What's this blog all about?

"Board games? You play board games?" I hear you say... yes, but not unlike any board games you've probably ever heard of. Monopoly? Cluedo? Guess Who? Battleships? No, not by a long shot. One day someone introduced me to a great little game called "Carcassonne" - named after a French medieval town of rambling streets, walls and sections - where the aim is to score the most points using little random squares of road, walls and cities.
I was hooked and so began my, then our - the Bradshaw Tribe, adventure into Euro- and Ameritrash- gaming...

Friday 14 May 2010

Games we've got, games we've played and not played (aka Games! Games! Games!)

We have a lot of games. According to my account on Boardgamegeek, I have 77. That's a lot of games for a 3 bedroom house with 5 people in it (2 adults and 3 kids in case you're thinking we're a refugee household or something). But there has been more than that over the years and mostly they are unplayed with. Why? I buy games because they interest me and also because some are collectable. But that is a complete oxymoron in that games are supposed to be played with and not honoured like some sort of Samurai uniform in the corner.

I have a large amount of Games Workshop games that use figures, but they suffer from "Too much time ious" - they have no time period as to how long they will last and that makes us as players not want to play them. Plus also I have to paint the figures - GW games just look wrong with unpainted figures and it makes it worse when you look at the professionally painted ones in the manuals etc. Most GW games also have a fatal flaw that is exploited to the extreme to generate money - the rules state you have to have a minimum of X number of figures and vehicles etc to qualify to play - and to me that is wrong; that turns a game from being fun to a money generator.

Anyhow - away from modern Games Workshop (I touch on older GW games which are a gold mine of fun) and back to the silly notion of not playing games.

I recently sold my entire Advanced Squad Leader set (apart from the three starter kits) because I knew I'd never understand the 2kg rule book, let alone have fun with it. It was too much of a paper driven simulator. So I sold it on ebay. I knew some of the items were rare and out of print; I didn't expect £1057 as a return for my investment.

I ploughed some of this money back into games - specifically Memoir '44. Lucky for battlequestgames, their shop opened just as this money fell into my hands and I spent it in there lol. Memoir 44 is an amazing wargame boardgame that produces much more fun and playability than ASL ever did for me.

It is hard to describe the joy buying and owning a new game brings - perhaps it is equatable to those whole like new luxury cars or handbags and shoes - taking off the wrapping film and seeing the components; especially the bigger games, and more especially the Euro types I have got to know recently because of their extremely high quality components; cards, counters etc. As you can tell I cannot wait to buy another one!

Anyhow, this set me thinking about the games I do have (Around 77+) and how many I have actually played.

Well that's have a look at board game geek at the unplayed games:
3rd Fleet
5th Fleet
7th Fleet
Aquaetto
Blackbeard
Bohnanza
Carcassonne: The Princess and the Dragon
Crescendo of Doom
GI: Anvil of Victory
Gunslinger
Imperium Romanum II
Last Night on Earth
Mancala
Nuclear War
Pirates of the Spanish Main
Star Wars: Assault on Hoth
Tank Commander
Uno Superman
Vinci (not played my own copy)
Warhammer Quest
Zombies!!!

21 games - not good. I will have to have a look at these to see if a) we should get a game in b) they are unplayable by the family and consider removing them from our collection.