Single-Use Games - the board game hobby's throw-away attitude (Topic Discussion) - Tabletop Games Blog
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Let's be honest. Most of us in the hobby buy games that we play once or twice or in rare cases, three or four times. In fact, the term "shelf of shame" is a thing, describing games that people have bought but not yet played. The thing is, these games sit there unplayed for months on end and may never see the welcome sight of a table, let alone a board game table. So in this article, I want to look at this a bit further and investigate why we don't play the same games more than a handful of times.

Let’s be honest. Most of us in the hobby buy games that we play once or twice or in rare cases, three or four times. In fact, the term “shelf of shame” is a thing, describing games that people have bought but not yet played. The thing is, these games sit there unplayed for months on end and may never see the welcome sight of a table, let alone a board game table. So in this article, I want to look at this a bit further and investigate why we don’t play the same games more than a handful of times.

  • AwesomeLowlanderOPMEnglish
    1·
    14 hours ago

    In my opinion, the best board games get better with repeated plays because that’s when you can really get into the strategy.

    I feel you. My game club got into Dune Uprising recently and we played dozens of games in a month. You could see the skill level rising so starkly. Looking forward to the Bloodlines expansion!

    Side note, but I also really hate the idea of legacy games where you just have to throw the thing out once you’re done.

    Yeah, I finished Pandemic Legacy recently and it really seems like a waste. I wish there was more focus on making the games resettable, and not making components single-use.