Five Popular Board Games With Hindsight I Wouldn't Have Bought
(As of 10/01/17)
In my last editorial I wrote a bit about the size of a board game collection, how many is too many and how rapid my library of games has grown into an unmanageable size. No library will ever be complete as new games are released and hidden gems are rediscovered years later - but if I had my time again there are games I wouldn't repurchase.
This doesn't mean it's a terrible game, there are different reasons for why I wouldn't buy certain games if I could travel back in time - but the main reason is that I don't really get to play these games and as a result the money could have been better spent elsewhere. So without further adieu, the list in alphabetical order:
Chinatown
I did a REVIEW for Chinatown and don't actually think I've played the game since. As I said in the review, on paper chinatown is a good game but as a fairly competitive player, I don't like the control players have to easily manipulate the outcome. Get out to an early lead - no one trades with you. Win a lot of games in your gaming circle - no one trades with you. In the end you either have to rely on luck or offer ridiculous trades that benefit the other player more than yourself, and something about that doesn't sit right with me. I've had fun with Chinatown but also found myself frustrated and would rather play Billionaire (aka Pit) to satisfy the trading itch.
Dead of Winter: The Long Night
I've played a fair few zombie board games and out of the ones I've played Dead of Winter is my favourite by far. I love the crossroad cards, the ever present chance of death with a roll of a die, the struggle to feed the colony, fighting off the horde of zombies as they constantly threaten to over run your survival, searching for supplies and survivors, balancing to hold off each rounds crisis while secretely completing your own objective, and everything else that just oozes with a zombie apocalypse theme. I forgot to mention, the potential hidden betrayer mechanic that brilliantly keeps everyone on edge. So why is The Long Night on this list? I rarely get the opportunity to play DoW as it is and The Long Night is basically just more of the same. It's the better edition of the two, but I feel they are too similar to really justify owning both. If you don't have either edition, buy The Long Night, but if you already have the original I don't see a lot of benefits to owning both when you could have a different game altogether. Since I owned the original when it first came out, buying The Long Night now seems pretty excessive.
Lanterns: The Harvest Festival
Tile placement isn't really a favourite genre of mine or one that I have much interest in. Why then did I purchase Lanterns? 85% hype and 15% based on the box. My relationship with Lanterns was bound for disaster from the start. After first opening the box and looking at the tiles I was already disappointed with the 'beautiful' art that was the subject of a lot of praise. To me the tiles don't actually look that great - especially when compared with how nice the lanterns look on the box art. Art isn't everything and its easy to have an average looking brilliant game, but for me personally, Lanterns is not one of those. The game makes sense, it's easy to play and moves along at a fairly decent pace - but it comes across as safe and almost dull to me. There just isn't much to the game and even though it moved along at a fair pace and I could easily play it, I just found myself just going through the motions without really having fun. After only a few plays of Lanterns I'm ready to move on, and have no reason to go back.
Spyfall:Spyfall, how you led me to believe that you were everything I enjoy in a game. Social deduction and bluffing are two game mechanics that will nearly always pique my interest in a game. Spyfall easily falls into that category, yet every time I've played the game it's been nothing but awkward. My experience with it has been people asking and answering questions in a complete unnatural way, mostly feeling awkward as they struggled to think of a decent question and then answered questions either too vague or too obvious. It could be the people I've played with, but after pulling this out twice with two different groups of people and having the exact same impressions, I'm not actually sure if/when I'll bring Spyfall to the table again. I've looked through other peoples thoughts, forums etc and even it seems even fans of the game either have a cheat sheet of questions to ask, or a display of all the locations for the spy to be able to secretly look at all the locations without being too obvious. If I loved the game, I'm sure it'd be worth the effort to make cue cards etc - but with my initial impressions it's not looking likely.
The Resistance:
As above, social deduction is one of, if not my favourite board game genres/mechanics. The Resistance was one of my early board game purchases and while we enjoyed some of the early plays, it never really caught on with my board gaming groups. Can't really put my finger on why, it always just came across as 'That was okay, what's next?'. Then I discovered Werewolf. Every game of werewolf has been the exact opposite and its often, 'Want to play one more?'. I've never actually had a werewolf night where another game has been played, whereas when we did play The Resistance it was more just the starter of the night before moving on. There is a few elements about The Resistance that I really appreciate - no need for a moderator, can be played with smaller groups, and the general control and direction of how to play. However, if I have a group of around 9-10 people I'm always going to pull out werewolf and for a fun hidden role game that can be played with fewer, I'll play something like Saboteur. The Resistance just doesn't seem to have a place in my library and as a result hasn't been played in over a year.
