How Small Can You Go?

Looking at that Chaos Marauders for sale has me thinking...how _small_ could you get your collection?

Could you replace your collection with _smaller_, somewhat comparable games?

This isn't meant for anyone to do seriously, but a fun mental exercise.

What I need on my shelf:
Some GW games, TITAN, light wargames (preferably with blocks), a train game or two, some family friendly euros of various themes (these are non-confrontational games and most are VP driven - TtR, Zooloretto, Settlers, D/C Grand Prix, etc).

How I could switch this out:

TITAN - this will be the toughest, as I couldn't imagine not having a copy of TITAN, but the obvious choice is TITAN/Colossal Arena. I prefer TITAN the Arena because it has the actual TITAN creatures. However, Colossal has more.

GW Games - Guess I'd go with Chaos Marauders. Basically Stephen Hand's untouched design and with art by GW warhorse John Blanche I could feel alright with this. Maybe.

Wargames - Condotierre no doubt. Not too many options for small, pocket sized historical wargames. Battle Line has a war setting, but not at all a wargame. Perhaps throw in LotR: Confrontation? Legend of Robin Hood? Anyone got any other historical suggestions? What was that little two player napoleonic game of French vs Spain with the cubes?

Train games - I prefer the pick up and deliver, map based games over stocks. I have no idea what would go here though. Suggestions?

Handful of Family Games - GMT's Formula Motor Racing would work, possibly Ivanhoe. Citadels could sort of replace settlers as we'd be building up cities instead of settlements. Love Letter would be included. Possibly Kingdoms as well.

So it looks like I could possibly cover the same bases with:
Colossal Arena
Chaos Marauders
Condotierre
LotR: Confrontation
Battle Line
Formula Motor Racing
Citadels
Love Letter
Kingdoms

It's quite possible this whole collection could fit in a backpack...

Anyway, I'm still missing something in the train department. The wargame category doesn't feel fully realized, and I know I didn't mention adventure games specifically, but Talisman would be missed. SH: Death Angel or Drakon in its place? Cutthroat Caverns? Munchkin (ha)?

I understand the exercise part of this, but it just seems like you're going for the best small box games. For pu&d you could get heartland hauling company, which is like a card game ticket to ride. There's plenty of Baggie wargames you could get

2 de Mayo is the wargame you're thinking of.

Cutthroat caverns works for an adventure game but perhaps a little more adventurey and outside the box could be once upon a time.

Why not replace settlers with bohnanza?

I think you could go a long way on Innovation and Modern Art. throw in Race for the Galaxy with the first expansion and you have a solo, 2P, 3-5P option and a team 2 on 2 option.

Street Soccer is my best small box non card game. Flicochet is good for a pub table dexterity game, and Decathlon is the best handful of dice in your pocket game I've tried

can't go wrong with a deck of normal cards of course

I know someone will say citadels takes 2-8(?) but is it good for the higher player count. I never found a group that got into it, so it always fell flat, I always wanted to like it more than I actually did as a result

I've been thinking about this:

Bohnanza - Family trading game
Condotierre - DoaM
One Night Ultimate Werewolf - Large group
Race for the Galaxy - Engine building card game (can be stored in smaller expansion box)
Hanabi - Weird, family co-op
Cutthroat Caverns - Take-that, Cosmic-like wackiness
Carcassonne - Tile placment (can fit in smaller expansion box)
Fairy Tale - Card drafting
Frank's Zoo - Family, climbing game
Paperback - Family, word game, deckbuilder
Battleline - 2p card game
Court of the Medici - 2p card game
Las Vegas - Family, dice game
Medici - Auction

And things I couldn't be satisfied with any smaller box games:
Blood Bowl - Minis, awesome
Lord of the Rings (silverline edition) - Family, co-op (this might be Sentinels of the Multiverse)
Firefly - Adventure, Pick up & deliver
Combat Commander - Wargame
Roborally - Racing, Programming, large group
Ticket to Ride - Route building, card drafting, family
Acquire - Economic, stock holding

Maybe I didn't do the best job, but I was going for realistically for myself. I just couldn't replace those larger boxed games with smaller ones and not feel they were lacking. As usual this sort of thing is pretty fun to help assess things.

Funny enough I've been thinking about this recently because in March I'm going to Utah to stay in a yurt in the middle of nowhere for a weekend and the games I'm planning on packing (and treking for miles in snow shoes with) are Decktet, Cribbage, Mystery Rummmy, Paperback, and SOS Titanic.

Bohnanza - trading
Nostra City - worker placement, set collection
Dos de Mayo - wargame
Skulls and Roses - bluffing
Blood Bowl Team Manager - site conquest
Ingenious travel edition - abstract
Pax Porfiriana - tableau building

Any of the Pocket Battles series for light wargame, Jeff.

