Reprints Encore

I feel like saying encore partly because I’m going to echo some of the prior comments, and partly because I’m on a train from Brussels to Amsterdam and I felt like speaking some French.  I thought most folks in Brussels spoke Flemish or Dutch, but I sure heard a hell of a lot of French while I was in town there this week.

The city just isn’t as interesting our quaint as so many others are in Europe.  Some blame it on the Euro-ifaction of Brussels, but frankly I wasn’t too impressed when I last visited in 1990.  Now the food and beer are outstanding – much better than anything I had in Germany last October.  There just isn’t much to see outside of a few museums downtown.  I’ve got all of Friday in Amsterdam and hope to visit the Ann Frank museum again and hit one or two of the art museums.  Update from Amsterdam: we hit two of the art museums.  More on that later.

Reprints… let’s see.  Why is it that everything that comes to mind is a wargame?  I don’t play them nearly as much as I do Euro/German-style games, but still I crave them.  All the more remarkable is the fact that those I crave the most, I haven’t even played before.  I’m thinking Up Front, We the People, Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage.  I think I can do without a reprint of Rise and Decline of the Third Reich.  Having read through the rules for Paths of Glory, my appetite for card-driven wargames is especially fierce right now.  Getting through a game of PoG is certainly an important step before I go crazy and purchase Hannibal or We the People off eBay – I may not enjoy it as much as I think I will.

While Dave seems to think I would pursue the perfectly logical and economically sound approach of reprinting those games that will produce the most profits, my belief is that most reprints will either be labors of love or low-risk reprints driving by the GMT P500.  A modernized, re-themed Die Macher could be very interesting, but I hesitate to vote for that as I haven’t even managed to get in a playing yet.  Taj Mahal is definitely on my list of games to acquire that are out-of-print, but I don’t think it has near strong enough appeal to warrant a reprint.

This is not strictly a reprint, but I think it would be very cool to see Eagle Games do a treatment on the 18xx system.  Not to dumb it down, but to blend some interesting bits with reduced playing time and increased approachability for this gaming system.  Maybe this could be a Railroad Tycoon expansion.

There’s one collectible card game that I’d like to see more expansions for: 7th Sea.  There was such a great story arc to this game that I would have enjoyed seeing it play out more.  The flip side is that I was able to obtain a large number of cards for next to nothing after it went out of print.

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Final comment after spending a day here in Amsterdam – found a fantastic game store near our hotel.  Funny enough, the name of the store is the Game Keeper and it had probably the widest selection of the Euro games I’ve seen, even after visiting Germany.  Didn’t buy anything though – no spectacular deals, although I did inquire about other Splotter titles after seeing Bus in stock.  Thought there might be an affordable copy of Antiquity available, but it wasn’t to be.

Flying back to Portland tomorrow for a week at home, then I’m off to Alabama and DC the following week.