My Growing Library

Games I Bought This Weekend

Games I Bought This Weekend

On the way to my fantasy football draft I picked up two used board games I won on a recent boardgamegeek.com auction: Takenoko and Imperial Settlers. I was pleasantly surprised when I opened Takenoko: although it was no longer in its shrink wrap, the cards were still in shrink wrap and the tiles were still unpunched. It was a great deal, paying less than half the MSRP ($50) for a brand new game. Imperial Settlers had a slight ding on its corner and two of the meeples were broken, but the meeples were the extras and I’m not worried about the box. Again, I paid less than half the MSRP ($50).

Yesterday I was in Orange County, which was excellent timing since I could pick up two games that I’ve been dying to get into my games library: Roll for the Galaxy and Star Trek Catan.

Roll for the Galaxy is awesome and it was the iSlaytheDragon.com Game of the Year for 2015, but I’m not very good at it. I always seem to be a step behind my opponents and haven’t gotten better than second place. Hence, my desire to own a copy: I need to learn the ins and outs of the game, the dice, the tiles, everything. I was close to pulling the trigger a few times on amazon.com whenever it dipped to $40, but I’m glad I waited. I managed to pay less than half the MSRP ($60) and I can’t wait to start rolling all of those dice.

Finally, Star Trek Catan was one of those on my Must Buy List, but it was never a priority until I found it for exactly half off MSRP ($50) in a boardgamegeek.com virtual flea market. I love the original series characters and their special powers in this version of Catan, which is definitely my favorite.

So for about the price of one brand new copy of Scythe, I was able to add four outstanding games to my growing library. I hope to add Scythe one day, but I’ll wait until someone’s tired of playing their copy so I can land another great deal. My bank account is thankful that I don’t follow the Cult of the New.

Day 280: Star Trek Catan

Star Trek Catan.

Star Trek Catan.

I’ve now played three of the most popular gateway games, thanks to my local gaming group. I’d played Ticket to Ride and Carcassone (also with the group a few weeks ago) and Catan was the last one on my list.

I was somewhat familiar with the game and actually own a copy (a birthday gift), but hadn’t played it yet. Tonight the first game the group put on the table was Star Trek Catan. The basics are the same, but the added “helper cards” featuring the Star Trek characters were fun.

The rest of the group was familiar with the game and each player seemed to prefer Star Trek over the original. I loved the theme and I’ll have to see how it compares to Catan. Somehow trading brick and lumber while avoiding the robber won’t seem as exciting as trading Dilithium and Tritanium while avoiding the Klingons.