Episode 241 - Does Size Matter?
August 7, 2025
Ambie and Crystal discuss a couple games they played recently, including Mystery Puzzle: The Lost Fire, First Contact, and Gibberish. Then, we talk about the size of our game collection, how it has evolved over our time in the hobby, and what we think the ideal collection size would be.
Intro: 0:00
Announcements: 0:42
Recent Games: 2:03
Collection Size: 16:30
Outro: 31:04
Bloopers: 32:08
Charities mentioned:
TransActual (Donate here)
Games discussed this episode:
First Contact: 5:26
DaDaDa: 15:30
Bomb Busters: 19:37
Broom Service: 24:01
This episode was sponsored by Grey Fox Games. Use the code "BLITZ10" to get 10% off your entire cart.
Board Game Blitz's theme song was composed by Andrew Morrow.
Transcript
[0:06] Crystal: Hello and welcome to episode 241 of Board Game Blitz, a podcast about all things board games that you can listen to in less time than it takes to find that person you were supposed to meet in the main vendor hall at GenCon. Board Game Blitz is sponsored by Grey Fox Games. This week, we’re talking about game collection sizes! First, we discuss a couple games we’ve played recently, Mystery Puzzle: The Lost Fire, First Contact and Gibberers. Then, we talk about whether there is actually a “perfect” size of game collection. And now, here are your hosts…
Ambie: Ambie
Crystal: and Crystal
[0:42] Ambie: Last week, we talked about some games from CGE, Codenames and Little Alchemist I talked about. And I recorded that before I realized that CGE made an announcement about the new Harry Potter Codenames, which we do not endorse because...
Crystal: Yes, that is very true. We do not.
Ambie: Yes, because money from that goes to J.K. Rowling, who puts money towards funds that hurt trans people. And so we do not like that. But since then, CGE has made some statements and I think they're working with people to try to figure out what to do. But if you want to not buy Harry Potter games, then with that money, maybe you can consider donating to some charities that support trans people. There's Trans Lifeline, which is in the US and Canada. And then Global Action for Trans Equity or GATE. But then there's also ones that are specifically in the UK. I found Mermaids. There's also Gender Identity Research and Education Society. And there's TransActual. And so I'll put links to those in the show notes if you would like to donate.
Crystal: Yes, we support the LGBTQIA community, especially the trans community. And we do not support those who are actively working to harm that community. So we will not be promoting any Harry Potter games, which you've probably heard because we don't ever talk about Harry Potter games.
[2:03] Ambie: Recently, I played Mystery Puzzle: The Lost Fire, which is a puzzle from Ravensburger, but it is on Board Game Geek. So it's a board game too. So this is kind of like a mix between a Jigsaw puzzle, Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective and the Unlock series, which is exactly what I was looking for. You might remember back in January or something, I talked about My Puzzle Adventure, which was a Jigsaw puzzle for kids based on the My First Adventure series. And back then, I said on the podcast that I wanted one for adults where, like, you do a puzzle and you look behind it and it tells a story kind of. And so this one is basically what I was looking for, because I think I had searched BGG and found it. On BGG this is called Puzzle X Crime Kids: The Lost Fire. But here this is called Mystery Puzzle: The Lost Fire. So Puzzle X Crime Kids, I think, is the series in German. But this is in English and they're bringing some more over to English. But it's basically you solve a Jigsaw puzzle and then there's a little story. This one, the rule book actually was all in French, so I had to use my phone translator to do it. But everything else was in English, so I think that might have just been a mistake in the printing
Crystal: a mistake in the production process. Yeah, a German company sent you a game in English with a French rule book. So yes, definitely not intended.
