The Opinionated Gamers

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.  

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.