The New Year comes round so fast! Too fast for my liking. Mostly because it means that we have to stop buying new board games until we’ve played through our library.
For those of you who are new to the blog, or to the idea of a Board Game Truce, it is quite simply a single rule that Amy and I force ourselves to live by each and every New Year. That rule is as follows:
We shall not purchase any more board games until we have played all the board games we own, at least once.
Games themselves count once, then each expansion pack also counts, unless it makes sense to combine the packs (judges final decision etc.) For something like Carcassonne we would play the two expansion packs we have separately, for Escape: Curse of the Temple we put the two expansion packs we have together into one game as it makes more sense to play them together as a single expansion. However we would still play Escape twice. Once without the expansions and secondly with both expansions.
This year we’ve added to our library with some wonderful additions such as Cathedral, King of New York, Colt Express, plus the expansion pack “Horses and Stagecoach”, and Time’s Up! These additions, plus all the others we’ve bought this year have given us a lot of fun but they’ve also made the year even more of a battle as our collection has swelled in numbers to a staggering 110 board games.
Granted, some of those are actually card games like Fluxx and the four variations we own, as well as Love Letter, Swish, Red7, Hanabi etc. But then others are quite long games, such as Arabian Nights, which on our first play through took nearly seven days to complete (granted we were at work during the day!)
This is the time of year our friends at Eclectic Games in Reading dislike the most. However, if we manage to get through two games a week then we should be able to buy new games in the week before Christmas 2016!
Please wish us luck!
Under the truce rules, do you have to play every game every year or just new ones?
I should adopt the same rule with video games… But I have nearer a thousand to try! Good luck to you!
Hi Peter, it’s every game unfortunately. Video games would be more difficult, would you play to complete or play for a certain amount of time? With the board games it’s just one game (unless it’s new in which case we play a “learn-the-rules” game first, and then we tally up the wins. Amy is 2-0 ahead at the moment after beating me at Cathedral then thrashing me quite comprehensively at King of New York.
Wow – so the only way for you to have time to play new games (long term) is to clear out older games? That would be hard for me, I can’t even get rid of completed jigsaws without suffering for it…
There’s been some interesting arguments about how long you should play a video game before being able to move on on Reddit. Some action games last only a few hours, many adventure games last 40+, RPGs can last 100+, and MMOs longer still. The nearest answer to an agreement I saw was to play until you don’t want to play more. To be ‘done’ with a game. I’m not sure I can even do that! But, it’s a noble idea. Definitely I wouldn’t try to play each one each year!
Really gives me a sense of how difficult your board game truce must be.