The Upgrades

I was sitting in a sales meeting the other dayyyyyy

and the speaker was talking about Apple. Apple convinced people they needed the iPad. You have your MacBook and you have your iPhone, but you don’t have those two things combined. You need it. The iPad is even more portable than a laptop (which is already a portable computer) and the iPad has a bigger screen than your phone, making it easier to perform tasks, or let’s be real, watch Netflix. Apple sold us three products that all roughly can do the same thing. I love it. I have all three of these items.

This isn’t about technology though. I don’t understand technology. If I had already established a reader following, I’d assuredly get comments about the difference between all Apple products. I want to discuss board game upgrades. The luxury items to our luxury items. The things that we’re convinced we need, but really don’t. Before we really dive in, I’ll make it clear, I love upgrading my board games. I have inserts, painted minis, metal coins, realistic resources and just added GeekUp Bits.

GeekUp Bits

The GeekUp Bits is really why I wanted to write this post. One week ago I found Quacks of Quedlinburg at my FLGS (shout out Beyond the Board in Dublin, Ohio) for cheaper than I’ve even seen it online. I bought it; I played it the next night; I instantly got on Board Game Geek to get the GeekUp Bits. The game was a hit (review coming after a few more plays), but I kept thinking about how much more satisfying it would be to pull thick, clanking, plastic pieces out of that bag.

Realistic Resources & Metal Coins

I pretty much only have these for Scythe. Scythe is second favorite game, or my favorite game, depending on how you feel about Pandemic Legacy Season 1 being my favorite, but never being able to play it again. I decided I was going to make Scythe the best experience I could for myself. I ponied up for the resources, coins, insert, expansions. I didn’t even question these purchases. At some point I just decided “Screw it. They’re getting all the money.” Charterstone and Raiders of the North Sea came with metal coins, so I didn’t really upgrade, but Charterstone’s coins are now in my Roll Player.

Inserts

Easily the most valuable of all board game upgrades. An upgrade that serves an actual game purpose. You get to set up faster, and you don’t have to leave 100 bags all over the floor. You get to clean up faster, and you don’t have to go through all those bags thinking, “This bag is way too small to fit 200 cards in it. Start over.” I have inserts for Scythe, Clans of Caledonia, Legendary Marvel, Lords of Waterdeep and the Hobby Lobby artist box and insert for Arkham Horror LCG. Gloomhaven has it’s unofficial insert with Plano boxes. All of these games are more enjoyable for me because of the insert. If I lost my games in a fire, I would buy them again along with these wooden inserts. You know the companies that make these wooden inserts, but I’m trying to squeeze some advertising money out of them before mentioning them by name. Some of these inserts for sale are bizarre to me though. King of Tokyo? Someone feels like King of Tokyo is such a bear, they need to get that crap organized or it’ll never hit the table. A King of Tokyo insert…alright.

Where Are We?

Here’s the issue with these upgrades, and this is going to shock everyone, I mean everyone…they’re so damn expensive. The GeekUp Bits were $42. I doubled the price of the game to make it a little more pleasing. If my friends ask me how much it cost to upgrade those pieces, I would be embarrassed to say. I would be embarrassed if they were $25. I felt guilty purchasing this upgrade, because it really is ridiculous.

Now, it’s not like my family is going without food this week. I have a monthly board game budget, so I decided that upgrading a game was more important than another game. Every few months, I would much rather buy something board game adjacent to make a favorite game a little more favorable. I don’t really ever have a shelf of shame, I don’t buy games that pile up. It’s more of the fact that I don’t need to be teaching a new game every few weeks. It can exhaust my friends. My purchases ebbs and flows. I’ll buy a few games in a row, then I’ll pause and reflect about how I’d really like to keep playing these games I’ve just bought and don’t want something new competing with them. That’s when I really start looking at inserts or upgrades or painting minis (saving the mini painting topic for a future post).

These upgrades are insane. Can you imagine telling someone not in the hobby that you bought a game that cost $50, and then spent another $50 for different pieces or for a wooden box to go in the box? It’s not something you should do for every game. There’s an argument (the reasonable person argument) to be made you shouldn’t do it for any game. But, If you have a board game budget, it’s a nice change of pace from just always buying games. And I would suggest creating a monthly budget if you don’t already.

No one asked for this.