My Games Library in Flux

I’ve been buying games – board games, card games and roleplaying games – for a while now. At present I own about 70 games in total. At one point I had an extensive wish list of games I wanted to add to my library, but the more games I’ve come to own, I’ve gradually become less interested in owning more.

I’ve found that a lot of games retread similar ground, which hampers their appeal to me. For example, there is a new Star Trek deck building card game that looks kind of interesting. But, I already own Dominion, which is a deck building card game, and I just can’t imagine that this new game would offer a significantly different experience. This overlap in game design has even effected how I view games already in my library. Pandemic was a personal favorite of mine for quite some time, but now I find that Forbidden Island gives a very similar experience in a more streamlined package. If given the choice to play one or the other, I think I would choose Forbidden Island 9 times out of 10, making Pandemic a largely redundant game in my collection. Some games I own aren’t necessarily redundant in this sense, but I still have found that I just don’t play them very often anymore. So, lately I’ve been clearing out some of my games, mostly by selling them off on eBay.

I’ve also pared down my wish list considerably. Now I find that I’m more interested in buying expansions for games I already have – such as the Lord of the Rings: The Card Game, which releases small expansions every month or two – than I am in purchasing entirely new games. There are, however, a few games on the horizon that have piqued my interest, but I’m going to give these games a lot more consideration before deciding whether or not to buy them. Right now, these are the few games I’m looking at. Most of these are not yet available, but should be released in the next few months.

Infiltration

This is a card game by the guy who designed Dominion, but it is not a deck building card game. The game is set in a cyberpunk future, and the players are corporate spies who are tasked with infiltrating the headquarters of a rival mega-corporation in order to steal valuable data. Players are technically on the same side, but they’re competing against each other to collect the most data. Players move their spy deeper into the corporate base, steal data, use items, deal with corporate employees who will try to stop them, and get out before the police show up and lock down the building. The game has a push-your-luck element, as you want to hang around and steal as much data as you can in order to score better than your fellow players, but if you don’t get out before the police show up then you automatically lose.

King of Tokyo

Conceptually, this game is a bit like the playground game of King of the Hill, except with giant monsters trying to occupy Tokyo. On their turn, players use a Yahtzee-like dice rolling mechanic to determine what they can do that turn – such as attacking the player on Tokyo, gathering energy to power a special ability, etc. This game has been described as quick and fun, with a fairly even measure of strategy and chance.

Star Wars: The Card Game

This is an interesting one. I’m always interested in a new Star Wars game. From the early descriptions of the game, though, it sounded like a clone of the Lord of the Rings living card game – being from the same designer and publisher. This would be a cool game, but I just don’t think I could justify investing in two nearly identical games. However, recently they announced that this game was going back to the drawing board due to less-than-positive fan reactions. So now there is very little information on what this game will actually be like when it does come out. It continues to hold my interest simply by virtue of being a Star Wars game, and if it proves to be significantly different from the Lord of the Rings card game, it might be worth adding to my library.

Star Wars: X-Wing

Another Star Wars game, X-Wing puts you in command of a small group of starfighters, fighting an intense dogfight with your opponent’s starfighters. One player controls Rebel ships, such as the titular X-Wings, or Y-Wings. The other player gets Imperial ships such as TIE Fighters and their different variations. The battles take place by moving miniatures of these ships around a game board, performing maneuvers to try and gain an advantageous position, and shooting each other down. The producers of the previous Star Wars Miniatures Game (a ground-based skirmish game focused on heroes and personnel) did a small stand-alone game about space battles with miniatures, but I found it mostly unsatisfying as it seemed very random, and lacked opportunities for any significant strategies. This game seems like it might be better because it is focused on starfighters and dogfights, and is thus a lot less abstracted.

Do any of these games sound particularly interesting to you? Are there any games you've got your eye on?