Restarting your game collection?

 I was over on BGG in my lunch break the other day and saw a thread about restarting your gaming collection. It caught my interest, because I often think about rationalising my collection with a view to playing what I already own more rather than spreading my gaming time thinly around . So, the premise is that you have lost all of your games in some catastrophic event. What do you get to replace them?

There is a lot of leeway on the original thread. No mention of being constrained by a budget or anything like that. I assume you would have to only aim for games that are actually available, but there's nothing wrong with dreaming either. What would you go for?

For myself, I am going to assume that the insurance paid up, which allows me to dream a bit bigger, but I would also be buying with a view to playing fewer games more often. My criteria for choosing the games would be based on the following:

• What am I likely to get the most use out of?
• What do I find myself getting down off the shelf and wanting to play even if I don't at that point?
• What do I find myself pottering with most, sorting counters or looking for storage solutions?
• Am I sufficiently nostalgic for this game to buy it?

That's a fairly broad group of criteria and there may well be other considerations. Looking at my peripatetic lifestyle, portability ought to be a consideration too, but I'm not going to think too hard about that. This is mostly about what springs gazelle-like to mind. I'm sure that long pondering would result in me remembering games that I once played and really enjoyed and might like to get, but this is about choosing games in the moment.

The first criterion points to games that can be played solo and with other people. I spend far too much of my time alone or in gaming deserts, so solo is essential, but I have always been more of a social gamer. That said, solo is also important because the types of games I want to buy tend not to be the ones that people around me want to play.

The second criterion points to hex-and-counter wargames for the most part. I enjoy Euro games, but I always wind up getting the hex-and-counter games down to paw over. This leads me to the third criterion where I find myself sorting counters and trying to organise my hex-and-counter games more than my Euro games. It also suggests that games with expansions and supplements should be part of whatever list I make.

The fourth criterion leads me to RPGs for the most part. I rarely get nostalgic for boardgames, perhaps because I still play them, but I do pine for the halcyon days of Basic D&D and Classic Traveller, hence my ongoing, but often intermittent, Scarlet Heroes solo game. I think the only boardgame I get nostalgic about is Terrible Swift Sword, a monster game of the Battle of Gettysburg 1863. I remember with fondness attempting to play this game to completion both solo and with a friend. These attempts never succeeded for a variety of reasons related to bad luck, accidents with the gaming table, and, in one case, a rogue sparrow.

With all that in mind, what would I get and why?

Scarlet Heroes

I would absolutely get another copy of Scarlet Heroes. It's the best fantasy RPG I know. It combines a modern streamlined design with old school nostalgia and is fully compatible with the old D&D modules. It is also designed for solo play, either completely alone or one player and one DM. For these reasons it would be top of my list for restarting my gaming collection. I would supplement this purchase with the PoD versions of the Basic and Expert D&D scenarios, and the accompanying Gazetteers. All of these would sit nicely on my shelf, can be played solo as I am showing with the adventures of Broneslav Torenescu, and could provide entertainment should I find someone else wanting to play.

Classic Traveller and 15mm Sci-Fi Gaming

I love Classic Traveller, and my first thought was that it would be second on my list. However, I do wonder if I would be willing to collect it all over again. From the perspective of starting all over again, I feel like there would be too much to do, because my Traveller gaming and my 15mm sci-fi gaming are both closely linked. I frequently use Traveller as inspiration for figure games or seek to set games in the CT universe.

This brings me to 15mm sci-fi gaming. I have a lot of painted figures for 15mm sci-fi and probably as many unpainted ones. I am just not sure that I could be bothered painting them all over again. Maybe if money were no object, I could get someone else to paint them all over again though. Of all the things I game, 15mm sci-fi is the most tempting to buy back into in this thought experiment. And there are a lot of different rules to play it with, so it could provide a huge amount of variety.

Advanced Squad Leader

ASL has been a part of my life for 30 years. I've done tournaments, played a lot against friends and played a lot solo. It's a game system that has so much to offer that it ought to be a no-brainer buying back into it. And yet, I sometimes think I should just sell up my ASL stuff. I rarely get to play it these days and all the players seem to be concentrated in places that I never work. The fact that I don't use it at the moment is the primary reason I would not buy back into it. Still, if I lost it all and had the means to buy back in, I probably would, assuming that the modules I want were available. Having it there would mean that I had the potential to play again. That seems important to me. I just have to hope that the carers in the nursing home will be willing to move the counters and tell me what is on them when I am in my dotage and finally have the time to play.

Interestingly, I have seen my focus change in recent years. I am more interested in playing on the historical maps and playing the Eastern Front campaigns. So, there is a good chance I would buy back into the game but at a reduced scale. That would mean buying:

• ASL Rules
• ASL Journal digital download
• Beyond Valor
• Red Factories
• Valor of the Guards
• Solitaire ASL
• ASL map bundle

That lot would give me about 50-60 geomorphic maps, a set of historical packs with campaigns and maps, and the facility to play a wide variety of Eastern Front solo campaigns. That is more than enough gaming potential for one lifetime. An alternative focus would see me adding the Axis Minors and Festung Budapest modules to that set, or heading west to 1940 with the UK and Commonwealth, French and Allied Minors so I could do France 1940 and Norway 1940. In terms of compactness though, the Eastern Front is simpler and you don't wind up with any excess counters.

Anything else?

I'm struggling to think of anything else that I would automatically buy back into. My gaming has always been steered a lot by what my opponents want to play when I have someone to play against. My philosophy is generally that it is better to play than not, and that means accommodating others. My poor, long-suffering opponent, Steve, has been drawn into more than a few fads by me and vice versa, but that is not always the case. So, if I were to start anything new, it would probably be inspired by contact with others, although there are a couple of rules/periods that I am more likely to choose to work on alone: Command Decision: Test of Battle with the Benghazi Handicap sourcebook for the Western Desert, and anything Viking-related spring rapidly to mind. I also quite like the idea of a Swedish-themed Seven Years War or Great Northern War imagi-nation so maybe I could use this imaginary opportunity to work on those.

The other driver for my gaming is games that can be played solo, preferably with a collaborative option so I have the option of playing with others. If they are compact and easy to take on my travels, so much the better. In my current circumstances, I think that largely precludes figure games, especially because I don't think I could be bothered painting the figures all over again. I seem to enjoy painting less and less as the years go by! So, that leaves me looking for solo and collaborative board wargames for the most part. There are a lot around these days, which means I could look around to see what takes my fancy and buy those.

And you?

If you have got this far in my ramblings, what would you buy into in this thought experiment?