The “deal” may be a dictation the way things are going.

And you think the Chinese are going to deal? They have absolutely no incentive to.

Tariffs raise prices? But that’s unpossible!

If you think thousand dollar games are a necessity for modern publishing, I’m sorry there’s absolutely no common ground your or i have. Buh-bye.

The point is these are games MADE FOR RICH PEOPLE. You know, like I said at the beginning of your blank incomprehension:

If you’re “appealing to a larger market” by making the game so expensive that only a few can afford it, are you really getting a larger market? Or are you just deciding you want to cater to rich folk?

$150 for an all cardboard game. Now let’s talk Star Wars: Imperial assault:

• core game: about $110
• dice for everybody? That’s an extra $12 per.
• want expansions? That’s $50 to $75 each. If you want all of them, that’s about $375
• want the “ally and villain packs”? That’s $15-$22 each. If we just count the ones still in print: That’s about $598

Fortunately all of the skirmish maps (at $25 each) are out of print so we’ve saved ourselves a further $325.

So the complete game, with all published parts currently available, is over a thousand bucks, which is utterly ludicrous for a mass market game that won’t even be remembered in a couple of decades (and whose components will have long rotted away before a century is out.

How ludicrous am I talking? For the price of this game that won’t survive a century as any kind of cultural icon (and whose components likely won’t last more than 30 years) I can buy a bespoke Xiangqi (Chinese Chess) set made of knotty red sandalwood with ornate, handmade mother-of-pearl inlay.

But this isn’t the entry price to play the game. If I just want to see if the game is even something I’m interested in, I can get a perfectly functional set for a little bit over fifty cents:

And even this el-cheapo set will outlast, probably, the thousand dollar Star Wars game aside from the thin board (which you can replicate easily with a piece of scrap wood, a pencil, and a ruler). And I also know the actual game will have legs considering the first known set of components was found in the archaeological record at 900 years ago or so, while mentions of it in literature go back almost 2500 years.

So here we have a game accessible to literally anybody ranging from the budget-conscious to the æsthetic fetishist, and that has proved popular across wildly different social classes for well over a thousand years. THIS is the kind of thing I wish the game industry would return to instead of ludicrous stuff like Star Wars: Imperial Assault, or Kingdom Death: Monsters, or Cthulhu Wars, or even the humble old Ogre. (In defence of Ogre, though, I have to say that at least it once had a cheap edition, and may still have.)

TL;DR summary: Stop making games for just rich folk if you want, you know, to expand the hobby, especially now that Trump’s tariffs are killing everything.

$150 for a game consisting entirely of cardboard, essentially.

How much did the deluxe version of Ogre cost again?

If you’re “appealing to a larger market” by making the game so expensive that only a few can afford it, are you really getting a larger market? Or are you just deciding you want to cater to rich folk?

I’m with @drolex here. I think it may be time for board/card/whatever game designers to return to basics: making games that people play, not the board game equivalent of a coffee table book.

I’m with you on Shogi. I find that it’s on the least-elegant side of the chess spectrum and I just never managed to internalize the rules. I’ve tried it a few times, but I return to Xiangqi as a good, fast-moving game (that I completely and utterly suck at … but enjoy to pieces nonetheless).

As an alternative, for training up, you can print up circular labels of the appropriate size with the Chinese characters and their English meanings and stick them on the bottom of the playing pieces. Just play with the pieces upside-down until you’re used to the characters.

I have no idea. Can’t be much older than 5, though.

BTW, the kid knows the game very well. He kicked the adult’s ass. Almost casually. (There were only two short points where he paused to think when playing.)

象棋 is in the family of Chess games, but it is a different game, yes, like Japan’s Shogi. If you have any chess skills they’ll translate well to this game, though. There’s a Chess Variants page summary available that goes into better detail. In brief, though, the differences include:

1. The “palace” in the centre of each side. The general and his advisors/guards are only permitted to move in that space: the advisors one space along the diagonals only, the general one space orthogonally only.
2. Generals are not allowed to be in uninterrupted line of sight across the board. (A common pinning tactic uses this rule.)
3. The elephant/ministers move diagonally two spaces, can be blocked, and cannot cross the “river” in the middle of the board. (This means they can only inhabit 7 places on the board, yet despite their rigidity knowing how to use them is incredibly important to play.)
4. The horses move like knights in Chess, but unlike knights they can be blocked: they do not jump.
5. The chariots are identical in movement and capture to the rooks of Chess.
6. The cannons are … the things that will screw you up the most. They’re very subtle pieces. They move like chariots, but they capture by jumping a single piece (either side’s) to take a single piece on the other side of the jump. They must have precisely one piece between them and the target to capture it.
7. The soldiers (what you called pawns) move forward one space when on their side of the river. Once they cross the river they can move one space forward, or to the left and right. They capture as they move.
8. The game has the same number of pieces as Chess, but the board is larger (90 spaces instead of 64) meaning games tend to be more dynamic and free-flowing than Chess games.

Read the Chess Variants page for more detailed rules. It’s actually quite a fun game once you get used to reading the characters on the pieces.

Xiangqi, a.k.a. Chinese Chess.

I get this impression that people in the USA simply don’t comprehend how much work and money is going to be needed to “return manufacturing to America”.

Perhaps this video will help: https://peertube.mesnumeriques.fr/w/4ukCr36qciYWFVGpCVPsQM

It is not merely labour costs that make production in China better for most companies. It’s the flexibility that Chinese businesses show as well.

Weirdly that’s exactly the reason I don’t buy American-made products.

Hey, think of the bright side!

Look at your shelf. Count the games that you’ve never played more than once (if you’ve played them at all!). With the industry collapsing you’ll find the time to play those games more often!

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Not. A. Chance.

There isn’t enough money in the world.

This seems to be endemic to billionaires. Robotman forces people to lose to him in a board game. Ketamine Kiddie pays people to play his video games for him so he can seem “elite”. What are we going to find out about Bezos next? That he forces people to play poker with him with the card faces turned his way?

Yeah, Azul has some spiffy pieces indeed!