Ambie: But yeah, you solve the puzzle and then this one is like they're on a train and there was a stolen necklace. And so you're trying to figure out what happened and you look behind each of the pieces and it has a number. And then there's a deck of cards. There's a little suction cup thing or suction thing that you use to pick up the pieces because you want to pick up one piece and look behind it. And if it's in the middle of the puzzle, it's hard to get it out. So use a little suction thing. And then there's a deck of cards. So you find that number card and then you turn it over and you read a little story. It's kind of like the game Suspects or Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective type thing where you're reading an excerpt. And then also some of the cards, you might find items and then they have numbers on the bottom that can combine with other cards. So that's kind of like Unlock in that sense. So you're finding all these clues and then there are also some envelopes where if you find a card, you might be able to open an envelope and it has supplemental materials. So you're going through and trying to solve the case before time runs out and time is- In the cards also, they have like hourglasses that say how much time has been used. So yeah, this was like a mix between a Sherlock type game and a jigsaw puzzle and Unlock and I loved it because that's like I like all of those things. It's basically like what I want more of an escape room type jigsaw puzzle. It's not timed like an escape room though, but it has a similar feeling to those types of games. And I like it a lot better than- Ravensburger also has Escape Puzzle, I think series, which is like a jigsaw puzzle. And then it has some little like number puzzle things that I'm always disappointed in those. But this gave more of like a story with I guess the having the deck of cards and other stuff also helps make it more of a full escape room detective type game. So I really like that. And I'm excited to get more of them. Mystery Puzzle is the series and this was The Lost Fire.
Crystal: I'm so glad that you found what you were looking for.
Ambie: Yeah, me too. And I think there's like four of them or something. I'm not sure there's at least like one other one in English right now on Amazon. I saw.
Crystal: Are you going to be getting that as well?
Ambie: Yes, probably. Think something about birthday, but there's four on BGG. So hopefully those other ones are also going to be in English soon, if not already. Oh, I also forgot to say this is designed by Inka and Markus Brand and Michael Rieneck. So Inka and Markus Brand, they make the Exit games. So we love-
Crystal: they make a lot of games and I like their stuff. I wish I liked jigsaw puzzles.
Ambie: Yeah. But definitely board game adjacent.
Crystal: Yeah
[5:26] Ambie: I also got to play First Contact. This is a game from 2018 designed by Damir Khusnatdinov and published by Cosmodrome Games. I got this at the Dice Tower West flea market because I had been wanting to play it and I played it a little bit at Dice Tower West, but like with one of my kids sitting on Toby's lap. But I played it again with adults this time. So this is a it's like Codenames, but without teams and with an alien language. So you have not a team, but people are split up into aliens and earthlings, I think they're called. One alien and one earthling will win. So it's not really teams. It's all individual, but on separate roles. And the aliens are going to have this grid of words that have symbols on them that say what they are. So like alive will be a certain symbol and metal will be another symbol. It's all these adjectives and there's going to be a grid of cards that are object cards like spear or whip or chair or something. And that's going to be a five by five grid. And the aliens will have certain cards that they want to collect. The theme is they're trying to get a certain number of those items from Earth and then the earthlings, they know which words are the adjectives. Like so they know alive and I forgot which ones I said, metal and stuff, but they don't know what the symbols are for those words. So they're going to try to be figuring out what the symbols are for the words, like what the alien language is. And they do this by first, the earthlings will go and then the aliens will. So the earthlings on their turn, they're going to point to and turn up to five of the cards on the grid to try to figure out what a word is. So they're going to be like, if it's a weapon, then maybe you can turn spear and gun and something else, like all the things that are weapons. And then the aliens will see what they turn and be like, oh, that looks like weapon. But they might misinterpret that and be like, oh, those were all metal things. So maybe they're trying to ask what does metal, what is metal? And so the aliens will write down a symbol that they think means those words. And so then the humans will be taking notes. All earthlings see this and each earthling gets a turn to turn things, but like they don't know what the other earthling intended. And they also don't know what the aliens intend, but they're just all interpreting it and writing down on this little dry erase grid their notes.
And then on the aliens turn, each alien is going to draw or write down like a description of the thing they want. So if they want spear, then maybe they'll write long metal weapon or something, but they'll write that in their symbols and the humans might know metal or they might have that one wrong, but they don't know the other two symbols. So it's like, okay, something metal, something like, okay, what is it? And then the humans will each pick one simultaneously. They have another dry erase card that they're using pointing to the grid and then flipping over and then whichever humans get right, they'll get a point. And the aliens will also get a point for the right ones. They get to mark on the grid. Also, if you get one, if you give the alien something that they wanted that wasn't necessarily what they asked for, you still count as right. So that can get really confusing with the words because if they said like long metal object and you give them a ring and that just happened to be their word too, you might think long means round. And so-
Crystal: Oh gosh.
