If looks could kill, they probably will.

My board game collection has become something of a tourist attraction.

Whenever we have someone at the house for the first time, adult or child, there’s some sort of tour, led by one of my stepdaughters, both of whom make excellent docents for their ages. I love our house but I don’t think there’s anything that special about it other than the weird thing we have where there’s a TV hidden behind a retractable canvas – it came with the house, I swear – and that’s broken now anyway because the motor died. But the tour guides have realized that they get the biggest reaction when they show the guests the board game collection, even though it’s in the half-finished portion of our basement near the water heater and HVAC systems, along with our Costco overstock.

The collection numbers over 300 right now, even though I have sold, traded, or donated over 80 games (net of games I’ve received back in trades) in the last year. Because I get review copies from many publishers, I feel like Kramer when he took over the bus – they just keep ringing the bell. Four more have arrived in the last week. They all looked good, too.

I’m not overly sentimental about games, either. I do have maybe a dozen games that are valuable or out of print; I have a first edition of Egizia, with the old (and superior) board, an early copy of El Grande, my copies of Orient Express and Acquire from high school, the original Glen More because because the new one made the game too long, and a few others that are out of print often enough that I don’t want to get rid of them. I’ve even moved out the games that all three kids have outgrown, even some of their old favorites (like Dragomino), because no one’s going to play them again in this house so they’re just taking up space.

Where I get stuck, and why the collection has gotten to its current state, is the belief that I’m going to play every single one of these games again at some point. It’s sort of board game FOMO, the fear of not having the game when the opportunity arises. They’re all games I like, obviously, but I like a lot of games. (I actually dislike a lot of games, too, but I talk about them a lot less. Not all games are above average.) I would be fine with 100 games. I’d probably be fine with 50 games. As much as I like to play, it’s not like I’m playing board games every night or something. I do have a job, and a family, and other things I like to do that aren’t playing games. I just like knowing that the games are there if, for some reason, I just wanted to bust out Discoveries, a game I haven’t played in at least six years, but that I really liked and would want to play just one more time before I got rid of it.

All that said, it’s time for another purge … the period from Gen Con (around August 1^st) through Thanksgiving is always a heavy one for new releases and thus review copies, so the collection is going to balloon if I don’t start culling now. I’ll just miss those games when they’re gone.

--S

The entire game collection. No, I’m kidding. There are seven more racks like this one.

Since my last newsletter, I published my second mock draft for 2025, and did a Q&A afterwards to discuss it. I also posted my annual ten-year lookback columns, redrafting the 2015 class and reviewing the first-rounders from 2015 who didn’t pan out, and then held a Klawchat to take questions. And I wrote about the shocking trade that sent Rafael Devers to the Giants.

On the dish, I reviewed the book American Desert by Percival Everett and the board game Masters of Renaissance, which is the card-game spinoff of the worker-placement game Lorenzo il Magnifico. I also posted my weekly link roundup on Saturday.

I’ll have a new review up at Paste this week – it’s already filed, probably running Wednesday.

Stay sane.

Keith