Four years ago I did one of those aggressive shelf purges where you decide anything unplayed in the last year is on the chopping block, and Twilight Struggle, a game I’d backed a repackaged printing of years before that and only actually gotten to the table twice, got swept up in that logic and sold to someone off a local hobby group’s classifieds post. At the time it felt like a purely rational decision, the math was right there, two plays in three years is not a good ratio for a box that size sitting on a shelf that isn’t infinite.

What I didn’t account for is that some games aren’t really about play frequency, they’re about the specific two evenings you did get out of them, and those two evenings with Twilight Struggle have stuck with me harder than games I’ve played fifty times since. Renata and I played the full campaign length version once, a genuinely tense evening where the whole Cold War arc actually built the way it’s supposed to, DEFCON creeping down, the coup attempts landing at exactly the worst moments, and I remember it clearer four years later than I remember most of what I played last month.

I’ve thought about buying it back more times than I’d like to admit, and the thing stopping me isn’t really the money, it’s a slightly irrational worry that a second copy wouldn’t recreate that specific evening, that I’d be chasing a memory instead of actually wanting the game itself. Which is probably true and also probably a bad reason not to just buy a very good two-player game that I know I like.

The lesson I’ve tried to actually apply since, with mixed success, is that play count isn’t the only metric worth tracking on a shelf purge, some boxes are there for the rare, dense, unforgettable evening rather than the reliable weeknight filler, and purging on frequency alone will occasionally cost you something you can’t easily get back. I still do shelf purges. I’m just slower about them now, and I read the “when did we last play this and how did it go” question a lot more carefully before a box goes in the sell pile.

I’ve mentioned this to a couple of people since and gotten two very different reactions. One friend thought the whole hesitation was silly, said the game is the game, a fresh copy plays exactly the same regardless of what evening you had with the old one, buy it back and stop overthinking it. Another friend got it immediately, said she still regrets selling a specific out-of-print game for almost the identical reason, one perfect session she can’t recreate and doesn’t want to risk diluting with a mediocre second attempt. I land closer to the second camp, which is probably not a very defensible position, logically the cardboard doesn’t remember anything, only I do.

Renata thinks I should just buy it, for what it’s worth, she’s the practical one in the marriage about most things that aren’t games. She’s also the one who was there for that campaign-length evening, so when she shrugs and says it’ll probably still be good, I trust that more than I’d trust my own nostalgia running unchecked.

I’ll probably buy it back eventually. I’m just not quite ready to find out if the memory holds up.