I'm finding my tastes are pulling back from board games. There's several reasons for this. The first is that I've had way too many games that have just sat on shelves unplayed. I got caught up in the moment (damn you, Rahdo, The Dice Tower, and Shut Up and Sit Down for making board games seem like fun!) and found myself checking out a lot of different games. Unfortunately many board games seem to scrimp on the rulebooks which can make learning them more complicated than they need be. And while there are many resources for learning board games it feels like a chore just to get to where you can play your first few solo-plays before unleashing the game on the rest of your group. That feels like work to me. The second reason is that board games are now optimized for a more ephemeral experience. Witness the number of games that are tuned to attract audiences on Kickstarter, with their large plastic pieces, miniatures, exclusives, and stretch goals galore. They're not here for a long-term engagement. At best these games become highly sought after until the next big thing rolls around to take its place. Worse, some companies have a difficult time with reprints after the initial Kickstarter and have to rely on expansions and what-not to keep an influx of cash. Lastly, many of these games have one unique thing that drives them while surrounding that with a bunch of mechanics and victory conditions that are more of a chore than fun. If the game is more about what I can't do on my turn then you're essentially driving me through your game design like a tour guide. Also, if it's impossible to determine who is "winning" because the cards or what-not aren't tallied until the end of the game then that's a silly design.

So I have put up a good number of games for trade or sale with more on the way. Check my Board Game Geek page (link below) for more details.

I don't think board games as a while are necessarily bad, but I'm finding that my patience for the current trends of expensive games with exclusives (or worse, "legacy games" that customize the game during play) are not for me. I'm more apt to bring up a RPG and play with that because it doesn't require as much for me to get started and the stories can be more interesting. We'll see if that changes in the future, but for now I'm removing a lot of "adventure" games, point-salad Euro games, and games that don't have a strong solo component. I'm also pulling a lot of games that are "single-taskers" where I can replace the gameplay with a printed board and Looneylabs Pyramids. If I can replicate your core mechanics with those then that's one less thing I'm keeping in my collection.

We'll see how this all turns out.