Games That Deserve a Reprint: #5 to #1

This is the fourth installment in our series called Games That Deserve a Reprint.  This article walks through #5 to #1.  These are the games with a high degree of consensus among us: in fact, it took at least 6 of us voting for a game to make this list!

In short, this project aims to highlight 20 games that we think deserve a reprint.  To make the list, we had 17 Opinionated Gamers vote, with precisely 50 games receiving votes.  Our only criteria were that (1) the game had to be out of print for at least a couple of years, (2) the voter had to think that the game was good enough to be reprinted, and (3) preferably these games would be difficult to find on the secondary market, so that a reprint would be justified.  

The first article discussed the background behind the series and our methodology.  We’ve have an additional article every day this week, and tomorrow we’ll end with some interesting statistics and a “what we missed” discussion.

Without further ado, here are the games that we think deserve a reprint.  

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The Root to My Heart

As I drove away from the Gathering of Friends earlier this week, along quiet, winding stretches of rural route 219, it dawned on me that I was driving away from the heart of my gaming universe.  The Gathering is a place where I have been fortunate enough to forge wonderful friendships with an incredible group of people from across the world that share my overwhelming passion (some might say obsession) for obscure, bizarre, and convoluted board games.  I only spend a few, fleeting days of each year at this magical analog gaming nirvana, but it is nonetheless the indisputable heart of my year. I can only hope that you, dear reader, have found the route to the heart of your gaming universe, whether that may be the magnificent BGG.CON, Geekway to the West, KublaCon, your own kitchen table, or even the patch of floor beside your toddler’s budding Haba game shelf.

Sunday Funday

I arrived late on Sunday, April 14 after a long drive with no plans of playing any games until the following morning, but I was swept into a series of games with friends I had not seen in a year before I could hardly put my bags down.  We started with On Tour, one of the innumerable new games from the truly exploding roll-and-write genre that I played over the course of the week. I am personally fairly picky when it comes to this genre, enjoying the likes of Railroad Ink and Penny Papers, but generally passing on the more mathy entries.  While the company was divine, the game was a poor fit for my teacup with its clever, but infuriating, exercise of positioning a growing series of random numbers across a map in a hopefully ascending path.

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Games That Deserve a Reprint: #10 to #6

This is the third installment in our series called Games That Deserve a Reprint.  This article walks through #10 to #6.  In short, this project aims to highlight 20 games that we think deserve a reprint.  To make the list, we had 17 Opinionated Gamers vote, with precisely 50 games receiving votes.  Our only criteria were that (1) the game had to be out of print for at least a couple of years, (2) the voter had to think that the game was good enough to be reprinted, and (3) preferably these games would be difficult to find on the secondary market, so that a reprint would be justified.  

The first article discussed the background behind the series and our methodology.  We have an additional article coming every day this week, plus a recap at the end with some interesting statistics and a “what we missed” discussion.

Without further ado, here are the games that we think deserve a reprint.  

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Games That Deserve a Reprint: #15 to #11

This is the second installment in our series called Games That Deserve a Reprint.  This article walks through #15 to #11.  In short, this project aims to highlight 20 games that we think deserve a reprint.  To make the list, we had 17 Opinionated Gamers vote, with precisely 50 games receiving votes.  Our only criteria were that (1) the game had to be out of print for at least a couple of years, (2) the voter had to think that the game was good enough to be reprinted, and (3) preferably these games would be difficult to find on the secondary market, so that a reprint would be justified.   

The first article discussed the background behind the series and our methodology.  We have an additional article coming every day this week, plus a recap at the end with some interesting statistics and a “what we missed” discussion.

Without further ado, here are the games that we think deserve a reprint.  

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Games That Deserve a Reprint: #20 to #16

Games go in and out of print.  In today’s marketplace, where thousands of titles are released each year, most releases get one printing, then they’re done.  Of course, many of us are also constantly clearing shelf space, so the secondary market tends to be robust, and even the one-and-done titles aren’t that hard to find.

There’s a maxim in the hobby that good games will always be reprinted.  That’s sometimes true: two of the games that had enough votes to make this list (Key Market and Dune) have had reprints announced in recent weeks.  But it isn’t always true: below are some real gems that remain scarce.

The reasons for the scarcity are numerous.  Many of the games below have a hard-to-get (or expensive) intellectual property license behind them.  Some have been embroiled in legal disputes. Others yet have enough of a following to drive up secondary market prices but probably not enough of a demand to justify a new printing.  

Whatever the reason, below are 20 games that we think deserve a reprint.  To make the list, we had 17 Opinionated Gamers vote, with precisely 50 games receiving votes.  Most of the people voting have played thousands and thousands of games, and as a group, we’ve written thousands of reviews over the past couple of decades (or longer in some cases).

Due to the length of the series, we decided to write about our findings in four articles, discussing the top twenty games.  This article will discuss #20 to #16. We have an additional article coming every day this week, plus a recap at the end with some interesting statistics and a “what we missed” discussion.

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Chris’s Trip to the Gathering of Friends: Wrap-up

The 30th Gathering of Friends ended tonight, though I left yesterday to head back to Missouri.  I wanted to do one final post about the Gathering, a sort of conclusion, with thoughts on the coming year in gaming and my experience at the Gathering.

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