This week, six of us sat down to try The Boardgamegeek Game, a Richard Breese design that has been published to celebrate the tenth anniversary in January 2010 of BoardGameGeek.

In the game, players act both as game publishers, trying to get their games sold in the local shops for the best prices, and as game collectors trying to build the best collection for their game group. In each of the six rounds, the players firstly take turns putting game titles (face down) into the shops they would like to sell the game. Once everyone has finished adding games for sale, players roll dice to determine where their three geeks are going to turn up to shop. There is then an opportunity to spend geekgold (VPs) to move your geeks to different shops. Once the geeks are decided on where they are going to shop, the titles are revealed and players take turns buying a game with one of their geeks, with the game's publisher rewarded with geekgold dictated by where within the shop's window the game was displayed. Any games not bought remain for the next round but are usually then offered at a discount. After six rounds, players receive additional geekgold depending on what they have collected, normally the number value shown on the game tile but, if you managed to get a complete set of games of the same value, you get a fixed reward of 30 (in the five player game) for that set. This makes grabbing a set of low numbered tiles very lucrative.

I think we all quite enjoyed TBGGG. It isn't anything terribly original in terms of mechanics but it works well and plays in good time. Revealing the bonuses at the end should be quite tense but, as I got complete sets of '1' and '2' tiles, it was always going to difficult to catch me up.