PitchCar Mini by Jean du Poël, published by Ferti
I started trading board games online soon after beginning the hobby. It has become a game unto itself and is something I truly enjoy. By now I have positive feedback for 72 trades on BGG. Since I first began in July of 2005, that means I am trading a little over 14 games a year. That is a rate of over one game per month!
Anyway, I have made a few great trades in the past few weeks, so I thought I’d take some time to talk about them.
The first acquisition was PitchCar Mini! This is an awesome dexterity race game in which the main mechanic is flicking a disk around a track. I set up an ultimate trade for my copy of A Castle for all Seasons (a game I quickly tired of, which also holds the award for “the worst board game title in 2008″). I wasn’t specifically looking for PitchCar Mini, but when it was offered as an option in my trade I could not resist trying it out.
Bombay by Cyril Demaegd, published by Ystari Games
An ultimate trade is essentially chain trading. I offer game A up for trade. Someone else offers game B for game A. Yet another offers game C for game B. I happen to want game C, so I end the trade. I send A to B, B goes to C, and C sends their game to me. Perfect! This trade was done using a geeklist on BGG. We ended up not having a chain because I was very happy to accept PitchCar Mini in trade.
The next trade I grabbed was suggested to me by someone on BGG. I was offered an unpunched copy of Bombay and a great condition copy of Witch’s Brew in exchange for my Valley Games edition of Titan. After reading up on Bombay I went ahead and accepted.
I think this trade was an excellent value for money. I received two very recent games in excellent condition for a game I was never going to play. I’m not sure why I ever ordered Titan to begin with… it just isn’t my type of game. Fortunately, Valley Games sent me two pre-ordered copies by mistake, so I have had some great trading mileage with it!
Out of these two games I have only played Witch’s Brew so far, but have greatly enjoyed it. It is a light-hearted game of double-think and “gotcha” moments. I don’t think it is brilliant, but I do have a great time playing the game.
Witch's Brew by Andreas Pelikan, published by Alea/Rio Grande Games
Bombay looks interesting, but has been lambasted by some on the internets for being too light. I hope I can get it played soon, because a light pick-up-and-deliver game sounds right up my alley! It is also a Ystari game, and I have enjoyed all of their titles considerably. The production quality on this game is very nice. There are plastic elephants which have little baskets on their backs. These baskets can hold the cubes you are delivering to other cities! How cool is that?
The last trade I want to brag about happened just yesterday. I threw up a bunch of so-so games in a recent math trade on BGG.
Math trades are an interesting phenomenon. Users of BGG post their games they are willing to trade to a massive geeklist. Once all games have been submitted, everyone uses an automated tool created by one of the members and marks every game they would be willing to accept for their offered games. After all have done that, the organizer/moderator uses the tool to process the possible trades in some crazy algorithm, and it optimizes possible trades and spits out a set of results, often the most trades possible given peoples wants. Everyone then sets up their trades and mails their games to each other!
One of the games I put up for trade was a new copy of Hellas. This was actually the third copy of Hellas I have owned… I keep managing to gain copies and then trade them away!
Shanghaien by Michael Schacht, published by Abacus Spiele
Well, the math trade was very good to me, and I ended up trading my copy of Hellas and acquiring a new copy of Shanghaien! This is a recent two player game by Michael Schacht that I have heard some great coments about. I enjoy many of Schacht’s titles, so I can’t wait to check this one out!
And that’s it for my recent run of good board game trading. If I get some more good deals I will be sure to post them here.
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