Super excited for the concept and extending the COIN system to more settings! I'll probably try to play some async VASSAL games, but I've had to limit myself from buying any more IRL COIN games. They're just too difficult to get to the table in my situation.

Beginner here, so grain of salt but my understanding is that generally chrome tan doesn't burnish well and most use "edge paint" to seal and get a nice smooth edge on chrome tan.

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll check it out.

We play mostly at 2. Furnace functions, but obviously isn't its best at 2 players. It becomes a tiny bit Chess like b/c you can often see exactly, "If I place this number there, that'll force this and there will force that". I still quite enjoy it and would play it for a quick game or two on an evening when we're not up for crunching a bigger title. But I don't know that I would recommend it for just 2p (unless you found a good deal).

Great Western Trail was new to us when we bought the 2nd edition and it's a top 5 now.

Tiletum -- we really love Lorenzo il Magnifico and Tiletum although a bit lighter is just as fun.

Furnace is a neat filler. I'm interested to see what the expansion adds and whether it elevates it to a mainstay.

I'm sad that Asmodee killed off FFG's sleeves, but the GameGenic sleeves have been holding up for me just fine and seem to be regularly in stock.

Lacerda games aren't for me. I'm fine with heavy, but they're all complexity for complixity's sake without adding any value to the decision space or immersion or anything (IMO, of course).

Lacerda games are also by and large guaranteed to be printed and available on EGG's site (if no where else ). In your case, the wait and see approach seems best. Wait for playthrough videos, wait for the other 100s and 1000s to receive and play their copies and see if the game really holds up. Worst case, if it turns out the game is amazing and you're group is actually down to play it, you might have to pay $15-20 more for it (maybe). An extra $20 bucks for something you're sure about vs. pledging and having it just sit on the shelf seems like a no brainer....