Tobold's Blog
Monday, June 08, 2026
 
After the game ends

Yesterday we finished our campaign of Arydia. We could have finished before, but we had spent a lot of time on a very long side quest already, and wanted to bring that to a conclusion. That involved one final boss fight. After that, we went to the final evaluation, where as expected we won the game. We didn't get the ultimate completionist win, but that would have involved a lot more hours chasing less interesting side quests. After 13 sessions and 66 hours played we weren't too keen on that, and decided to stop at that point, so we could start our next campaign game, Stonesaga.

I now put the whole Arydia game back into the box. What I didn't do is resetting the game. Arydia is a game which changes while you play it. Map hexes get turned over when exploring them, cards move from active to inactive or banished, additional game components are unveiled during the campaign. We have a big plastic bag full of cardboard tokens representing gear and other stuff we used and discarded during the game. Arydia is a "green legacy" game, so none of the changes are really permanent. It is possible to reset the game and put everything back where it was at the start of the game. The problem is that this would take hours of work, and I am not really motivated to do that.

I think we played through over 90% of the content of Arydia. Playing the game again would follow largely the exact same story, even if the order or individual battles could play differently. A second playthrough would certainly be a lot less interesting than the first playthrough. And as my board game library resembles my Steam library, too many games - too little time, I don't really see me playing Arydia a second time, even if I enjoyed the first campaign.

Unlike a Steam game I played and don't plan to come back to, a board game takes up physical space. Arydia is a huge box weighing 11 kg. I wouldn't even want to sell it used on Ebay or elsewhere, as I don't want to ship such a huge box. And with the game being in a state where it would need hours of work to reset, I doubt there would be much interest for it anyway.

So I am currently leaning towards throwing the game away. Maybe keep some of the materials like the painted miniatures for use elsewhere, and sort the rest into plastic and paper waste. But that feels somewhat ungrateful towards a game we had a lot of fun with. On the other side, I can't have too many games I'll never play again block all of my shelf space.

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Comments:
As a big gamer myself I always offered my "done" games at a very cheap price but with the condition that the buyer has to come and get it himself, since you are also a Essen Visitor you could always consider the trading option there but thats not as easy with transporting =)
 
In the US there are always groups looking for used items to sell them cheaply, or just given them, to people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford them. Could you drop it off to a group like that the next time you’re “in town”? Just hearing you describe it, it seems a shame to waste it.
 
I found somebody via a forum who might come and take the game off me. But board games are a niche hobby, and campaign board games are a niche within that niche. Not many people play a $200 board game that takes 66 hours to finish.
 
I'm curious about your thoughts on Agemonia vs arydia vs tidal blades 2. How would you rank them?
 
Arydia was feeling more like a generic pen & paper game, with a d20 combat system, albeit spiced up with a hit zone system. Agemonia felt more linear and scripted, but it was interesting to see how the rule system allowed for some quite interesting encounters. Tidal Blades 2 had the most interesting combat system, in my opinion. All three games are very good, but I wouldn't play them a second time.
 
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