Bull Nakano wrote: Funny enough I've been thinking about this recently because in March I'm going to Utah to stay in a yurt in the middle of nowhere for a weekend and the games I'm planning on packing (and treking for miles in snow shoes with) are Decktet, Cribbage, Mystery Rummmy, Paperback, and SOS Titanic.

I wanna hear more about this.

Mr. White wrote:

Bull Nakano wrote: Funny enough I've been thinking about this recently because in March I'm going to Utah to stay in a yurt in the middle of nowhere for a weekend and the games I'm planning on packing (and treking for miles in snow shoes with) are Decktet, Cribbage, Mystery Rummmy, Paperback, and SOS Titanic.

I wanna hear more about this.

I'll be sure to post how it went in late March/early April (not sure when I'm traveling back east yet).

For selection of games they obviously had to be light, good with two, and easy to get into as my traveling companion isn't a gamer, though enjoys games. I'd have loved to bring RftG, but alas. She particularly likes games that have a historical or old world trappings (Jack, Titanic), classic feel (Cribbage, Jack again), and she's a writer so I figured we'd enjoy some co-op Paperback. Decktet is what I'm most unsure of but figured it might work out.

I do actually sort of think like this when buying games. I get to most gaming eves or days via either motorbike or cycle and generally fill my rucksack with games. So anything bigger than a AH bookshelf sized game gets a question mark over it and anything smaller gets a thumbs up. Part of the reason a game like Fleet has lasted so long on my shelf is its size.

DukeofChutney wrote: I do actually sort of think like this when buying games. I get to most gaming eves or days via either motorbike or cycle and generally fill my rucksack with games. So anything bigger than a AH bookshelf sized game gets a question mark over it and anything smaller gets a thumbs up. Part of the reason a game like Fleet has lasted so long on my shelf is its size.

totally agreed. Anything bigger than an Alea big box or AH bookshelf raises an eyebrow, I don't have a lot of room for many of them, and they tend to be traded off faster. Small card games go in this small VHS cabinet I keep them in, I love small card games, so unless I didn't enjoy something about it, it'll probably stay in there for a long while.

Mr. White wrote: Could you replace your collection with _smaller_, somewhat comparable games?

This isn't meant for anyone to do seriously, but a fun mental exercise.

Actually, Ive been trying to figure this out for the past few months. My wife and I bought a fair sized house last year (2500 sq feet on 1.2 acres), but were recently offered almost double what we paid for it. In looking at other houses with more acreage, we would have to downsize to 1500ish sq feet on 20-60 acres with the option of expanding the house later. Because of this, I have been looking at my collection that at one time was 600 titles, and is now 300ish and have been trying to figure out how I could fit the essentials into one 15inch deep double doored Billy bookcase - not counting Heroscape tiles or RPG minis (those are stored in my painting area) or my Carrom board (since it will be on the wall as "art").

When looking at the collection, there are a couple things I wont ever get rid of, my AH and 3m Bookcase games for example and games given to me by my now deceased grandparents, and the copy of Risk that my wife's great grandmother gave her. But those take up about a shelf. Ogre DE, Rebound, and Crossbows and Catapults will sit on top, but that leaves four shelves of roughly Fantasy Flight big box size, and one that is one and a half sized.

Since my collection is all over the place the games I know I would keep are:
Mississippi Queen & Black Rose
Memoir 44 (with one of each expansion), Battlecry, Battlelore 1.0 (with one of each expansion) - thats three game boxes and two plano boxes. - pretty much one shelf.
Defenders of the Realm (with all expansions in box)
Pandemic
Nexus Ops
Rex
Pitchcar - 2x starter set with random extra pieces in the boxes
Titan
Wiz War - with expansions I have not bought yet
Xwing minis
Space Hulk
Through the Desert
Ascending Empires
Pillars of the Earth
Power Grid
Munchkin
Awful Green Things from Outer Space
Snit Smashing
Ravensburger Labyrinth 80s version

Then a bunch of small games in front of the others like:
Bang
Netrunner CCG starter
Attribute
Wizard
Rook
Forbidden Island
Travel Carcassone
Pocket Ogre - 6x...

My wife loves the Pandemic style multiplayer puzzle, so Pandemic and Defenders are played fairly often. Forbidden Island is obviously the one to play with younger gamers who have never played a game like it. And while owning both Dune and Rex is overkill, Rex is what we play if I dont trust my opponents. You can never have too many copies of Pocket Ogre.

That is actually a shockingly small list for me from 300 to about 50. I would still have space to cycle through some other games, but those are really the core ones we play. Now paring down the video games from the 5,000 it is at now is the big trick