buying habits

I set myself a quota of gaining no more than 20 games every year. "Gaining" includes buying, receiving games as gifts, home-manufacturing games. I don't remember when I came up with this quota, maybe about 2 - 3 years ago, but I know I have not met my target for the past three years. However having a target does help to keep me in check somewhat.

Let's go through again the list of mantras that I came up with to dissuade myself from buying games:

1. You don't need to own every game that you like.
2. You don't need to play every good game.
3. You need to play more of the good games that you own.
4. Wait until your interest wanes.
5. Don't impulse buy.
6. Will you play the game more than 5 (or 10) times?

So far in 2011, I have been a good boy and have only bought 2 new games, A la Carte and Endeavor. I know I will definitely buy the upcoming Race for the Galaxy Alien Artifact expansion. That makes 3. So I think I will finally achieve my goal this year. In fact I think I was close last year. Quite a number of games were bought for my children, some that could already be played, some to be played when they are older - Viva Topo!, 10 Days in Asia, FITS, Ubongo. ColorMonster was a review copy. Wizard was a gift because I helped with the rules translation to Malay. Funny Friends and Planet Steam were rewards for translation work. There weren't many games in my friend's inventory that I was interested in, so I picked these two which I had some mild interest in. I probably wouldn't have bought these two games myself.

A la Carte

I play most frequently with Han and Allen, both of whom also buy games. We still have a long list of games not yet played, so there is no shortage of new games to play. We have also been doing some repeat plays, which promoted longevity of games, and also let us enjoy and appreciate these games more (this is the Game of the Month concept). E.g. 4 plays of Sid Meier's Civilization, 3 plays of Merchants and Marauders, 2 plays of Liberte. Our tastes in games overlap, so sometimes they buy games that I am interested in, and I try-before-buy, and buy only if I really like them that much that I feel the need to own a copy.

Allen and Han. We were playing Wars of the Roses: Lancaster vs York.

With a long list of new games waiting to be played, I feel no urgency to buy games. Also, I find that it is harder and harder to come across new games that captivate me. Not that there are no or few good games among them, just that I feel quite contented with games I own and games I have access to. At the moment I'm just keen to try 7 Wonders and Dominant Species (and Allen has already ordered the latter).

I have enjoyed the recent repeat plays of games. They allowed us to explore the games in depth. Familiarity with the games also meant we could play very quickly. The games were intense, because the decisions to time ratio was high.

Sometimes I have less urge to try new games, and I yearn to bring out some older games (Samurai Swords anyone?). I still have not learnt the strategies in Euphrates and Tigris.

So I tell myself it's OK to miss some good, or even excellent games. Antiquity is a game that I think I will like a lot. But it's very expensive. But then there are just too many good games out there, and one should not try to own or even play all of them.

I am also cutting down on buying expansions to games that I like, because I don't play the base games or expansions that I already own that much. E.g. Grand Hameau expansion to Le Havre, Gamers' Deck expansion to Agricola, the many Power Grid expansions, Age of Steam expansions, Innovation expansion. The base games plus expansions that I already own are already more than enough for me, based on the frequency that I'm playing these games.

Power Grid, a game a like a lot but have not played for soooo long. The recent tournament organised by Jeff (boardgamecafe.net) made me itch to play again. I'm not a tournament person, so despite following the session reports loyally I didn't sign-up for any of the qualifiers.

One game that I have some interest in but will likely not buy is The Resistance. It's a Werewolf-like game, with undercover traitors among the players attempting to secretly sabotage the group's missions. One important difference is noone gets eliminated during the game. This game is only suitable for a big group, and I rarely have that.

I consider myself a lucky gamer. I have regular game sessions. I don't lack games that I'm keen to play. I don't really need to buy many new games, so I shall be very selective and limit myself to buying those that, as a figure of speech, I feel I can't live without.

Game of the Month

Nowadays I often play at Allen's place, and usually we have 3-player sessions, Allen, Han and I. Han suggested we do Game of the Month (GOTM), which Chris has been very successful with, and I have also been talking about but not acting on. I first read about the GOTM concept a long time ago in an article by Mark Johnson at the now-inactive The Games Journal website. Han and I have tried this before. We picked Hammer of the Scots, which we played quite a number of times over a few months. We enjoyed the games a lot. Somehow we didn't continue the GOTM, probably due to being distracted by too many new interesting games to play. Let's see how our new attempt goes.

We agreed that we will take turns naming the GOTM and deciding how many times it needs to be played. We probably won't stick to the period of one month, and will just play that game until we feel satisfied. It won't be exclusive either. We will play other games too.

Allen was first to name the GOTM, and he picked Le Havre. Although I have played this more than 10 times, I'm happy to play it because it's a game I like a lot, and I still feel there is more to explore. Also Allen has the Grand Hameau expansion, so I'll have the chance to try it.

Le Havre is a very open game that gives you many choices. It has a worker placement element, but there are many buildings available, and each player only has one worker, so even if a building you want to use is blocked, you can often find something else useful to do. Having played two games with Allen and Han recently, I find that I am still not watching my opponents enough. I still mostly try to build my own little business empire, as opposed to trying to work out what the others are doing and trying to hinder them at the same time as trying to achieve my own goals.

Le Havre being played at Allen's place. To help speed the game up, we prepare the resources as specific on the round tiles beforehand.

Other insights:

• Building a luxury liner (needs 3 steel, which is difficult to obtain) is a very powerful move. Luxury liners are worth $30 - $38, which can often decide win or lose.
• Plan to get ships early to help with the feeding. In one game I had both the fish related buildings which gave me lots of fish and smoked fish. They helped me avoid loans for maybe two thirds of the game, because I always had enough food for the end-of-round feeding. However in hindsight I realise they made me delay building ships, which I probably should have done earlier. When I was eventually unable to catch up with the food requirement, I suddenly went deep into debt. Building a ship earlier probably would have allowed me to spend less effort on getting food, and thus allowed me to spend more effort on making money.
• Needing to take loans is sometimes good. When the interest payment is due and you don't have cash, you are forced to take another $4 loan to pay the $1 interest. That means you suddenly have some spare change, which can be used to pay entry fees for buildings belonging to the city or to other players. This flexibility can be very handy sometimes. I always joke that the loan sharks in Le Havre are nice people. They don't loan you money unless you are desperate (you can't borrow money, e.g. to buy a fancy building, unless you can't pay for food or pay interest), and they only charge you a $1 interest every round no matter how many loans you have.
• I discovered that I have been playing the Marketplace wrong for many many games. When you use the Marketplace, you can look at the top two Special Building cards, and then return them to any position in the deck. Previously I thought I had to return them to the top of the deck, just that I could swap the order. Dumbest rule interpretation of the year...
• 6 Nov 2010: Correction - Frank pointed out that I have actually been playing Marketplace right afterall. See links in comments.

We haven't quite decided (or Allen hasn't quite decided) how many games of Le Havre we will play, but Han being next to pick has decided to play 3 games of War of the Ring, i.e. each of us will play the 3 different sides once each. I still have not decided what game to pick. Maybe I will pick Factory Manager, because it's one of my 2010 purchases that has not been played much. The game can be slow at first because some of the concepts are tricky to grasp. However once the initial hurdle is over the game should be quite quick.

The central game board of Factory Manager.