Ambie: Because you're like, oh, I gave them this must be round or like beautiful or something because that's what the ring was, but it just accidentally got the right one.
Crystal: Oh no. That is where this game would go very wrong for me, I feel.
Ambie: Yeah. So yeah, like when I played at Dice Tower, I was the alien. It was just one alien and my mom and Toby were earthlings. I think we did fairly well at the communication part, but here there were two aliens and two humans when I played and I was an earthling. I think one of the things we gave him one that was wrong. I think Toby gave him a spear or something and he was clueing towards ring. So we thought- Toby and I both thought something meant weapon when it was actually beautiful.
Crystal: Oh. Yeah those are very different.
Ambie: And then later on, I figured it out. Yeah, later on, I figured I was like, wait a minute. So like I kept having question marks on like, does this question mark this might mean this or might mean something else? It's not this. That was my one problem with this. Like it gives you this little dry erase board with the grid and you have dry erase markers, which are kind of thick. And I'm trying to take all these notes like - not this, not this question mark, question mark. And I did not have space for that on this little dry erase board. So that's my gripe against dry erase is like the space. I would want paper so I could take notes with a smaller fine tip pencil. But yeah, that was interesting and I enjoyed it. But it does get difficult. The communication with the symbols and getting those confused. But yeah, that's First Contact.
Crystal: Well, that definitely sounds interesting and like something that I would potentially enjoy.
[9:46] Crystal: Well, I actually sent you a video earlier today of the game I'm going to be talking about. If you had to describe to our listeners what was happening in that video, like what would be a quick description of what was happening?
Ambie: You were saying words that aren't- it seemed like you were making up a language because you were just saying words like- I don't know, like, bleh? Fleh? Bleh. Like all these other things...
Crystal: Like, kind of like we were speaking gibberish, maybe.
Ambie: Yeah.
Crystal: Well, the game I'm talking about is Gibberers: The Word Game of Language Invention and Civilization Development. So kind of in a similar vein to what you were just talking about. So in Gibberers, it is a cooperative game designed by Keisei and published by Hobby Japan. And it came out in 2024, although it is a reimplementation of an older game. So in Gibberers, every round one player is the mentor. Well, let me back up. To start Gibberers, you have to start constructing a language just like right off the bat. And to do so, there are a few words that the game makes you choose. And when you're constructing the language, you use English characters from the alphabet, obviously, but you make up words completely that mean things in English. Like some of the words you have to do are like, yes, no, things of that nature. And then every player gets to make up a whole bunch of other words, whatever they want, basically. And there's some guidance in the game. There's like these little postcard sized cards that have words on them as like suggestions that you can choose from. We did not use those. We just picked our own stuff. So like Kathy picked the word ankle for one of hers. What did I pick? Like, I think we ended up with like hot and cold. We ended up with a whole bunch of random stuff. And so they're on these little slips of paper and it shows both the made up word and then what it means, the definition. And we put them all out on the table based on the first letter of each word. So that way we can all see them.
Then the first mentor draws a card from the first generation deck. And we have to go through seven rounds and three generations to win, quote unquote, the game. And the cards for each generation have words on them that the mentor is going to have to get the other players to guess. But once you start the game, the only language you can speak is the made up language. So if you haven't come up with a word for something yet, you don't have it. That's it. So when you saw us- Oh, and when you're the mentor, you also during the round have the ability to kind of create a supporting word that will help you during the course of that round. And that's really important, especially if the word that is on the card that you picked is something that really doesn't relate to anything that's already out on the board. So like when Greg was trying to get us to guess his word, as you heard in the video, maybe we'll post this video. I might put it on our social media, but he was saying, "Pish, mish." Like one of those things was big and one of those things was water. He was trying to basically say big water. But the thing was you have a certain number of tokens each round that you can use for either clues or guesses. So you can't just throw out any word you want and hope that you hit the bullseye on the dartboard, so to speak. If you want to make a formal guess, you have to spend a token to do it. And so even when we think we know he's saying big water, okay, that could mean a whole bunch of things, right? Like that doesn't necessarily. So that's why like I at one point, oh, poop was one of the words on the grid. And so we had fish somewhere. And so I think I was asking if fish poop in the big water.
