Well, with my busy schedule it certainly feels like I have given up boardgaming for Lent! I don’t know about you, but I am (beyond) fully back to work at something like 120% in the office (including some weekends and after hours “events”). It really has put a crimp into my wargame and boardgame time. The Shelf of Shame is growing with little indication that it will be seriously worked off in the near future.
- Cuba Libre (Volko Ruhnke, GMT Games, 2013) – This is supposedly a shorter, simpler COIN-series game; as short as it is I haven’t been able to get it tabled!
- Don’t Tread on Me: The American Revolution Solitaire Board Game (Ben Madison, White Dog Games, 2014) – I love the American Revolution and really want to explore Ben’s treatment of the era; a very British take on the events?
- AuZtralia Big Box with AuZtralia: Revenge of the Old Ones & AuZtralia: TaZmania (SchilMil Games, 2022) – Expansions to my favorite Waro (Euro-Wargame).
- Plains Indian War (John Poniske, GMT Games, 2022) – Very interested in this design as it has some Birth of America-series DNA deep behind it; the BoA-series from Academy Games, along with 878 Vikings, are the games that brought lite, family wargaming back into the RockyMountainNavy home and were so important to our coping with COVID.
I need to work off some of this backlog because more games are inbound. In what seems to be a post-COVID rebound, the flow of games started in the COVID-era are finally making their way through the pipeline and some are getting closer to delivery. A few titles that may show up within the next 3 months include:
- Red Storm: Baltic Approaches (Douglas Bush, GMT Games) – “Loading Approved – No Firm Arrival Date Yet.”
- CDG Solo System (Stuka Joe, GMT Games) – “Loading Approved – No Firm Arrival Date Yet.”
- Root: The Marauder Expansion / Root: The Clockwork Expansion 2 (Leder Games) – BackerKit closing, shipping to start end of March?
- Reality Shift (Academy Games) – BackerKit closing.
- 2 Minutes to Midnight (Stuart Tonge, Plague Island Games) – BackerKit closing, ship by end of March?
Even though my Shelf of Shame is starting to sag, new games are always welcome. That said, my “acquisition strategy” has been to slow down a bit this year (Mrs. RMN says, “About time!”). Here in late March my trend-line of gaming acquisitions is a bit under-slope from the last few years:
- 2019 Gaming Acquisitions thru March: 12
- 2020 Gaming Acquisitions thru March: 19 (+58%)
- 2021 Gaming Acquisitions thru March: 20 (+5%)
- 2022 Gaming Acquisitions thru March: 13 (-35%)
I think many of us are going to look back at 2020 and 2021 and see that, even in the worst of the COVID lockdowns, our gaming was in something of a Golden Era. Sure, there was less face-to-face gaming for many, but here in the RMN house the RMN Boys and myself got in lots of good gaming. That “Golden-Horror” time has certainly come to an end, and now we struggle to keep our hobby life going.
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