Curse Of The Collector or Just Play Da Fuckin Game

At some Austrian game convention a new deck for BGG's #1 game Agricola will be given away (for free of course) called the Ö-deck - no, this has nothing do with metal and the Blue Öyster Cult won't be featured on one of the cards.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/39256

The deck contains joke cards all centered around the Austrian culture, such as the "Steirische Eiche" (Styrian Oak) which has Schwarzenegger standing in front of an oak. Another one has Siegmund Freud on it. There are couple of other personalities which I highly doubt someone living outside of Austria or the transmission range of their state TV will recognize. The card text is German and so I guess is the humor.

Still, plenty of "geeks" on TOS are already in turmoil to receive one of the 3000 sets of highly sought after shit packed in plastic. And this has me wondering: Is there something in this hobby I don't "get"? Why are people so desperately in need and are willing to trade whole games for a grossly specialized item, which I doubt will add much to the game experience of Agricola? I somehow understand why people are paying lots of money for Magic cards, but I still would rather print my own cards if I should ever play the game (which is unlikely).

Yes, I too have many unplayed games in my "collection", but I'm always either playing or learning a board game. I, too, collected stickers of football players, was eager to complete an album of my favorite team and I was also a proud owner of 150 pokemon, but I did all that stuff when I was 12 years old ...

Some people go mad when something is labeled "limited edition", they wanna be special and have it. But I guess there are some real hardcore Agricola fans that just want to have the game complete with everything. On our game site in Czech Republic there are lot of such ppl who play Agricola 24/7. But in this case, I would just print the cards from BGG or make proxys. But I am personally tired of the "jokes" on Agricola cards, they are trying too hard to be funny. I would puke if I drew the "Melissa" card of the essen deck. Fuck her and her OMGspeech.

I game with several hard core collectors and the lure of getting something because it is rare, different, or just plain weird is always there. I have to remind myself "Buy only games you'll play" but even then they hardly get to the table. The competition of the huge collections is too stiff. I'm seriouly considering selling off half my collection - but the inner turmoil keeps me from committing. Besides I always hear "Yeah, I wish I still had that- what was I thinking..."

Steve"packrat"Avery

I try to limit my game purchases to games that will likely get played because I think it sucks to pay for a game and never play it although sometimes it sucks even more to get it, play it once and it never sees the light of day again. I buy games to be played not for collection purposes (I've seen too may "valuable" collectibles drop in value).

but it seems like there is the same mentality with action figures because there are bunches of people that buy those for the collectible value not realizing that one of the reasons why a mint Star Wars figure from the 70's is worth money is because 99% of the Star Wars figures from the 70's were played with. With all these people buying action figures, hermetically sealing them and packing them away, there wont be the same amount of value to a mint figure. Besides, they look much cooler out of their packaging.

If Agricola ever had a Blue Oyster Cult deck, I might actually play the damn game.

Until then: pass.

Just a guess, but I'm thinking that the boardgame hobby attracts a disproportionate number of people with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, particularly those who are into obsessive hoarding.

I personally struggle with my collector tendencies. At one point, I sold off two thirds of my comic book collection to fund a move to another state, and now I own more comics than ever. I gave away a box of comics last year during my latest move, but that still leaves me with 18 short boxes. At least I have been able to gradually cut back on buying. In the late '80s I was buying nearly 20 comics a month. Now I'm buying maybe three comics a month, and as I drop titles, I'm not replacing them with new ones.

Besides the comic collection, I have 80+ boardgames, several CCG collections, 150 music CDs, and several bookcases worth of books. I just can't quite bring myself to get rid of the several CCGs that I rarely play anymore, the 40 boardgames that I rarely play, or the books that I read maybe once a decade. For now, I justify all this stuff because it's a bad time to sell things, and all of this stuff represents long hours of free potential entertainment so I can cut back on spending.

I give fuck all about collecting anything any more, especially not consumer products...I did for a while, and at one point I had the whole Star Wars thing, tons of action figures, comics, posters, 600 or so games and I got to the point were I was just like "why?" All I thought when I looked in my closet and on my shelves was that I could have used that money to gone on a world tour, bought a 1970 Dodge Challenger, or knocked off of work for a year.

I only buy games if I'm going to play them. I have a lot of stuff I haven't played, but I will...and if I play it and don't like it, onto Ebay with it. My collection has a very, very high turnover these days. I even sell stuff I like if it's not going to be played or if everybody I know has a copy too.

I know at least two "super collectors"...yes, Branham is one of them. The other guy has probably five times as much as Branham, but a lot more useless junk. Of course, he also has three copies of JATI. The master bedroom suite in his house has been converted to a game warehouse. He has a very, very understanding wife.

I'm going through a purge cycle right now. Ditching good games that I just haven't been playing. It's liberating. I'm thinking about doing the same thing to my CD collection, now.

It's the small expansions that I most regret buying. I'll probably never get around to using all those Blue Moon decks, but they don't have enough value to justify the time required to sell them.

