> Another lesson learned is: never buy expansions.

The last game of Carcassonne we played was the first game after we'd just purchased the big box with all of the expansions. It was just... too much.

Japan has something of it's own game renaissance going on (some games make it big in the West), but space is a major consideration there. So almost all Japanese games are very compact (often, but not exclusively, card based)

This view is somewhat biased by what games are small enough to bring over to NA/EU conventions to sell and pitch, and the lower price range of games publishers are willing to take a chance on. This in turn created some expectation that "good Japanese games are small" and became self-reinforcing in terms of what NA/EU publishers were willing to pick up.

Yes, some designers like Pawn and Seiji Kanai keep working mostly in that small-box style (not unlike lots of NA/EU designers), but e.g. Hisashi Hayashi's or Yasushi Kuroda's games weren't small "because of Japan", they were small because they didn't have money to make big ones!

If storage space is a consideration checkout the range of “Tiny Epic Games” by Gamelyn Games. I have about 20 decent games taking up the space of 3 or 4 “normal” size ones.