My Board Game Collection – Dan Hilton

I think I may have been taken off the Christmas card list for some of the bloggers here at Zatu, as it is my fault we are all now doing full feature blogs for this instead of a collab list. But on the plus side, this gives us more room to breathe. We can talk about the thing we all love for longer – games!

As it stands, I currently own 208 games and expansions. And I have 422 games and expansions rated on BGG. And even though I know they are big numbers; I still consider myself pretty new to the hobby. There are so many games I haven’t played! But, let me tell you a little bit about the games that I HAVE played…

Like all collections, it started very small. The first ever board game I played (outside of the classics like Monopoly, Cluedo and Scrabble) was Saboteur. I was introduced to it by an actor friend of mine and I was hooked. Of course, playing a hidden role game with an actor teaching us meant we lost every single round. The rum probably didn’t help either. A few years after that I downloaded a Magic the Gathering game on the PS3 which ignited my passion for buying the physical game. Even though I have never really played it much with people, I eventually ended up with 9 decks and 6000+ cards.

Years later I found myself living in Liverpool and making new friends. These friends were fellow nerds who happened to be into board games. They introduced me to Carcassonne and Tsuro and I was addicted again. I started buying any and every game I came across. This was mainly well-known games such as Exploding Kittens, Unstable Unicorns etc. But I also ended up with some obscure games like Oddball Aeronauts, Possession, Fletter Fuse, Spite etc. Kudos to you if you have even heard of some of these, let alone played them.

I am the kind of gamer that loves pretty much every type of game. I wish I weren’t. Trust me, my bank account would thank me if I weren’t. The only kind of game I don’t enjoy are ‘take that’ style games. With that being said, here are my picks for a series of categories that I totally didn’t chose myself…

Highest rated game: Out of all of the hundreds of ratings I have made, only 1 game has received a perfect 10 rating. The game is one that I managed to play at UKGE 2022 after having my eye on it for some time. The game is The Old King’s Crown. This game is a fantastic lane battler mixed with subtle bluffing with variable player powers. It is an incredibly well-crafted game, and I am very excited to see it climb the ranks of BGG when it is released. I know I know! It isn’t techhhniically part of my collection yet. But it will arrive in the coming months.

Oldest game: It is a common belief in the hobby that older games are not so good. But there were also some interesting experimentations being done in the hobby in the early days. Enigma is a product of this experimentation. With a strange honeycomb shape board adorned with a massive maze and wrapped in a hexagonal box, this game screams unusual. It is telling of the time that it uses roll and move mechanics but the gameplay revolves around solving riddles. I would love to see a modern reimplementation of this game.

Most interesting theme: There are so many games based on ancient Rome and fantasy realms. I always appreciate a game that finds itself wearing the skin of an interesting theme. Stworze ticks this box for me. It is a game that has you taking control of ancient Slavic mythological creatures in an attempt to gain the favour of the people or distil fear in their hearts. Murano Light Masters is a close second here seeing you take the mantle of a glass blower creating incredible glass figurines and selling them for profit.

Most mechanically thematic: It is a very hard thing to make a game thematically tied to its mechanics. There are a lot of thematic games for sure, but few can marry what you are doing on the table with what you are theoretically doing in the game. Hegemony manages this incredibly well. With everyone playing as a different political party with their own agendas, mechanics, and ways of interacting with the shared board and other political parties in play. It is a great game to experience.

Rarest: Even though I chose this as a category, it was a pretty hard one to determine due to it not being opinion based. After a lot of investigation though (like, seriously, I spent hours looking up printings of games like Terrry Pratchett’s THUD and Hatch Dragonology) it turns out that my rarest game is a little party game I backed on Kickstarter called Worge. I am one of only 100 people in the world who own the game. Worge is a game that sees everyone making new words by mashing two from a list together and creating the funniest meaning for the new creation. It’s the best game that takes the mechanic of a player judging the choices of another player that Cards Against Humanity helped to define.

Smallest: Unlike the rarest game, this one was incredibly easy to determine. Cutthroat Cove: Pieces of Eight is my smallest game. It is made of only 38 cards and comes in a box smaller than a standard deck of playing cards. It is a super simple game that sees players swapping, discarding, and gifting chests of coins, barnacles, or curses to try and be the one who ends the game closest to eight golden doubloons.

Most tactile: I am a huge fan of dexterity games. I think they are great for welcoming new people to the hobby as they capitalise on the physicality a game can bring. For me, the top game for this is undoubtedly Junk Art. This is because it doesn’t just use the simple premise of ‘stack these weird shapes’ that appeals to people of any age. The different game modes found in the box introduces players to different game genres within the premise of this unassuming game.

Best component: Tactile nature is something that can give a game a lot of recognition and in some places elevate gameplay. Noria has a fantastic triple layered disc that you spin independently each turn that you place tokens into. This dictates what actions/resources you will be available during your turn. It is an action selection mechanism that is both fun to interact with and devilishly tricky to manipulate for optimal turns.