Board game reviews, news and commentary.
Games Yet Unplayed
Head in the Clouds
Updated: Tuesday, Jan 27, 2015
I was putting away a few games that I was talking about recently, when I realized something.

See, I’ve enjoyed board games for as long as I can remember, starting with Donkey Kong and Pac Man board games I had in grade school. They were cheesy, but they sparked my imagination. When I was a little older, Risk became my go-to game. I eventually began collecting bits and pieces of other games from thrift stores to trick out Risk with homemade expansions. (And yet, I was always picked last for dodgeball. Go figure.)

My focus on the hobby would ebb and flow over the years, but then, on January 20th, 2012, nearly three years ago today, while poking around the internet for more accessories to trick out Risk, I stumbled across a video by The Dice Tower for Litko gaming accessories. That video introduced me to Twilight Imperium, The Dice Tower itself, and more importantly, the world of modern board games.

Over the last three years, I’ve been making up for lost time, sometimes… often acquiring board games at a rate faster than I can assimilate them. (That reminds me, I should get a copy of Acquire.) The result of this accelerated acquisition led to the recent realization: there’s actually quite a few games on my shelf that I haven’t played even once yet.

And there’s a lot more of them than I expected.

Fortunately, easing off the throttle, accumulating fewer games, and indulging in the yet to be played games in my collection, all coincide with the resolutions I have already made for myself this year.

And it got me wondering, on average, how many unplayed games are in someone’s collection at any given time? Surely everybody must have at least one game in their collection that they’ve never played. Maybe even forty. So, if you’ll indulge me in audience participation once again, I’d be interested in hearing your answer to the question of how many board games are in your collection, and how many of those have never been played? Let’s compare notes. And next time, I’ll discuss what it is that I think compels us to keep buying games even when we’ve started to accumulate a pile yet unplayed.
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