The New Old - classic games vs the cult of the new (Topic Discussion)

Like a lot of people, the board game hotness excites me, because it potentially offers new mechanisms or clever twists on something familiar.

Sometimes the new game draws me in because it has my favourite setting.

When I finally hold the new game in my hands, the excitement continues.

When I read the rulebook, set up the game and pull levers or push buttons to see what happens.

Yet as amazing as new games often feel, the ones I return to most often are games that have become familiar friends.

Somehow, knowing them so well has not made them any less interesting, but it has changed what I enjoy about them.

Of course I love new board games because they allow me to discover what they have to offer.

I want to see what happens when I try out different strategies.

Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't.

Sometimes it's because of how good my strategy is and sometimes it's because of how everyone else reacts to it.

Either way, I keep learning something new.

New board games also have the potential to contain something truly new and different.

They offer the possibility of finding something that I had never seen before, such as a mechanism I've never encountered previously, or a game with a clever twist on a familiar mechanism.

At other times a new board game is simply exciting because it has a theme I really love.

For example, I might pick up a game set in the world of Dune.

Even when I have no idea whether the game will actually work for me, the draw of an exciting setting often gets the better of me.

It is only when I play it that I decide whether or not it was worth it.

Anyway, whatever the actual reason, there's always something optimistic about opening a new game.

Every new board game offers the possibility of becoming a new favourite that stays in your library.

Even when I have no idea whether I'm looking at something I will enjoy once and maybe never again, or something that I will still be playing many years from now, it's exciting.

The uncertainty is part of the fun.