HeroQuest
1989 / Dungeon crawling board game / 2-5 players
****
Resold
Better late than never, and a crazily underpriced eBay listing meant I could finally experience the junior roll-n-hack proto-RPG, before deciding it wasn't really for us and selling it on to the next adventurer. I can't tell if it would have been a childhood favourite in an alternate timeline, but it didn't have a great deal to offer a 40 year old, nor a 6 year old pony RPG veteran, who got bored by the repetitive quests and preferred to use it as a weird doll house.
The Matchbox Collection: 15 Days expansions
These matchboxes are roomy enough for more cards and tokens, so fortunately Kickstarter backers helped to sort that out (before deciding they weren't interested after all and selling their unopened sets at a loss on eBay).
Feathers & Lag Season ***
Extended season sets win the game, so here are more extensions to fight over.
Upgrades the wooden animal actions to be more powerful. Possibly overpowered when playing against humans, this feels more like a fix for the difficult solo mode that means I can actually win now, unless I'm cheating.
The Matchbox Collection: 15 Days
***
I was sceptical about the quality matching the quantity when bidding on this set of five purpose-built microgames for the usual price of one (plus "expansions," that I'll get to), but if some Italians could be bothered to design, produce and market these, the least I can do is play them.
This first outing is a pleasantly dull set collection card game (Spoiler: They're all card games). Its wooden animal totems and pastel nature clipart are a welcome break from my usual dark and exciting themes, though the bastard solo automaton keeps it from being too relaxing.
2018 / Card game mini expansion / 2-4 players
**
I don't know whether this mini expansion really enhances the microgame or just makes it more annoying (especially when the card stocks from the same publisher don't even match), but introducing supernatural gnome and mutant entities makes it trippier. You might just be hallucinating in the mushroom fumes anyway.
The kind of weird game you only end up with when it's included in a cheap bundle with another one you actually wanted, I thought the quickfire deduction and bluffing would be too much of a step up from Love Letter for the six year old, but I asked if we could try it out once before I sold it on. Then she wanted to keep playing all night.
She might not have grasped every mathematical variable, but it's not like my efforts to track cards and probabilities fare much better. You just don't know what's in the pot, especially when a cheeky child sneaks in the man and other cards you're not supposed to. A surprise but welcome keeper, real stew was also more of a success than sushi.
7 Wonders Duel
Too hard and serious looking to have caught my eye if it hadn't been going unusually cheap that day, I made a few abandoned forays into the rulebook before I finally got around to playing it and quickly realised it was the Advanced Splendor I'd been craving. Every time I play, I'm impressed by how good a game it is, with so many things to keep track of even before I get around to adding in the bundled expansions. The only downside is I might have ruined most other games for myself now.
2025 / Board game expansion pack / 2-6 players
****
Releasing an expansion series for a 90-year-old board game is a funny idea in itself, and this one leaned into the silliness most, so seemed like it'd be a fun addition to her Sailor Moon set, but I didn't predict how much she'd be obsessed with it (for about a week, anyway). On the technical level, it creates more problems than it solves and essentially breaks the game. But when the game is Monopoly, you can't really complain, and it succeeds on the entertainment level. Especially when your promising overpowered card combo strategy gets you nothing but more worthless money, then your opponent picks up a card that lets her win by landing on Go.
2025 / Tile placement board game expansion / 2-6 players
***
"Ultimately, it's mostly pointless. I don't need or particularly want it in the collection" - Me, 2025
Well... yeah, but that was about the older version that included the rubbish bazaars. And the weirdly brown bridges that they've finally made grey to match the roads, so are more appealing to use now, even if I still forget to. It's nice to have proper castles rather than flimsy print-outs too, even if there's a little clash of art styles.
That was all I needed from this batch, so I sold on the next-generation tiles and surplus barns to further discount an unboxed set I'd paid for using eBay profits from recreationally upselling other people's underpriced Carcassonne sets, so it's not like I spent any real money on this completely unnecessary indulgence.
The Seafarers of Catan
1997 / Strategy board game expansion / 3-4 players
****
Resold
Whether I've got too dependent on expansions in other games or this one was especially lacking in vanilla, this wet widescreen extension was looking to be a compulsory purchase if I planned to hold onto the game this time – but only when I saw a cheap listing and made a stingy offer to discount it further.
It's not the expanded size and little tweaks that make it, it's the book of scenarios guiding players through varied experiences and setting you up to create your own unlimited variations (within tile limits, anyway). Unfortunately, there's no one else around who's boring enough to play it, and three-handed solo trading is too tedious even for me, so I passed it on to make game funds and space.
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