Tabletop Games Collection, March 2017

       Here's a breakdown of my collection as of March 2017.  I've been collecting since 2005, but have taken long breaks in between stints of playing and collecting.  Everything I have gets to the table unless I have a larger than normal backup like right now.  Shadowrun and Sentinels have yet to get any play.
      I'm looking to acquire copies of of Legends of Andor, Dungeon Run, Space Cadets: Away Missions and Dead of Winter in the near future.  Releases I'm looking forward to include Wrathborne Champions and Dungeon Alliance, just recently funded on Kickstarter.  I've also got my eye on Hero Realms for the promised cooperative deck coming in the near future.


Collection, 63 titles in no particular order:
Aeon's End (2016)
The Undercity (2015)
Tiny Epic Galaxies (2015)
Mistfall (2015)
Shadowrun: Crossfire (2014)
Xenoshyft: Onslaught (2015)
One Deck Dungeon (2016)
Sentinels of the Multiverse (2011)
Millennium Blades (2016)
Warhammer Quest: The Adventure Card Game (2015)
The Networks (2016)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Board Game (2016)
Star Realms, Base Set (2014)
Flash Point: Fire Rescue (2011)
Escape: Curse of the Temple (2012)
Saltlands (2016)
Pandemic (2008)
Grimslingers (2015)
Battletech Introductory Box (2002)
Apocalypse Chaos (2015)
Galaxy Defenders (2014)
Machi Koro (2012)
Machi Koro: Bright Lights, Big City (2016)
Sushi Go Party (2016)
Tsuro (2004)
Castle Panic (2009)
The Adventurers: The Temple of Chac (2009)
Last Night on Earth: The Zombie Game (2007)
Dungeoneer: Tomb of the Lich Lord (2003)
Dungeoneer: Realm of the Ice Witch (2005)
Munchkin + Unnatural Axe Expansion (2001)
Zombie Fluxx (2007)
Through the Desert (1998)
Colossal Arena (1997)
Red November (2008)
Space Hulk: Death Angel (2010)
Mag Blast (2006)
Dork Tower (2003)
Arkham Horror (2005)
Order of the Stick: Adventure Game (2006)
Monsters Menace America (2005)
Roborally (1994)
Nexus Ops (2005)
Vegas Showdown (2005)
Aye, Dark Overlord (2005)
Betrayal at House on the Hill (2004)
Battlestations (2004)
Killer Bunnies & The Quest for the Magic Carrot, Blue - Green (2002)
Killer Bunnies & The Journey to Jupiter (2008)
Killer Bunnies Heroes and Villains (2010)
Codenames (2015)
Schmovie  (2013)
Chez Geek & Chez Geek Slack Attack (1999)
The Oregon Trail Card Game (2016)
Zombies!!! (2001)
Diamonsters (2013)
Timeline: Music & Cinema (2013)
Doom (2004)
Chaos Isle: Zombi Deck with Expansions (2008)
Wreckage (2003)
Memoir '44 (2004)
Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small (2012)
Pocket Battles: Celts vs. Romans (2009)

Please don't ask me to rate them.  I'm actually looking to thin the heard in order to make room for some new titles.  I am in the process of getting rid of some.

Right now they are stacked in 2 separate closets, with the excess sitting on the floor outside the closet.  I'll soon have a much better storage solution with an Ikea Billy bookcase for which to keep them at easy reach.

