake my world. My world view remains unaltered, and now here I stand at the dawn of a new year, reflecting on what I’m doing with my hobby. I’m understanding why people subject themselves to these challenges. Why do I spend dozens and dozens of hours playing board games that I only “like” and not “love”? Why don’t I resolve to play Food Chain Magnate or Galaxy Trucker 10 times this year? Surely that would bring me more joy than the rat race of buying, unboxing, learning, and teaching new games every week. Should I consider pivoting to only playing the absolute hits and abandon my pursuit of new games? Would I be happier playing 3 great games over and over again instead of 170 good games?
Perhaps, but perhaps not. I know that I derive a significant amount of joy from discovery. The whole process of learning about new games, the thrill of acquisition, and the crescendo of finally getting a game to the table with my friends is part of what makes me happy in this hobby. All that being said, the rat race can get exhausting, and if you spend ALL of your hobby time just grinding through new releases, it’s real easy to fall into unsustainable habits and burn out on the deluge of new releases.
All of this to say, I hope this year you take some time to reflect on what brings you joy. If you’ve been feverishly acquiring games, or playing a hundred games a single time before moving on and feeling the burn-out that can cause, I hope you take the time to shake up how you engage with your hobby. Remember, buying games does not equal more time to play games, and if playing games is what really makes you happy, then it’s worth spending some time refocusing on what aspects of board games really make you happy.