And it was funny because Greg, he told us later, he was like, I was trying to figure out whether I should answer yes or no, because I was like, I don't know if this is helpful or not. And so that's kind of where this game gets interesting is you're answering questions, trying to point people down the right path. But like, even if you answer the questions accurately, that might not happen. And each generation, the words get more difficult. I don't own the game. It's Greg's. So I pulled up an image from Board Game Geek of some of the words in the game and they're not all simple words. Like there are some that I think are a little easier, like door or castle. But then when you get to some of the harder levels, there are things on these cards like pipe organ, typewriter, part time job. Like there are things here that a normal person would not guess-
Ambie: That's hard enough with like 20 questions.
Crystal: Oh, yeah, like part time job. I don't know how the world, like this poop was not going to get us anywhere close to that if we had drawn that one. Now, admittedly, each card has five to 10 different options on it. And you get to pick which one you do. But then as you get words, right, you also collect tokens based on the symbol that was next to those words. Those can unlock more special abilities or you can potentially create more words for your language throughout the course of the game. It basically is just an exercise in not talking in English for a while. And it's quite fun. I think you basically know if you're the type of person who will enjoy this game or not. Like you, for instance, would, I believe.
Ambie: Yes, it's already on my want to play list. Like I have heard of this before. I don't remember where, but like when I opened up the link, it was already on my want to play list.
Crystal: Nice. Yeah. It's one of those games where if you think you're going to like it, you're going to like it. And if you're like, oh, that doesn't sound like fun, you won't like it. It's very, very much a if you want to construct a language. Yeah. And I do like that this one, unlike some other games of this nature, it's kind of a little more loosey goosey because you're just completely creating the words from scratch. So we weren't like you showed me a link to another game that's kind of similar.
Ambie: Yeah. DaDaDa I think. I think also a recent one. Yeah. These are both recent ish.
Crystal: Yeah. It seems like this is a trend right now, I guess. But in that one, like there's syllable parts that I guess you put together and there's nothing here in how you create the fake words. You literally like we were just making stuff up. Yeah. We're like, Blueble dish, Moopple. Like, you know, it's whatever we came up with was the words we had and it was quite fun. So, yeah, I really, really enjoyed Gibberers. It is not a game that I think would hit the table often because you definitely want to have the right people to play it with. And it is from Hobby Japan, which their stuff isn't always readily available in the States. But I'm probably going to keep an eye out to try and get a copy of this for my own.
Ambie: Yeah, I want to try it.
Crystal: Well, I will play it with you. And technically, I guess instead of using the little slips of paper, if we made like an Excel spreadsheet or a Google Doc with the words on it, we might be able to play it online. That would be pretty fun.
[16:30] Crystal: For our thematic segment today, we are talking about the size of our game collections. And is there a perfect game collection size? And I do want to caveat this upfront with I'm kind of only considering this from the point of view of playing games and maybe like space considerations. But I am not factoring in the monetary part of acquiring games because obviously money holds different value to every person and something that is cheap for one person may be very expensive for another. And so like if somebody owns two thousand games or four thousand games, to me, that's I just I don't want to talk about like how much money it costs to create a game collection. We're just going to talk about like how many games do you need to own as a gamer who wants to play games and where do you keep them kind of like that's kind of the angle I'm coming at this from.
Ambie: I think for most people, like 10 is good enough.
Crystal: Right? I know. I'm sure there are at least one person listening to the podcast who just heard me say two thousand and is like, what? Cause I do- I know multiple people that own that number of games. Or more. I do not.
Ambie: So I log my collection on Board Game Geek. And right now, I think I keep it pretty up to date. It says I own 353 games. That includes expansions...