I've decided to sell my Jyhad collection today, I don't have time for it anymore and nostalgy alone won't buy me happiness. Maybe it's the time for the Warhammer 40k chaos army to go away too

sydo wrote:

I've decided to sell my Jyhad collection today, I don't have time for it anymore and nostalgy alone won't buy me happiness. Maybe it's the time for the Warhammer 40k chaos army to go away too

I kept a very large collection of D&D materials long after I stopped playing, mainly for reasons of nostalgia. I finally got around to selling it all a couple of years ago and it felt good once it was gone.

The money raised was mainly used to fund a new obsession with Heroscape. There is no hope for us.

This kind of dovetails into the man-child discussion we had a few months back. In so far that, those of us that label ourselves as 'gamers' potentially have the gene to collect just for collection's sake.

I too used to be a big comic book guy. I only went up to about 6 long boxes though. I ended up giving every comic away to students during my 6 year run in the public schools. Since then I have bought some Groo trades, but that's about it. And as discussed previously, I went on a massive GW hunt starting in the early 90's where I bought nearly every game they ever put out up til about '04. All of it gone. From time to time I do wish I had a game or two, but I know they still wouldn't get played enough to make it worth it.

Over the past 4 years, I went from a closet full of games (a lot for me) to a small book shelf, and now down to one shelf. I'm trying to get it down to below 10. I figure the returns on each will be much higher with fewer games.

Ironically, the only games I'm interested in now are remakes of old games I either had or never got a chance to play (new WK - arriving this week! -, CE, Talsiman 4th, etc).

The big struggle now is expansions. Back in the day, only a few games had expansions. Now nearly every game does. This is feeding the collection addiction. I marveled that FFG didn't put out an expansion for FoD, but was delighted they didn't. I bought the WK expansion without having played the new one since there's only the one. I fear the staggering amount I'll be sucked into with CE and Talisman 4th, though. I hope they don't get to AH levels, but if they do I can imagine I'll stay away from the 'big box' expansions. It's just too much and would probably hit the diminishing returns point.

Jack Hooligan wrote:

The big struggle now is expansions. Back in the day, only a few games had expansions. Now nearly every game does. This is feeding the collection addiction. I marveled that FFG didn't put out an expansion for FoD, but was delighted they didn't. I bought the WK expansion without having played the new one since there's only the one. I fear the staggering amount I'll be sucked into with CE and Talisman 4th, though. I hope they don't get to AH levels, but if they do I can imagine I'll stay away from the 'big box' expansions. It's just too much and would probably hit the diminishing returns point.

Totally agree. I have the collector gene and am just starting to realise the number of expansions I'm going to be up for if I want to "complete" my games. I don't know whether I should be targeting new games on my wishlist or getting the expansions to the games I own and love like Tide of Iron, Warrior Knights, Last Night on Earth, Ca$h'n Gun$, Dungeon Twister, etc.

Pointing out the obvious, but let's use LNoE as an example. Fun game. MSRP is $50 GH is $40. I own both. Has the fun of my recent games (at the cost of $90) been more fun then when I only had the base game at $50? Not really. I still have some laughs, but the expansion surely didn't 'double' the fun. I should've known better, but in hindsight I can't recommend buying GH. It's the collector in me though...

I like the 'smallness' of the Reaper expansion for T4. I thought a lot of expansions in the old game just made the game longer with new places to explore at a high dollar cost. The Reaper seems to have a (somewhat) low cost, but adds a new dynamic to the game. I'll give it a shot. But if they start doing City/forest/space/time/whatever I think I'll pass.

I'm usually on the "Yes, Expansions" bandwagon but lately I've kind of cooled on that...I think FFG is kind of to blame, although I definitely don't fault them for extending the value of their properties.

Even though ROAD TO LEGEND was conceptually great, did it really add to my DESCENT experience? No! I don't play the game any more than I used to. I'm not even really looking at TOMB OF ICE. I'm also cool on getting BLACK GOAT, I can't see that adding another 500 cards to the game is really going to make all that much of a difference.

FFG's expansion model veers from stupendous and pointless bloat to really smart, modular expansions like TI3 or the GoT titles. I'm realizing that I'm not too big on expansions that just add a bunch of cards or new monsters. I like add-on mechanics, the ability to increase player numbers, pick-and-mix additions, and expansions that literally expand how the game is played. I don't want more of the same- ARKHAM HORROR, I'm looking at you. The LNoE expansion was like that too...just more LNoE, and without really bringing anything terribly significant or new to it.

The thing is, most of FFG's expansions are good if it's something you play ALL THE TIME...and none of their games fit that description for me. I play a lot of their games some of the time, but I'm not committed to any of them to a degree that makes some of their expansions really worthwhile.

But I used to buy expansions just to keep the games current and to collect 'em all. And I still have that first C&C:A expansion still sitting in the box, all 700 stickers unapplied, to show for it.