What BOARD GAMES are you TRADING?

I've been trying to make a trade for Catherine: Cities Of The Tsarina... Looks entirely in my wheelhouse. It LOOKS like a game that fell out of a wormhole from alternate 2004. Basically it's a low interaction card game with multiuse cards that you play in clever ways to score points. Plays in under an hour. I want it, but it seems like a great game to trade for, since it's got bargain bin written all over it imo. I don't think "this looks like a mid euro game from the early 2000s" is an aesthetic that is going to drive a lot of sales ATM, even if I'm into it. Don't really want to drop MSRP on a game that'll be $20 this time next year.

for the first time made a trade through Reddit's /r/boardgameexchange, despite being on there for years.

Out:
Andor: The Family Fantasy Game
My First Carcassonne

In:
Oceans

The boys are growing out of interest in their "little kids" boardgame interest. Not many people are trading for kids games like that, so i had to jump on someone actually looking for them.

My First Carcassonne is luckily one that hadn't been damaged by little hands over the years. Andor we played once or twice, and just never grabbed anyone's attention.

Oceans, my eldest has really latched on to Evolution (and Evolution:Flight), and I've been playing Oceans on mobile for some time. We played it for the first time last night and enjoyed the combos that arise. It's really a gorgeous game, even if it feels slightly too long.

Out:
Atlantic Chase
Field Commander Napoleon
Sherman Leader

In: Railways of the World anniversary edition + 5 (!) expansion maps

I went through a phase during lockdown of getting excited about solo wargaming, and ended up with more solo war games than I'm actually going to realistically table. FC Napoleon is really fun and i'd be happy to keep it but y'know. Sherman Leader is also fun but I prefer Thunderbolt Apache Leader and they're VERY similar. Atlantic Chase just never clicked with my brain... If I had a wargaming buddy locally I think this one might have seen the table more 2p but eh.

I know realistically this is WAY more Railways of the World than I need, but it'll condense into not much room box wise and the value proposition for the trade was real solid (being local helped). ROTW fits directly into my wheelhouse of solo game style alongside stuff like Merchant of Venus.

Out: Obsession with expansions

In: Nemesis base game

I struggled with giving up Obsession. I am sure that we would have enjoyed it and that it isn’t especially complex, but every time I sat down with the rules, it was rough.

Obsession looks way more complex than it actually is. It doesn't help that the rules have gone through a couple of iterations. BGA has a great implementation, so you might try it on that.

Yeah, I bet it isn’t. There was just something about the rules that made me give up reading them every time I tried.

Some rulebooks be like that for sure... Like I know this game isn't complicated but the rulebook just slides off my brain as I'm reading it.

I think I got an advantage by teaching myself how to play Panzerblitz around the age of eight. Took a while, but I learned how to deal with the densest rules-writers ever imagined (aka Avalon Hill.) But, yeah, there are still some that take another time of reading to make sure I know what I'm seeing. DR Congo was one that kind of threw me on a couple points.

On the trade: Even though my first play of Nemesis was seriously underwhelming (bad rules(!) explanation), I'd have to say that's a good one, as there are few more repellent themes/settings I can imagine than that of Obsession.

Out:
(deep breath)
Star Wars Rebellion + expansion
Sentinels complete with everything
Flash Point complete with everything
Settlers of the North complete with everything
Wir Sind Das Volk + expansion
Thunderbirds
Hogwarts Battle

In:
Guns 'n' Roses gig tickets

When my spouse was a sprightly and naiive eighteen years old she and her best friend went to see Guns 'n' Roses play in Budapest and it's stuck with her as a particularly joyful life experience. The band are coming back to Hungary later this year for the first time in nearly twenty years so, as I am working toward my 'husband of the year' award, I decided to buy two tickets so she and her friend could re-create the experience for probably the last time the band will ever play there, or at least the last time before someone's hip finally gives out and Slash has to shred from the comfort of a bath chair.

Observation thus made: I don't care how much anyone whines about the price of board games from now on, they are a frivolous sundry expense compared to stadium gig tickets.

Ticketmaster fees are truly outrageous. There has been multiple times this year alone that I chose to NOT buy tickets just because of the fees.

Robert Smith of The Cure has been doing the lord's work and raging war publically on Twitter and privately behind the scenes against TicketMaster and their fees and onseller scalpers with The Cure's latest American tour.

Unlike other artists who have talked a good game against TicketMaster but got nowhere good ol' Bob has actually got results even to the point where TicketMaster has actually been forced to issue refunds for some of their egregious fees.

Just another reason to love The Cure really. It's likely to just be a bloody nose to TM rather than a total victory and sea change for the industry but at least it's something.

I love that Robert Smith has been doing that. I was going to see them on their tour but the dates were not great for me. Plus I learned of the tour like 3 days after buying Duran Duran tickets.

So I was reading Dan Thurot's review of the new version of Summoner Wars and there's no way I'm not going to own that game. And I've got this copy of a first edition of Fire in the Lake that is probably worth $40. So as I'm thinking about this, I go and read a review of FitL on some website and come across this:

Tackling such an impressive and rich game in the format of a review was especially daunting as I can only hope to scratch the surface of this design with just a couple thousand words. The take away here is that this is one of the most brilliant and complete packages I have ever experienced in this industry. This is a heavy and complicated game but the wide reach of detail achieved with a surprising degree of elegance is astounding and worthy of insurmountable praise. This is the type of game you can leave setup on your solo table for not Weeks but Months while you continually uncover new facets and nuances just waiting to be discovered. This game is an achievement in and of itself as it’s the definitive operational level Vietnam game many of us have been searching our entire lives for.


Thanks. Just thank you for writing that. I really appreciate it, because now I can never get rid of this game that I'm really just not smart enough to play. They will bury me with this game.

Oh, and also this paragraph from Space Biff:

That’s Fire in the Lake, a game about diplomacy, frustration, chaos, control. It’s a bit more complicated than previous entries courtesy of a non-government faction getting conventional forces of its own and the non-insurgents getting their hands on guerrilla-type troops, but anyone familiar with the system should be able to figure out the changes in no time. Other than that, yes, it can run long, and it’s a bit tough to learn, sometimes tricky to track everything, and often frustrating as you come within an inch of victory time and again only to have it snatched away at the last possible moment, but it’s still one of the best uses of the COIN Series thus far. It isn’t my favorite game in the COIN Series — that distinction still belongs to Cuba Libre, mostly because it lets me play as mobster Meyer Lansky — but at this point it’s my second-favorite, fulfilling precisely what I want out of a game about the quagmire known as the Vietnam War.

I'm just a sucker for good sentences and lavish praise in game reviews. They stoke my gaming fantasies.

Oh, and this snippet about Cuba Libre is delightful:

"If you hollowed out a wargamer's body and a eurogamer crawled inside, this is what you would get. The eyes would slide around uncomfortably under the loose sockets, and the teeth wouldn't line up properly with the mouth, but it would still be your same old eurobuddy underneath - only with casinos, assaults, terror, and historically interesting events to add a sense of danger and veracity."

Fire in the Lake sucks, you should dump it.

I’ve got a copy of first edition Fire in the Lake that I’ve been wanting to trade or sell too. Unpunched. Like new. Straight from its P500. I’ve been playing wargames for 50 years, but it seems more complex than it’s worth and more of a commitment than I’ll give it. Then I read sentences like that. Yep, I understand just how you feel.