That started when I stumbled over the news of the release of Arkham Horror: The Card Game - Chapter 2. Arkham Horror: The Card Game is a so-called Living Card Game, a type of game that lives somewhere between board games and trading card games. That makes them a bit confusing and annoying for board gamers, as different expansion sets arrive and sell out, and you never know what exactly you would have to buy to get started here. As Chapter 2 is a new Core Set, it would be a good starting point, and so I looked into the game. Read on various forums about it and asked questions, watched YouTube videos, the typical stuff I do when I research a game.

Then in the afternoon of the same day, I got a mail that a crowdfunding campaign I was interested in had started. It was for Brass: Pittsburgh, the latest entry in the Brass series of board games. With Brass: Birmingham being the top rated game on BGG for years now, that crowdfunding campaign had 60,000 people following it, which is a very high number for a board game. So I had the same question again, do I need this game? And I again spent hours reading about the game and watching videos.

At the end of the day, I had made my decisions: I won't buy either of these games. That is not because I think these are bad games. But because in my current board game environment, I wouldn't be able to bring them to a table and play them.

I currently only have one campaign game group left, the only group that is repeatedly playing the same game, currently Arydia: The Paths We Dare Tread. The rest of my gaming activity is board game nights, either privately organized or in public spaces like my friendly local game store. As the public spaces have opening hours, I am limited to games I can set up, explain, play, and pack in within 3.5 hours. And as these are public spaces, I tend to play with different people every week.

Arkham Horror: The Card Game is recommended for 2 players, while playing it with 4 players pushes it beyond my 3.5 hour limit. And it is a game in which much of the interest lies in deckbuilding between sessions, so one would need to play through several scenarios of the same campaign with the same people.

I already have Brass: Birmingham, and I am not playing it all that often, as games are often getting very close to that time limit. Looking at Brass: Pittsburgh I quickly saw that the game is more complicated than Brass: Birmingham, adding several new game mechanics and resources, and will almost certainly take more time to play than Brass: Birmingham.

In the end, both of these board games would be more suitable to a fixed group of players meeting privately in a regular manner and repeatedly playing the same game. That isn't a good fit to my current situation.