Crystal: That is a lot more than I would have thought you owned.
Ambie: Yeah, because I used to own 100 and we used to try to keep it around there.
Crystal: And then the kids got older.
Ambie: Yeah, I guess I got a lot of kids games. But even before then, we got to like 200 just because we got like a lot of smaller games. We got into 18xx, got a bunch of like train games and like then like all the Oink games don't count. They don't take up space.
Crystal: They don't count?! It's funny because that technically it seems like it should be an insult, but it isn't. It's a compliment. Like, Oink games, you're good. You don't count towards the count. You're fine. We keep you no matter what.
Ambie: Yeah, my collection is too big because it does not fit in our shelves anymore. Also, we are moving and we got some moving boxes from like normal people. And normal people do not have enough.
Crystal: Normal people don't have board games.
Ambie: The book size boxes is like the board game size boxes. So they had like these boxes that are for books. Yeah, we do not have enough of those.
Crystal: Yeah, there are there are lots of board games that do not fit into normal like moving boxes. I encountered that when I moved five years ago too. I was like, oh, we need to figure out some different solution. The big plastic containers, the big bins that you can buy can be helpful. But of course, then you have a bunch of plastic bins left over.
Ambie: Luckily, we're moving like just a mile away. So we're going to just drive stuff over. And so like the board game bags actually hold board game boxes fairly well. We have a lot of those!
Crystal: Oh, yeah, IKEA bags also. I don't know if you guys have an IKEA near you?
Ambie: I don't have any IKEA bags.
Crystal: I was gonna say those big blue IKEA bags are nice for Yeah.
Ambie: But yeah, like for the size of collection, I was saying 10 because I was thinking of the games that I actually play. I've just been playing Bomb Busters a bunch when I have my game group. It's mostly just that. And then maybe some other games, but like for games that actually get played. That's not that many for me. And I have a lot of games. And maybe it's because I have a lot of games or just like, it's harder to pick when we have too many games. So having fewer-
Crystal: Yeah, it's overwhelming.
Ambie: Yeah, having fewer would be better for actually playing games, I think.
Crystal: It's one of those things where I think I've kind of like gone through a journey as a board game owner, because I started playing I mean, I've been playing board games my whole life, but I didn't really start building my hobby collection until I moved out to Vegas in 2008, and was kind of really like, on my own for the first time. And my collection was relatively small for a while. Like even when we started the podcast, I know that my collection then was probably 50 games, I think, which I know that to normal people that still sounds like a lot like my Facebook friends would see a picture of that and be like, Whoa, at the time and now I'm like, Okay, so I think I own like 500 to 600 games at this point. All I know is that I own two five by five KALLAXes. And generally, those can hold about 200 games a piece ish depending on the sizes. And my games do not fit on those shelves anymore. Like I got stuff stacked up to the ceiling. I got stuff on the floor. Like there's games everywhere now. So yeah, and I've gotten to a point where I'm like, it's too much for me personally. And that's I have the space technically, like I'm very lucky. And that I have a large enough house that I have places I can put the games. But I recognize that there are games that I'm just never playing. And there are some games that I will never play that I want to keep anyway, for sentimental reasons or for collectibility reasons or whatever else. But there are also games in my collection that I don't need to keep that I will probably never play again. And that's not even to say that they're bad games. They're probably games that I've really enjoyed in the past. And I just at a certain point, how many games of a certain type do I need to own, right? Like there are other games that scratch similar itches. And sometimes a better game comes out. And it's like, I think this is kind of like that one, but a little bit better or newer or fancier. And you know that sometimes the new shiny stuff does kind of tend to seem a little bit better anyway. I don't know. It's one of those things where I struggle to cull games. We've talked about this before. And I have actually started doing that over the past few years. But it gets easier after you start doing it. You're like, Oh, like I don't- I don't miss any of the games that I've sold at all. I think there may be one time where I was looking for a game and I was like, Oh, I think I may have sold that. And then I was like, Okay, oh, well, whatever. It just moved on and I was fine. So I know there are people out there who likely are like I was before and are afraid to like, get rid of a game because they might want to play it in the future. And, eh? You can buy it again, probably depending. But you know,
Ambie: Yeah, I have 430 previously owned games marked on BGG. So we have more previously owned than owned.
