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Play Games - Interact - Have Fun!
United States
California
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It's been awhile since my last post here and although I have numerous topics I eventually want to get to, there is one i particular that has pushed it's way to the top of the heap - The Unplayed Games list.
A Common Story...
When you first are starting out in the hobby, you most likely don't have a list of this type. You have a few games that you play a lot of and once you buy a new one, you immediately take it for a spin and see how it plays out. Games are all new to you at this point in time, why on earth would you bother to buy a game and NOT play it?
As your collection hits twenty games or so, you may realize that you are playing certain of your older games less and less as your new favorites come into the picture - grabbing all the attention and table time as you eagerly explore all the new mechanics and game play that they have to offer. Luckily, the time available for playing a new purchase or two most likely still dwarfs the total amount of free time devoted to gaming. But not for long.
If the gaming bug really takes hold, you'll find yourself increasing the size of your online gaming purchases. You will see that you are adding new games to an order - games that you originally had NO intention of buying at this point in time, simply to push your order into the realm of free shipping. Next thing you know, you are getting multiple TANGA alerts to tempt you into buying every game that pops up because it's such a good deal - even though you would never have bought the game otherwise.
And suddenly, it happens.
You realize at some point, that you now have 5 or 10 or even 20 games that you've recently bought (or at least in the past few months), that you have not only not played, you completely forgot you even purchased! How did that happen? That can't be right can it? How did I manage to get 10 games - some still in shrinkwrap even, and they've already been obscured by other games on the shelves?
Now multiply that effect by 10 years or so and you'll wake up to see that you have HUNDREDS of unplayed games in your collection. HUNDREDS!
Now I recently have been going through my collection and giving each game that I KNOW I've played in my lifetime an arbitrary log of a single play - just to remove those precious few games off of my list of shame, but even after I complete that (and I'm in the middle of doing so), I know that I will still have a sizable amount of games that have never been played once. Never. It is these games that this list is primarilly going to address - but there is another subset of my collection I'm looking at too.
For the better part of this year I have made a concentrated effort to try and play a lot of the great games that I have in my collection that have been languishing on the shelf feeling neglected. In some cases - a small few, there are some games that I've actually played when I first got them, but these games - for whatever reason only saw a single play. Add those to the list of totally unplayed games and you can see I have my work cut out for me.
I have not yet finished adding my "Unlogged Plays from Memory" but I can show you a partial list of games unplayed out of the first 300 games in my collection. There are more to comebut for now, I wanted to see if I was alone in this or are there others out there who also have a growing list of Unplayed Games that are willing to join me in my quest to shorten their lists alongside me.
The Unplayed List (The 1st 3rd)
Here are the games I have decided I need to play at least ONE TIME (Taken from the first 300 games in my collection):
Age of Steam, Alhambra, Amun-Re, Arkadia, Atlanteon, Back to the Future: The Card Game, Battle Cry, Boomtown, Buck Rogers: Battle for the 25th Century Game, El Caballero, Caesar & Cleopatra, California, Carolus Magnus, Cathedral, Cave Troll, Chang Cheng, China, China Moon, Clans, Container, Corsairs,Corsari, D-Day, D-Day, Deadlands: Doomtown, Dragon Masters, Duel in the Dark, Dungeoneer: Tomb of the Lich Lord, Dynasties, Ebola Monkey Hunt, Entdecker, Euphrates & Tigris Card Game
I will cross each played off this list and take a look at it next year!
Points of Discussion:
Do you find yourself with an increasing number of unplayed games in your collection? Have you already fought this demon and beat it? If so, what did you do? Stop buying games for awhile? Force yourself to play everything bought? How many unplayed games are there in your collection? What game(s) in my list would you recommend that I play as soon as possible?
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Since I moved from Mexico City I found myself without my group to play the games I own but I still have that habit of buying the ones I like, so now I find myself with 15 unplayed games at this time but many more with one or at most 2 plays.
, although you've got a much larger collection. 
I have allowed myself to trade games and have received new games as gifts from friends and family. But still it is really hard to get them played. The thing that has helped me the most is to find people in my game group who are interested in an unplayed game that I have and set a date.
