Starting Over

(Perhaps there's been discussion about this already in the 10 years this forum has been kicking...but oh well)

So, have there been any games where you enjoyed the game immensely, but the bloat became too much...so you started over? Perhaps you had all the Talisman expansions, but then sold them off for just the Base + Reaper. Maybe you were drowning in Dominion cards and traded them away to just get a base set again. Arkham Horror? X-wing?

I'm sort of there with Blood Bowl. I've got teams of different scales, different manufacturers, different materials, different eras, etc. There's a part of me that would just like to dump it all and start over. Hell, I don't even really like the minis in the new BB2016 release, but the thought of just having the two teams that my son and I could paint and play together is very attractive...mini aesthetic be damned. I only need a handful of teams to take to tournaments anyway. Maybe I reset and only buy an occasional new team after ours are painted and we've played them extensively. I dunno. Seems the correct course.

Carcassonne for me. The base game is occasionally fun to pull out with non-gamers or if no one’s in the mood for something heavy. Maybe the River expansion. But the game really isn’t interesting enough to sustain the 20 expansions (or however much there are). They make the game stay vastly past its welcome and turn a light, simple game into a fiddly mess.

Arkham Horror is another one, kind of. Playing with all the expansions is a a complete mess. Base game plus Dunwich is the most I’d even consider now.

So, have you taken the steps to unload your unwanted expansions or just plan to not bring them out in future sessions?

There are a couple like this. The big one for me was Battlestar Galactica. I spent good money on the first two expansions, but now if I ever play the game at all (which is rare) I am using the base game alone.

Carcassonne is also like this for me, although I have it expanded to exactly the extent I like. We use the first couple RGG expansions, and that's been good enough for us for close to 10 years. There are a couple of other games where I perceived I had bought enough of the expansions, and that I didn't need anymore. Catan comes to mind. I have Seafarers and Cities & Knights, along with the 5-6 player extensions, and that's where I stopped there.

I bailed on Dominion after like five expansions. No regrets.

I haven't tried to "start over" per se, but I've placed expansions under a lot of scrutiny for a while.

I'm being very careful with what aliens I add to my Cosmic Encounter set. With so many aliens to choose from and the game being so replayable I really don't think there's a reason to ever play a bad one. I want to play designs of the quality of Clone, Magician, Virus and Loser, not Grumpus or Locust or most of the aliens in Cosmic Storm.

So far between the base game and the first expansion my breakdown is this:

48 Great Aliens
21 Good Aliens
0 Mediocre Aliens
1 Awful ones

So I haven't removed any aliens. EDIT: WAIT, LOCUS IS IN THIS EXPANSION. So I guess I should remove that one. Some people would remove Genius, Reincarnator or Masochist as they tend to be weak and "silly" but I think they are great designs, regardless of their actual power level. I'm much more likely to remove Shadow or Bully than those three.

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The other game I'm keeping my eye on when it comes to expansions is Steam. Back when I played this a lot I bought and printed a lot of maps and now that things have calmed down I think I could streamline my collection a little. There's little reason to keep ok maps when you have 20 of them and now that I'm better at making my own copies I'm going to try to make better copies of the good maps I want to keep (Eg. Portugal, Switzerland)

dysjunct wrote: Arkham Horror is another one, kind of. Playing with all the expansions is a a complete mess. Base game plus Dunwich is the most I’d even consider now.

I used to play a lot of Arkham Horror, and I always enjoyed playing with all the expansions. There was one time when we tried to play with just the base and one expansion, but we wasted 45 minutes sorting through all the decks to strip out cards. But now that we play Arkham just 2 or 3 time a years, the big game with all the expansions is too much. It's tough enough trying to seal six gates before the Great Old One appears, but then there is also the looming threat of the Deep Ones Uprising or the King in Yellow reaching the third act, or rifts opening due to Innsmouth, or the appearance of the Dunwich Horror itself. From here on out, I think that we will just play whichever one of those elements is triggered first. Kind of like how we ignore rumors if we already have one rumor in play. Maybe we could allow for two or even three of these end game threats if we have a higher player count like 6 or 8.

I kinda did this with Heroscape twice, and now wishing I could unload most of my figs (not terrain, that shit is evergreen and useful for multiple purposes) since they dont get played enough to take up the space it does.

Arkham Horror and BSG for me.

Though, same as above, AH has to have Dunwich. Moreover, I keep all the deck richness stuff from the fuck load of expansions I have (e.g. magic items, common items, encounters, etc). So maybe only halfway with AH?

Carcassonne - Its bad enough getting people to decide which game to play. Adding in the debate of which expansions (and early on which farmer rules) to use just made it a hassle. Got rid of the base and a bunch of expansions a long time ago and kept just The City and Knizia's The Castle. I did end up picking up the new graphics version and first 2 expansions. Starting over and ending there.

Arkham Horror - I customized my base game with cards from all the expansions that I liked and sleeved all of that. All the other expansion cards that only get used with that expansion are unsleeved. It makes no real difference in game play but makes separating things out easy. Only kept Dunwich, Innsmouth, and a couple small box expansions afterwards so I could fit everything into 2 boxes. The game comes out so rarely that I'm lucky to use any expansions so won't miss the ones I tossed the leftovers of.

Runebound 2nd - I customized this with cards I liked from all the card pack expansions. Except the class decks which I never bothered getting. The only box expansion I have is Sands and that's fully intact except its in the base game box. Originally I intended to keep the cards I wasn't using in a box in my closet. It got lost when I moved so now its permanent. Plays great but I'd have a hard time selling it since I don't have all the base game cards even though they got replaced with better ones.

Star Realms. I don't even like the 2nd stand-alone set and the expansions add elements that, for me, detract from the pure game.

I started over on Carcassonne too. I sold off a Big Box and some other expansions I had mixed in and bought Winter Edition. I have the River, and the Winter Edition has some Gingerbread Man thing I don't use, but that's it.

Cosmic Encounter also. Now I only have the base game in a little Vectron card case with a handle, and it's pretty convenient.

Carcassonne and original Dungeonquest are the only 2 games where I felt my expansions had taken the game beyond its original fun length and had become drawn out tedious affairs and stripped Carcassonne back to the core set plus river and Dungeonquest is now just the core box and we occasionally play with some of the heroes.

Arkham Horror is now a curated version with the Dunwich, Innsmouth, King in Yellow, Dark Pharaoh with the Dunwich board removed. It has the right blend of chaos and difficulty.

I used to be a big believer in more is better and it took a long time to admit that expansions could taint a game. I still have regular battles with a friend who wants to play the most chaotic variants of Cosmic Encounter that he can revise.