My second favourite game of all time, as of writing this post, is Arkwright. If you have listened to my Top 5 Uwe Rosenberg Games episode, then my number one game of all time should come as no surprise - Fields of Arle. They both share a trait of being fairly heavy - OK, Arkwright is heavy - games. I like heavier games.

Both games physically weigh a lot, Fields of Arle even has a wooden organiser, but that’s not what I mean about weight. In the world of board games, “heavy” means complexity or decision space. This post isn’t going into that, other than acknowledging that both are considered ‘meatier’ games.

Arkwright plays best with four players, and here we have the issue with heavier euro games, player interaction. In Arkwright, you are running competing mills. Two players? No real competition, unless you always chose the same mills to run. That and it lacks the dynamics that four brings. See also Dominant Species: Marine, as an example. I’m not saying you can’t get heavy games that work well with two (see also; Twilight Struggle)

So we come to Barrage. I did show interest at the time of release, and something put me off. It bubbled back recently thanks to Twitter and yet again I started to show interest until a Heavy Cardboard play through showed me that Barrage also shines at four, and maybe three, but not two players.

I have enough games on my shelves that don’t get played enough, I don’t need more. So Barrage went back onto my list of games I’d love to play if they ever showed up at a game group night, but with 90% of my plays being with two players, it couldn’t justify the expense. However, it looks like Beyond the Stars may be back on the potential list. Wasn’t really into tech tree games until Anno 1800 came along and was a big hit (“Do you make sausage?”) and space as a theme is not my favourite.

This mentality, along with a strict budget, gets applied to almost every game I buy, even more so now my collection is large enough. I very rarely make impulse purchases and rarely back Kickstarter games too.

How do you work out what game you are going to get next? Budget? Theme? Kickstarter? Or throw care to the wind and get whatever you fancy? Let me know at @MacBoyceGaming (https://twitter.com/macboycegaming)

Image from Ricker on BGG boardgamegeek.com/image/503…