My Board Game Collection – Stefano Paravisi

If you are reading this blog, it is likely you love boardgames as I do, or you are perhaps interested to know more about this hobby. Like any hobby, getting started in board gaming can be a daunting prospect considering how many differing opinions there are and how many games are currently on the market. I do speak from personal experience here as I still remember how I started enjoying playing and collecting boardgames almost 10 years ago. Today, I would like to share some of my personal experience and brag a bit about the boardgames I love so much. I will not be telling anyone what to buy, but I hope you will find some interesting thoughts while reading about my personal journey in the hobby. Let's get started then!

Where it all started?

As a kid, I remember playing a number of boardgame with my two brothers as it was an easy way for us to enjoy some nice time together. Although I loved them, I think the game that really marked the start of my passion was “Legend of Zagor”, a 1993 RPG-like game with a talking boss. I was enjoying playing Dungeons and Dragons at the time and buying that game looked a great idea. In a few years, I bought or received as presents a few other very good games that I actually still have including “Battle Master” and “Inkognito”. At that time, however, I was just playing sporadically and surely I was not looking to start collecting board games.

My passion for boardgames really step up a notch when I met my wife as she also loves board and RPG games. It was then pretty obvious that when my son got old enough we would have started playing card and boardgames to enjoy some fun time together. Obviously, the more we enjoyed playing games together, the more we wanted to play different ones so I naturally HAD to keep looking for new interesting options we could bring to the table. I think being able to spend time with my family while playing all together is what really brought out my passion for boardgames. I was also quite lucky as my collection of games was decent enough to make our days at home during the Covid19 Pandemic much lighter and enjoyable than I would have thought.

Two Challenges I face constantly as a Board game passionate

As soon I got myself hooked-up to the hobby, I started to face two extremely dramatic challenges: “Would that game be interesting to have?” and “Where do I put all of them?”.

As I mentioned at the beginning, it is great that there are so many different games on the market but, at the same time, deciding if a game is worth buying is not an easy choice. This is obviously true even if you are looking for your first boardgame and I think everyone has their own personal experience and thought process. For example, in my case I usually first consider if I already have a game with similar mechanics in my collection and whether my family and my friends would like that type of game. I usually try not to buy a game if I fear that it will not be played as I do not really enjoy solo games. I also try avoid games that are too similar to other games I already have unless it is a type of games we all really enjoy. For example, my family love Draft and Write or Roll and Write games thus we have quite a number of them even if they may seem pretty similar. Expansions also fit in these rule as it really depends on how much we love the base game and what value an expansion will bring to it.

Another important aspect I always consider is the price of the game versus the number of times it may actually see the table. To me this is a very key factor as I don't like spending £100 for a game that gets played once a year. Another very important aspect I consider is the length of a game. As my wife and my job keep us quite busy, we mostly play during the evening thus fun games that can be played in just under the hour are often much better choices for us. Of course, if I really, really like a game, I will still consider buying it disregarding all other factors and that's how my collection keeps growing....

Whilst deciding which game to buy can be an exhausting experience, managing your collection can prove an even more complex experience. When I had just a few games, it was quite easy find a nice a suitable space and I enjoyed taking shelfies of my (very small) collection as everything was fitting in a picture. However, as the number of boardgame start growing, I had to find more space to store them. At one point someone said the most terrifying sentence of them all: “Do you think you have too many boardgames?”. I know I am not the only one that faced the same challenge and you likely can relate on the topic. Together with adding more storage space where possible, culling it periodically is the only real way I managed to deal with my growing collection.

Selling my games is not obviously an exciting part of the hobby but it allows to focus on the games we love to play like the ones you will see in the next chapter. It is also a way to pass the joy you experienced on a game to someone else and perhaps to meet like-minded people. I actually met two of my best gaming buddies this way and it is awesome it all started when I passed on a box of Star Realm.