c/board-game-geeks

Bought a used game bundle at a flea market, ended up paying for the same set twice

Saw a box of 40 games for $50 at a flea market in Akron and grabbed it without checking inside. Turned out 12 of them were missing pieces, and 8 were duplicates of stuff I already owned. I get that it's a gamble but has anyone else gotten burned on bulk game lots?

Traded my Catan group for a solo game night, best call I made this year

Last month I had to pick between staying with my Friday night Catan crew or ditching them for solo gaming. The group was fine but every session turned into 3 hours of trading drama and someone rage quitting over a robber placement. I bought Spirit Island on a whim, played 4 solo rounds in one weekend, and realized I'd been dragging myself to a game I didn't even enjoy anymore. Solo play cut my setup time in half, no waiting for Dave to recount his points, and I actually finished a full campaign in 2 weeks. The catch is I miss the trash talk, but I don't miss the scheduling fight where we rescheduled 6 times just to sit for 40 minutes. Has anyone else dropped a regular group for solo mode and regretted it or felt relieved? I'm trying to figure out if I should give them one more shot or sell my Catan copy for cash.

Took me 4 months to realize I was shuffling wrong

I kept getting the same cards in the same order after a few rounds of Catan, and I thought my sleeves were just worn out. Tried a new shuffle method about 3 weeks ago after reading a forum post about pile shuffling with 30 cards. Turns out my mash shuffle was only mixing the top half of the deck because my grip was too tight. Swapped to a proper riffle with a mat under the cards, and now the distribution is actually random. Tested it 50 times with a marker card and it finally moved around. Anyone else spend way too long on a basic habit that just needed a small tweak?

A 5-minute rules debate with a stranger changed my whole tournament prep

At a local con in Austin last month, I was waiting for a match and this guy Dave insisted the tie-breaker order in my favorite game was different than I thought. He pulled out the rulebook on his phone and showed me the exact line, which I had skimmed for years. Turns out I was prepping for the wrong scoring sequence in all my practice games. Has anyone else had a random rules clarification totally shift their strategy approach?

Pro tip: store your game boards upright or pay the price

Found my Arkham Horror board warped last week after keeping it flat under a stack of heavier boxes. The cardboard curved bad enough that tiles slide off the map now. Tried the reverse bend with books on it for 3 days, still not flat. Anyone else had a board ruined by improper storage? What do you use to keep big boxes safe?

Hit 200 plays on my shelf and it made me rethink collection size

I keep a simple tally in a notebook for every game that gets to the table in my group. Last month I counted up and realized I'd logged 200 unique plays since January 2023. That number surprised me because I only own about 45 games, and I figured a third of them never got touched. Turns out my most played game sits at 31 plays, while 6 games still haven't seen a single solo round or group night. The real kicker is that the 200 plays came from a core set of 12 titles, not the whole shelf. I started culling the dead weight and sold 4 games at a local flea market for $80 total. Has anyone else tracked plays and found their collection is way more lopsided than they thought?

Took me 6 weeks to realize dice trays are for saving my wrists, not the table

I always thought dice trays were just for protecting the table surface, so I kept rolling on the felt mat and ignoring my sore hand after 4 hour sessions of Spirit Island. Then my buddy in Seattle watched me wince and said 'dude, you're grabbing the dice too hard because the tray catches them for you', so I borrowed his cheap one and played a full game without any pain. Anyone else use a tray for ergonomics instead of table protection, or am I the last one to figure this out?

A 10-minute rule from a stranger fixed my whole game night

Last month at a local meetup in Austin, a guy watched me explain a co-op game for 15 minutes and finally said, "You're over-teaching, just give them the goal and let them find the rules." I cut my intro down to the win condition and one action example, then let everyone dig through the rulebook on their own. It was crazy how fast people got into it, like they were exploring instead of sitting through a lecture. Now I time myself to 10 minutes max for any teach, and if we hit a snag we look it up mid-game. Has anyone else found a shorter teach time actually works better for heavier games?

Bought that $100 dice tower, totally useless for my group

The tower kept knocking over my buddy's drink in Portland on game night and we just went back to rolling on the table after 20 minutes. Has anyone else shelled out for a fancy accessory that just made things worse?

Game night ruined by a rules lawyer in 20 minutes flat

Last Friday I hosted a small group for some casual play and one guy, a friend of a friend, kept stopping every round to quote the rulebook at me. He insisted my interpretation of a card interaction was wrong, even though I checked the FAQ on my phone and showed him the official answer. He shrugged and said "house rules don't count" then tried to flip the board in protest when the group sided with me. I ended up calling the night early around 9pm and nobody touched a single box since. Has anyone else had a rules lawyer kill a whole session like that, and how do you bounce back without banning someone?

My buddy was right about dice towers, I ate my words

For two years I insisted dice towers were overpriced plastic for people with shaky hands. Then my buddy Mike brought a cheap felt-lined one to game night and our group's games ran 40 minutes faster because nobody was re-rolling dice that bounced into the snacks. Anyone else flip on something they used to mock after actually trying it once?

Is a legacy game really worth it when a regular game gives you 50 replays?

