u/Parking_Chemical8747

There’s a bluffing layer built into this too: giving up a record is public — everyone sees which genre it is, so opponents can start guessing what you’re NOT collecting. But what you pull out stays hidden, since the sleeves are blank on the front and the genre’s only on the back. Giving is public, taking is secret — that’s the tension that makes people hesitate before digging.
Had a playtest recently where it all clicked: I’d bought one record of my genre, but an opponent held the other two — game looked over for me. I dug into the crate and pulled one out, which got me to two. Later he dumped his other one into the crate since he didn’t need it — I dug it out on my very last turn and completed the set.
Still iterating on balance. Curious if anyone here has designed similar “shared resource pool” mechanics — how did you handle the tension between “junk for one player, treasure for another”?

After 20 years of digging through crates, I finally designed a game around that specific feeling

I’ve spent a year designing a board game about vinyl hunting — here’s the crate-digging mechanic I’m most proud