What I don’t like about your categories is that you’re focusing on the buying and owning games part.

Apparently I am “Expert” but I don’t feel like one. I just like playing lots of games. I have too many games but very few unplayed. The “as many as you can” is bound by money, space and time to play.

Who made these categories?

I love to research new games to death. I’ll read pdfs of rules, purchase them, look for expansions, etc. But I don’t play as often as I would like. I don’t have a group of friends and I mainly play with my SO. The games that hit the table most often are light to medium weight and games that work well with 2 players. I’ve loved games since I was a kid and have trouble culling my collection, but sometimes I exhaust my enthusiasm unfortunately.

I dislike this way of trying to put people into categories.

I have very few board games (10ish). Occasionally I rent boardgames. But still I’ve played over 200 different ones and know almost all of the games people mention. I know many places with very good collections where I can play board games for free, people often bring many games to events and I have friends who have very big collections as well.

The reason I don’t like buying more boardgames is I’m a fan of shared products. I’ll only buy small games that I absolutely love. That way I can save a lot of storage space. If there’s a game I want to play that I don’t have then I’ll either rent it or ask a friend to bring it. To ensure I’m not a leech I tend to bring snacks to private events or take care of explaining games to newcommers.

I’m more of a specialist and a rule lawyer.

I mostly have a small collection of games ranging from easily explained to really huge. Like, I have Flashpoint, or Pandemic, or Betrayal at the house on the Hill. All of these are games you can understand well enough in 1-2 rounds of going if you know boardgames a bit. And then there are things like Junta, Arkham Horror, Eldricht Horror, Battlestar Galactica, considering to get the new dune game. Those are great, but a lot harder to get into.

But that’s a quality my current gaming circle likes. I can pick up a lot of rulesets and digest them decently quickly, because I’ve played a lot of games, and a lot of complicated games over the years. Like, if you’ve dealt with MtG and Dominion, you’ve seen 90% of deck building concepts and rules. Some P&P RPG experiences in 2-3 frameworks cover a lot of ground for a bunch of game rules. You kinda learn how rules tend to be written, how rules tend to be designed, and how rules are usually intended to be and that helps processing rulesets quicker.

I’m a specialist. I played a decent amount of different games, enough to know what I like. My collection is small, around 30 games, ranging from Boonanza to Frosthaven. I have a game for every occasion and I really like them ALL. I buy a new game every year or so and every couple of years I do a ‘clean up’ and sell a few game that I’ve lost interest in.

I must admit: I keep a few games that I should part with, but I just can’t do it (Catan, Monopoly).

I would say I am a Specialist, maybe becoming a Collector.

We do not have so many games and enjoy playing the games we have as much as possible. It is our favorite hobby and we do not shy away from heavy games, in fact, we prefer a healthy mix of some easy to get into games and harder games.

We probably have something like 30 games. we thought about selling some but its almost more hassle than just keeping them around.

The poor fan: Watches all of the videos, reads through PDFs of rulebooks, joins communities… but has a very sparse collection and doesn’t have time to play.

Wow. That was sad to type out.

Sheepishly I’ll classify myself as The Collector even though I am slowing down the purchases.

I suppose I’m also a bit of a Casual since I’m not playing super frequently - but not for lack of opportunity as there are plenty of local meetups - just don’t have the time.