Last week I was contacted by a fellow BGG member from Alaska polling for people willing to trade a game for his freshly out of shrink copy of A Few Acres of Snow. The BGG software supports you creating a formal, expiring, offer to trade a game from your collection for a game in another user’s collection. If accepted, the two parties pay for their own shipping and on the honor system, simply mail the game. Given that it’s the honor system you’re taking some risk but the software also supports trade ratings and the ability to contact potential parties outside of the trade system. I usually contact the person directly, establish the current state of the game being traded, in my case, for only new or like-new games.
As luck would have it and wanting a copy of A Few Acres of Snow, I shipped off my copy of Container (hadn’t seen the light of day in years), and when the copy arrived I tore into it. A Few Acres is a card-driven, two-player, battle game from Martin Wallace. The game pits the French against the British for dominance in northeastern North America during the 1700s. The game uses a deck-building mechanic which is to say, players start with a fixed hand and then amass more cards throughout the game. Many cards serve multiple purposes depending on how they are played and many simply muddy up your deck.
The first printing of Wallace games that come directly from TreeFrog are signed and numbered by Wallace himself and have premium components. I have two other games like this: Tinners’ Trail & Steel Driver. Unfortunately, the copy of A Few Acres is a 2nd printing and is not signed or numbered and has lower quality components. The 2nd printing fortresses are simply black discs and I decided, on a whim, to pimp out my copy with homemade bits that resemble the 1st printing fortresses. What you see in the image above is the end result. Below is an image of the bits while being made.