My Friday night group finished Pandemic Legacy Season 1 last month after 14 sessions, and honestly I have mixed feelings. On one hand, the sticker and card destruction mechanics made every decision feel huge, like when we lost the entire city of Seoul and had to play around it for the next 3 games. On the other hand, we spent $70 on a game we can never replay, and one bad early choice basically doomed our campaign to a mediocre ending. A friend of mine swears by the alternative of buying a regular Euro game like Viticulture for the same price, which gives you dozens of replays. But another buddy argues that the shared story and permanent consequences are what made us actually talk about the game between sessions, which never happens with any of our other games. I see both sides, but I'm leaning toward the idea that legacy games are a one-time event you pay for, not a game you own. Has anyone else finished a legacy campaign and felt the same way, or do you think the experience is worth the dead box on the shelf?

Paid $15 to play test a prototype at PAX Unplugged, but the designer argued with me for 10 minutes about my feedback. Should designers defend their game or just take notes?

The difference in my game group after I kicked out two people

I run a weekly board game night at my house in Portland. For about 8 months I had this couple who would show up late, argue about rules, and then leave early. I finally told them they couldn't come anymore back in June. Now my group of 6 actually finishes a game of Terraforming Mars in under 3 hours without anyone getting upset. Has anyone else had to trim their game group to keep it fun?

Appreciation post: the guy who taught me to score a game box before slicing it open at the charity shop

I used to just rip into old thrift store boxes and ruined three perfectly good games before a random dude at Salvation Army showed me to run a box cutter along the seam first, and now I've saved about $40 worth of salvageable components in the last two weeks alone, so has anyone else got a weird trick for keeping secondhand games intact?

Pro tip: always check the box for missing pieces before leaving the game store

Last month I drove 45 minutes to a shop in Tacoma, bought a used copy of Brass Birmingham for $55, and didn't realize until I got home that someone had replaced the iron tokens with dried lima beans, and now I'm stuck trying to figure out if I should reach out to the store or just hit up a 3D printing guy on Etsy for replacements - has anyone else dealt with weird substitution finds in secondhand games?

My failed Kickstarter board game expansion that cost me $80

I backed a Kickstarter for a board game expansion back in March. It was supposed to ship in June but kept getting delayed. Now the company went silent and I'm out 80 bucks with nothing to show for it. Has anyone else gotten burned by a board game Kickstarter that never delivered?

The week my gaming group fell apart over a broken token

Last Tuesday we were halfway through a 4 hour game of Twilight Imperium when the plastic victory point token snapped in half. One guy blamed the other for being too rough, and within 10 minutes two people packed up and left. We haven't met up since. Has anyone else had a game night implode over something this stupid?

Got told my tile spacing was off by a retired contractor at the hobby shop

He said I was using too small of spacers for the floor tiles on my game board diorama. Swapped to 1/8 inch ones and the grid actually looks straight now. Anyone else get tips from random strangers that turned out right?

Spent $60 on a 'deluxe' card shuffler and it jammed after three uses

Bought that fancy battery-powered shuffler for our Friday night game group and it ate two cards from my favorite deck before dying completely. Anyone else found a shuffler that actually works for more than one session?

That time a tournament player told me my deck shuffle was cheating

I always did a quick overhand shuffle before games, but a guy at a local event pointed out that was leaving my mana clumped. So I swapped to 7 perfect riffle shuffles and started actually drawing playable hands. Anyone else get called out for something that turned out to be a real issue?

The moment I realized my dice tray was ruining my games

I was at a Wednesday night game at Mike's place in Portland last month. We were playing a heavy euro game and I kept getting bad rolls. I blamed the dice, the table, even my luck. Then Mike pointed out that my felt-lined tray had a thick lip that was catching the dice and stopping them from bouncing. I switched to his flat wooden tray and suddenly my rolls evened out. Has anyone else had a gaming accessory secretly mess with their results?

Heard a guy at my LGS say deckbuilding is just solving a puzzle and it kinda changed how I look at it

He was tweaking his Commander deck and said every card choice is like a piece that either fits or blocks your win condition. Has anyone else started seeing their collections differently after a random comment like that?

Organizing games by weight vs alphabet was a game changer for my group

I spent like 4 years organizing my board game shelf alphabetically because it felt neat and logical. But then my group showed up last Saturday and we spent 20 minutes arguing over what to play because nobody wanted a heavy euro after a long week. I finally rearranged everything by complexity weight using the BGG ratings. Now the lighter party games and fillers are on the top shelf and the heavy strategy stuff is on the bottom. First session after the change we grabbed The Crew in under a minute and had a blast. Anyone else found a system that actually works better for their group?

Just sunk $80 into a deluxe edition of a game that's basically unplayable

I picked up the 'Collector's Edition' of Endless Realms at a flea market last weekend for 80 bucks. The box is huge and the minis look great, but the rulebook is a total mess, missing half the setup instructions. Tried to play a quick 2-player round with my buddy and we couldn't even get through the first turn without arguing about what the symbols mean. Has anyone else fallen for a game that looked amazing but turned out to be a dud? I'm thinking about trying to sell it online but I'm not sure if anyone would want it.