Crystal: Wow.
Ambie: I remember when I first got to that, and then I wanted to keep it that way. But then I ended up getting more. It went back to more owned than previously owned for a bit. And I'm like, No! But I think it should stay that way for forever now. The more previously owned than owned.
Crystal: Probably.
Ambie: But yeah, I think there have been times where I thought I've gotten rid of a game because like, I just haven't seen it in a long time. But it's just like, still in my shelf somewhere. I'm like, Oh, I guess we do still have that. Back to like games that you play. Because like, I play maybe like 10 games at a time over whatever a year or something. I don't know. Like these games I play a lot and then I own them and then I get new games and like really want to play those and those are the games I play. But those other games that I loved back in 2012 or something, like I played them all the time. Like I still have fond memories of them and like, Oh, that was a great game. That's a great game. Like I would love to play it again sometime and I just never do.
Crystal: Yeah
Ambie: That's why the collection just keeps growing, I think, because there's always these great games. And then like, as you play new games, you keep the great ones, but you also keep the old great ones and sometimes hard to get rid of the old great ones.
Crystal: Yeah
Ambie: Because you're like, Oh, yeah, I'll play it again. And sometimes you do play it again. And it's like, Oh, yeah, this is really great.
Crystal: Oh, yeah, I do that with games. Broom Service is a really good example of that for me. I tend to play that game about once every like three years or so. And it's sometimes my copy. It's sometimes another person's copy. Every single time I play Broom Service, I'm always like, dang, I love this game. I don't ever, like that, It doesn't- I don't need to play it more often than that because I like it. But also, I don't ever want to get rid of it because every time it hits the table, it's so satisfying. And I will admit, like less so now than maybe a few years ago, since my collection is so large now, but I struggle around times like now where like Gen Con is just wrapping up as we're recording this. And there are so many new games coming out. I used to kind of feel like I need all of them. And I don't feel like that anymore. But you hear people talking about how much fun these new games are and how exciting they are and how much they loved them. And it's not that I feel like I need to increase the size of my collection. But I want to play these new games. And sometimes the only way to play them is to buy them. And so it's one of those things where I'm like, eeeehh, do I need it? I don't know. And I'm better now at not buying all of the things. But I am as we discussed in a recent episode, I'm worried about all of these releases coming out from All Play because I want all of them.
Ambie: But both of us are also lucky in that we have friends who get new games.
Crystal: Yeah.
Ambie: So like, we can use their copies if we want to play too.
Crystal: Greg, God bless you. I love you, man. You're one of the best. Shout out to Greg, everybody.
Ambie: But for me for this year, like I have solved the problem of GenCon new games by being too busy to actually watch or like learn anything about GenCon because I've had a very busy summer. I'm like so behind on board game YouTube videos and all this stuff. Like I don't know what's going on or what's coming out. So yeah, just because I don't have time.
Crystal: We're the least tuned in board game content creators. We're like GenCon, who's she? I don't know. I think obviously, like the size of a person's game collection is going to be dependent on a lot of factors. And I do think that the journey of being a hobby gamer is a journey. And I think everybody kind of has to go through it. Because I don't know very many hobby gamers who haven't had that like initial buying surge when you first get into the hobby and now you're like if you play a game and like it, you buy it. Sight unseen basi- woell not sight unseen, you're playing it, whatever. And I've been that person for other people where I'll introduce a game to them. And they're literally on their phone ordering it as we're playing it because they like it so much. I was in that phase once. And I think a lot of hobby gamers do that. And then you kind of hit a breaking point at a certain point where you're like, okay, hold please. I need to take a pause and not order every game that I like. And then I think I'm on the down-slope now. I feel like I'm kind of like, okay, I need to be thoughtful. But also that game looks really good. And it's like the struggle.
