Another Game, Another Existential Crisis

When buying board games becomes emotionally exhausting...

I can’t be the only one who feels this way. It’s the worst. When your love of board gaming turns agonizing because as much as you want that new hyped game, you already own so many. Some of them even scratch the same itch. You know you do not need it. But that knowledge does nothing to quiet the want.

When a new game catches my eye, I go deep. Probably too deep. I research until there are too many voices rattling around in my head. Beyond BoardGameGeek ratings and comments, I usually end up watching YouTube channel reviews from BoardGameCo, The Dice Tower, Thinker Themer, Liege of Games, and Kovray. I am really just looking for permission from myself. Some kind of internal justification that buying the game I am obsessing over is totally reasonable. The whole process makes me a little anxious.

Thankfully, this does not happen nearly as often as it used to. Still, it got me thinking about the games that had me pacing around a store, boxed copy in hand, unable to decide. Sometimes I walk out with the game. Other times, I leave it on the shelf. I cannot remember all of them, but here are the ones I remember most fondly.

Grimm Forest - This was one of the first ones I remember having that agony over at a Barnes & Noble when we lived in Georgia. I recall talking to my now wife on the phone, which continued to text, about spending $40 on a cute game about family members of the three little pigs racing to build three houses the quickest. We ended up loving this one and it is still in our collection.

Unmatched Adventures: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - This one just released in the last couple of weeks. For some context, earlier in our board gaming life we owned a lot of Unmatched. And by a lot, I mean the original battle box, Cobble & Fog, Ingen vs. Raptors, Little Red vs. Beowulf, and Robin Hood vs. Bigfoot. To be honest, I never loved the first battle box. Maybe it was the characters, but despite all the praise the system received, I kept buying different sets hoping it would finally click. It never really did. My wife was also much better at it than I was. I am secure enough to admit that probably played a role.

Long story short, it just was not a system I enjoyed. Would I enjoy it now? I honestly do not know. But TMNT is an IP I have loved since I was a kid, and that makes this one especially tempting. The $80 price tag feels steep at the moment, though I have put it on and taken it off hold at our local game store more than once, hoping that selling a few consignment games there might soften the blow.

Is it a good choice? I have no idea. But if anything is going to pull me back into Unmatched, it might be this. Right?

Slay the Spire: The Board Game - My wife and I both really love the digital version of Slay the Spire, so when the board game was announced, it immediately caught our attention. We did not back the Kickstarter at first, but once late pledges opened, the familiar agony set in.

Shoutout to Contention Games customer service for adding me to the pledge list, taking me off, then adding me again. We finally pulled the trigger after finding out my wife was pregnant in 2024. Apparently, I just needed a little justification, and there it was.

Heat: Pedal to the Medal - The hype around this one was enormous. Even though it was clearly not ideal for our usual player count of two, I still wanted it. I played it a few times on BGA without fully grasping how it worked, then watched video after video of people insisting the bot cars made the two player experience great. Eventually, I convinced myself I needed it.

The price kept me from buying it outright, so I sold a couple of games on Facebook. Conveniently, I met the buyer in the parking lot of our local game store. After the purchase, I felt a mix of satisfaction and unease, which in hindsight was probably a sign. To make things even better, I got pulled over for speeding on the way home, with Heat sitting in the passenger seat. Very on the nose.

I was so eager to try it that I set up a solo game after reading how fun it was supposed to be. It was not. Not even close. It soured me enough that I did not want to bring it to the table with my wife or friends. Two weeks later, I traded it away for Apiary, a game we genuinely love, and I still don’t understand the hype behind Heat.

Marvel United - Currently, we own a few boxes of Marvel United and the base box of X-Men United. No plans to get rid of them. But when Marvel United released to the public, I picked it up for $10 at Walmart. It didn’t click with my wife, and we tried it twice. She still didn’t like it. BUT then a Kickstarter comes out for more United, including the Sinister Six, Infinity Gauntlet, and more. I pledged, cancelled my pledge, re-pledged, and cancelled. Ended up not backing it.

However, once it came to one of our local stores at the time in Atlanta (shoutout Giga-Bytes Tabletop Cafe), I wanted to get the Infinity Gauntlet set and maybe one or two more. And yes, my wife still didn’t like base Marvel United, so I was on my own here. After I bought a couple of boxes, they just sat on our shelf for a while. During our next cull, we ended up returning it to Giga-Bytes and buying Merchant’s Cove, which we both really enjoy despite having not played it super recently.

Bringing things back to the present, we decided to give Marvel United one more shot. I found the base box for $10 and played it with friends, which completely elevated the experience. I will still play it at two with a friend who is really into superheroes, but it definitely shines more at higher player counts.