Losing To My Shelf

In 2018, Grail Games released Boomerang. The game was designed by Scott Almes, maybe best known for designing the Tiny Epic series of games.

The tagline on its box cover describes it as “A Come-Back-Again Card Game” and it was successful enough to spawn several sequels.

This article is not about that game.

This article is about board games that I purged from my collection at some point and then later reacquired.

I considered several working titles for this post – “Dumb Ideas I’ve Had“, “Board Game Night (Baby Please Come Home)“, and “Why Pay Full Retail Price For a Board Game When You Can Pay Double?” were a few.

I decided to go with this title as the mental image of a boomerang sounds fitting. These games left my shelf and then came back to me.

Plus, “Boomerang Games” makes me sound like less of an idiot.

The 800-pound gorilla

Let’s just address this one here at the top.

If you’re a solo gamer familiar with Mage Knight, I’ll give you a few seconds for the dizziness to subside and/or for you to make a few disparaging comments about me under your breath.

With that out of the way, let me just say that Dungeon Roll is a perfectly enjoyable light, press-your-luck game. A little too light for me. It has since moved on to another home.

Agents of Smersh is a fun, random game in the vein of Tales of the Arabian Nights. It was even reprinted in an Epic Edition in 2022.

The non-epic copy I traded for is still in my collection today:

But I get it…

Mage Knight is one of the all-time great solo games.

It was the #1 ranked solo game in the BoardGameGeek 1 Player Guild annual People’s Choice Top 200 Solo Games voting for many years, before being recently overtaken by Spirit Island.

It’s now firmly entrenched at the #2 ranking. Not bad for a 13-year-old game!

I returned to the board game hobby in 2014 (About Paul details my gaming history). I picked up Mage Knight a few months later.

In hindsight, I think my initial negative reaction related to me wanting the game to be something it is not. I likely expected an overland hex crawl, like Runebound (Third Edition), not a hand management game where your available actions are dictated by the hand of cards drawn from your deck.

Over the intervening years I’ve learned much more about game mechanics and what I like (and dislike) in my solo experiences. So in late 2023 I decided it was time to revisit this one and see if I’m now in a better position to appreciate it….maybe even enjoy it.

I am and I do!

Blame it on Dol Guldur

Another title I picked up soon after returning to the hobby was The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game (LotR:TCG).

This one seemed right up my alley.

I’m a huge fan of the theme. I read The Hobbit in grade school, read The Lord of the Rings years before the movies were a thing, and even made my way through The Silmarillion (with a little help from some supporting materials, like the indispensable Atlas of Middle Earth)!

And, for a while, LotR:LCG was a hit! I bought a handful of expansions and played it exclusively for several months. I had a great time!

But eventually I found I was no longer having fun. Several scenarios were very difficult, and I would fail at them repeatedly.

I don’t mind losing board games (solo or otherwise) but the constant beatdowns grew tiresome and I gifted my collection to another gamer.

In 2022, Fantasy Flight released the LotR:TCG Revised Edition. I was tempted yet again by the setting, the fantastic artwork, and a new campaign mode. It was soon back on my table.

I knew going in what to expect in terms of difficulty. I like to think I’m better at this game now than the first go-round – based on my prior plays of this title, but also just from general experience with other deck management games.

In reality, I think it was the discovery of Sleazy Mode that made this one more approachable for me:

“Sleazy mode provides players with just a single additional resource at the start of the game on each hero but keeps the rest of the game similar to Normal mode.”

– Vision Of The Palantir

Some scenarios are still tough, but the game as a whole doesn’t feel so punishing. If you find yourself in a similar situation, I highly recommend trying Sleazy Mode.

I’ve since added the available revised saga expansions to my collection (The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers) and I think this is one boomerang game I’ll be holding on to!

“[On a shelf at my house] dead Cthulhu waits dreaming…”

Arkham Horror: The Card Game (AH:TCG) is another Living Card Game, similar to LotR:TCG in mechanics and gameplay.

AH:TCG is based on another theme I enjoy – H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos – and is set in Fantasy Flight’s “Arkham Horror Files” universe, which includes two of my all-time favorite games – Arkham Horror Second Edition and Eldritch Horror.

Again, AH:TCG should have been right up my alley – a theme I enjoy, great artwork, familiar characters…

And it was!

For a while…

Like LotR:TCG, individual scenarios can be difficult. Unlike LotR:TCG, AH:TCG scenarios are typically part of a multi-scenario campaign¹.

Losing an individual scenario doesn’t require replaying it. The campaign’s story moves forward regardless pass or fail.

In 2021, Fantasy Flight released AH:TCG Revised Edition.

As with LotR:TCG and its revised edition, I decided to revisit this one and see if I might feel differently about it after a few years.

I didn’t.

The game’s difficulty was still an issue. But it was at this point that I realized I don’t like deck construction as a game mechanic.

I don’t have the time or patience (or skill, frankly) to build and tweak individual decks from a large card pool. I much prefer the Sentinels of the Multiverse approach of a predefined deck for each character (just shuffle and go!).

And so, a few months after this boomerang game returned to me a second time, I let it go again. I donated it to a local game convention charity auction.

1. The revised version of LotR:TCG released in 2022 added a multi-scenario campaign mode to the core game. ↩︎

A long-range boomerang

The only other boomerang game I recognize as back in my collection today is Magic Realm.

I originally bought a copy in a local hobby shop back in the early 80s but lost it somewhere over the years.

I don’t remember knowing anything about it ahead of time, so I suspect it was the cover art that drew me in:

I do remember that I never learned how to play it. Its rulebook is notoriously difficult to parse and that proved insurmountable for the teenaged me.

I hesitate to say I trashed the game, but…it’s entirely possible I did.

Fast forward to February 2022, and an unpunched copy was available at Noble Knight Games for a reasonable price. A quick “Add to cart…” and it was on its way!

The game still wasn’t easy to learn but the internet, and the many fan-made learning aids created over the intervening 40 years, helped tremendously.

It’s a great, unique game that I’m glad to have back on the shelf. Maybe someday I’ll even learn how to play a magic user!

Regrets…I’ve had a few…

I’ve purged a few dozen games over the last decade of reconnecting with the board game hobby as an adult.

I’ve repurchased 3 of the culled titles (so far, and not counting Magic Realm – a childhood game I tracked down as an adult). That’s not a bad record of “purger’s remorse”!

Still, there remain a few more games on my “Previously Owned” list that I’ve found myself reconsidering – Elder Sign, Folklore: The Affliction, and Ghost Stories.

Those titles share little in common beyond being culled from my shelf. Yet I can’t help but wonder if I might feel differently about them now than I did when I decided to let them go.

Could more boomerang games be headed back toward me? I’ll keep an eye out for them!

What about you?

What games did you let go, only to track them down again later?

What previously owned games are you now thinking about reacquiring?