I'll post a picture when I get it organized.
Updated, end of March 2017

The Tabletop Co-Op Renaissance

       There's a thread in tabletop gaming now that seems to have recently surfaced and taken over the popular forefront of the hobby.  This is truly impressive, because as a niche interest that includes sub-niche sectors classified by various influences reaching as far as the geographical, its relatively difficult to find anything that unifies these genres into a common lane - that is aside from the physical use of the physical; cards, boards - dice to the chagrin of many.  Tabletop gaming has aways been an enormous web of crossing sections that divide and endear audiences in equal measure, but the surge of cooperative titles in the past three years has revealed more about the hobby than I have ever come to learn by playing.
         My impression is that this trend comes almost exclusivly from the wave of cooperative adventure games that were released during the last generation of video game consoles.  It seems in recent years that a lot of the simulations presented digitally are breaking their way back into the physical world.  Doom, the popular first person shooter, has had two board games based on two separate video game releases.  Mechanics in the board games directly echo that of the virtual ones, going so far as to translate both the pace and the flow of an experience existing in a similarly interactive medium that nonetheless exists as figures and dice on a board as opposed to a split second, first person experience. What's more, lines are being blurred every day by adoptive developers to design board games that mirror modern open world questing.  It's come to the point that, similar to video games, many physical board game releases require a stream of content support and updates by developers to stay relevant, not simply dynamic and engaging strategic systems.  In actuality, Gygax and Arnerson pushed a monster out with D&D in the 1970's, and computer games took that monster in and helped it grow.  It only makes sense that it would eventually want to break free and explore the physical world once more.
         I'll share my experience in realizing the existence of the modern co-op renaissance.  When I first started collecting and playing board games I was in high school and had purchased a copy of Monsters Menace America (I'm not much of a Eurogamer - as I'd rather trade blows than crops). Prior to that, I played Magic (incorrectly) and prior to that, Pokémon (also incorrectly).  Before Monsters Menace I had a couple of years playing the Wizkids clix game Mechwarrior with my brother (much more on that in another post) but that's the long of short of it.  After Monster's Menace, I did a bit of research, got into the hobby, and soon followed an acquisition of some entertaining, competitive and semi-cooperative titles like Doom, Vegas Showdown, Order of the Stick, Through the Desert, Colossal Arena and more.  I wasn't aware of a good cooperative experience until Arkham Horror, and didn't know much about the unanswered plight of the soloist until, oddly enough, Chaos Isle: Zombi Deck a few years later.  Back then, a lot of user created Solo/Co-op variants existed on the forums at Boardgamegeek because there was a demand for them, but it was relatively untapped on the market.
       After a couple years of collecting I went off to school, dropped the hobby and started both a career and a relationship.  Years would pass before I'd learn about Galaxy Defenders, a 1-5 player game where the entire opposition was controlled by a set of conditional orders based on position in respect to the players, and I flipped.  The reason I was so interested in Galaxy Defenders was that it changed the entire experience of the hobby from an effort to use established mechanics to best a friend into a collective effort to twist established mechanics in order to solve a puzzle.  That got me jazzed for more of the coming innovations in popular games.
       Since then, the hobby has seen an explosion of cooperative and solo compatible titles come from developers from all backgrounds.  Where there once was only semi-cooperative games like Descent that employ one player to control the opposition (One Vs. All is also the term) there are games like Galaxy Defenders, The Undercity and Gloomhaven.  It's satisfying because the puzzles are difficult, and collaboration not only allows everyone to share victory, but general gameplay always has a productive tint.  Speaking in terms of the previously mentioned genre, whether cornered or knocking out enemies at every turn, the connection between the players at a strategic level is something that's fairly new to the hobby. All players haven't really had the chance to fight a pure design without someone to referee the proceeding, and that's not specifically for games that were born out of the slipstream of RPGs such as the dungeon crawler genre - it also goes for deck building games like Aeon's End, Star Realms + Gambit Expansion, Shadowrun: Crossfire, Xenoshyft: Onslaught and defense games like Portal of Morth, Apocalypse Chaos and Castle Panic.  The stage is set, and random elements such as Xenoshyft's market items exist heavily to encourage subsequent plays and keep the game from getting predictable.  While you generally work toward the same goal, the variables involved change the puzzle every time.  The ability for these products to spread the brain burn around is inspiring.  It encourages a group to agree in order to accomplish goals and beat a machine with human wit, reasoning and foresight.  You have to solve the puzzle to win, or else we all lose.
       One of the main attractions to these designs is the absence of a referee or game master.  In traditional RPG gaming and titles that draw heavily from them such as Descent or When Darkness Calls, the mechanic of one player sitting in as the GM can be fun, but it is considered less playing and more running the machine that is the game for the players.  This is because of hidden information inherent in story driven games.  You can't have a character sneak up on the heroes if no one knows he or she is there.  It's fundamental.  This idea is getting broken down with new games that use cards and tile draws to generate encounters and sow a story relying on the interpretation of events that unfold, and that's a very nice development, because in the many circles of gamers I've sat with during my rainy days on this planet, they've all had one thing important in common: no one wants to be dungeon master.
       This is proven time and again by the support these kinds of titles get on Kickstarter, especially  releases that advertise as solo compatible.  The demand for solo variants in games that should involve at least two human people, minimum, is huge.  At times it can seem like some fans don't want other people at their table at all, but the fact of the matter is that board game fans want to play board games, and they want to try and beat the system in different ways. Solo variants and solo compatible games simply allow a different way to approach the challenge.  Some game states are vastly different when presented to a single brain.  There's even a satisfaction in handling multiple player roles with the mind of just one.  It helps that these configurations can be executed in your own time, separate from the ties of the proverbial game night.  That being said, I myself have always believed board gaming to be best and primarily a social hobby, but as someone who admires and respects a game's thematic and mechanical design, being given the chance to tinker on my own time has been fun as well.
       With games constantly evolving and building on each new design as the years go on, I'm actually quite satisfied with the recent saturation of 1-4 player co-operative deck builders, 1-4 player squad-level tactics games and 1-4 player dungeon crawling campaigns that pop up every other week.  It lets me know that, since the cannon of influence that is Kickstarter bucked up in the late 00's, people are making and releasing their dreams of deep, replayable games they really want.  Its evident from the last few years that a lot of those dreams are cooperative.  And it makes sense, right?  We don't always have access to the perfect adversary.  We might have friends who enjoy the mechanics but don't like the theme.  We might have competitors that vastly surpass us in skill level.  I myself spent 1991 - 2009 losing every game I played to my brother.  It makes me happy to have him on my side for once, against a system designed to make us put our heads together.
         
-MS