Ambie: Yeah, we still get the games that we really like. I guess when we first started the hobby gaming, every game we played was like, ooh, this is really cool. There's something new and something. So it's harder to find a game that we really love now because we just have so many already. It's like, oh, we have this that does it. We have this at home.
Crystal: I feel like if the universe conspired against me and I was forced to reduce the size of my game collection, and they said, you have to pick a number and stick to it from that point onward, but it has to be smaller than what you own now. And it can be, you know, I'm trying to think of like, what is the number of games that is a more reasonable amount that I think I could live with. And I feel like for me, I think 100 wouldn't be enough, which seems silly to say out loud. But you know, when we make our top 100 games lists, there are things that are right below 100 that are games I really like, especially because there are so many games that are situational that you can't play in all different types of scenarios that I still would want to own. I think for me 200 ish would probably be the like smaller sweet spot where I think I could manage. But I think getting from where I'm at now to 200 would be a real struggle. And that would mean getting rid of a lot of things that I really like.
Ambie: Yeah, I feel like theoretically, we should be able to do 100. But the problem is now that we have kids. With kids games, like it's hard because that counts towards the collection count, but it's not really like
Crystal: It feels like it's kind of separate. Like it feels like the kids games and the non kids games kind of could be counted separately. Cause they're gonna age out.
Ambie: Yeah, they are gonna age out, but they are having trouble culling games to like, I have too many games that I've got for them because like, there was a liquidation sale on time and I got a bunch of HABA games and-
Crystal: Oh yeah, that was my fault. My bad. Sorry. I told you about that.
Ambie: So many. And I don't play any of them and they're like, no, we like this one. And then they play it once.
Crystal: So the cycle has started early for your boys is what you're saying, basically.
Ambie: We're trying to get them- They're good about getting rid of some stuff sometimes, but we need to get them better about it. We've done one cull with them, I think so far in their life.
Crystal: I do wish that especially for like kids games, I feel like it would be nice if there were more publicly known places that you could donate games that would be used meaningfully. Like obviously, you can donate games. Yeah, like, I feel like cuz like with kids toys, right when you kids get too many toys, you can kind of tell them like, hey, there are, you know, other little boys and girls who don't have toys like this. And so we're going to donate them to these little boys and girls. And that like is a really neat way to both teach kids how to be giving and also get rid of some of their toys. Like it's kind of a win win. But with board games, like it's a harder thing to donate because for a lot of charity groups, they want new wrapped things or things and like board games also like-
Ambie: The board games like kids have played, they're like, not in good condition at all.
Crystal: Yeah, you can't really like at that point, I guess you could theoretically do like components into like craft kits maybe or something like that. I don't know.
Ambie: A couple of things we did give to friend. So we're like, Oh, do you want to give this one to our friend here? And they're like, Okay, so-
Crystal: Some libraries will take game donations depending on the quality of the game as well.
Ambie: Yeah, so I was thinking maybe like my preschool or like my elementary school or maybe the library. But yeah, a lot of the games that they played when they were preschool age are chewed up. So like,
Crystal: You don't wanna turn in the game with teeth marks to your local library. Here it comes with my child's DNA.
Well, we would love to hear from you all our listeners, our viewers if you're watching on YouTube. Thank you for watching on YouTube. Tell us how many games you own and how many games would or should be in your perfect game collection. We would love to hear from you all. So hit us up on social media or in the blitz discord.
[31:04] Ambie: And that’s it for this week’s Board Game Blitz. Visit our website, boardgameblitz.com for more content and links.
This episode was sponsored by Grey Fox Games. Is your collection not big enough and you want to make it bigger? Grey Fox Games has a section of games on their website that are all less than $40—it includes all their best small box games and some special discounted titles too! And don’t worry, all discounts will stack with our exclusive coupon code, so you can get an additional 10% off by using the code BLITZ10 at checkout!
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Our theme song was composed by Andrew Morrow.
Until next time,
In a big game room
Games stay with you
Like a cozy choice
Playing Ticket to Ride
Bye everyone!
Crystal: Bye!
[32:08] Crystal: Hello and welcome- blehblehblah
Okay, we're gonna try that again.
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