The Games of 2021

Another great annual tradition here in blogland is reflecting on the board games I played in the previous year. I am a little later to the tradition than usual, in part because yesterday, I spent the day in a family game jam. It seems like a January 1st game jam has got to be a good way to start the year. The result is Salvage Scavenger, our first game in 3D and our first project since last April. As usual, the code is available online if you'd like to check it out.

But enough about that! Back to the games.

Last year, I logged 478 plays, which is almost 50 fewer than the previous year. This was spread over 87 different games, which is also fewer than last year. There are a few factors here that I think contributed to the downward trend. One of them is, of course, the continued pandemic, which has hindered the ability to get together with both friends and family to play games. This particularly affects the variety of games, since it's often playing with friends or distant relatives that allows me to try something new. As for the number of plays, I can't help but think wistfully about how just a few years ago, we would play board games basically every night. Now, my oldest son is involved in community activities, gone at least twice a week at meetings. My youngest two sons have a later bedtime, which means that by the time they are processed, there's not really time or energy to get into anything serious with my wife and older sons. We're stuck playing during daytime hours, but even there, the kids are involved in a lot more than they used to be. It's all good, of course, and we're still a far cry from being empty nesters; yet, I do yearn for those old patterns, looking forward each night to a different lovely game. Also, honestly, the Epic Game Store giveaways probably ate into some game time as well, as I feel like I may have spent more time this past year playing video games than the previous year. I don't log that rigorously, but you know, Cyberpunk 2077 doesn't play itself.

Here are the games that got at least ten plays during 2021:

• The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine (29)
• Xia: Legends of a Drift System (27)
• The Quacks of Quedlinburg (26)
• Clank! (25)
• Thunderstone Quest (25)
• MonsDRAWsity (24)
• My City (20)
• Oceans (20)
• Crokinole (14)
• Dune: Imperium (13)
• Arcadia Quest (12)
• Kingdomino (12)
• Lost Ruins of Arnak (12)
• The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth (11)
• Mage Knight Board Game (11)
• Pandemic Legacy: Season 0 (11)

I am surprised at that first entry, since we haven't had that to the table since March. Honestly, I thought it was fine, but I didn't love it like some people did. On the other hand, Xia is on my short-list for Gestwicki Game of the Year. I picked it up after hearing accolades about it from the Arydia kickstarter, and my family has loved it. The older set enjoys playing full, 20-point games, and the younger boys can join in 60-minute timed or lower-point games. Quacks and MonsDRAWsity are my other two candidates for this illustrious and completely made up award. I'll mention too that after playing a bit of Wingspan and Oceans recently, I came to realize it's the latter that's my current favorite tableau-builder.  Of course, Clank remains a staple around here for accessible and fun deck-building. 

It's worth pointing out the twelve games of Arcadia Quest here represent two campaigns with my third son, who is now old enough to get through the game. He's done a fine job, and it's been fun to go through the game again with a full four players. When my youngest son is old enough to play, well, I don't know what we'll do. Will they do a campaign without me?

I am still a little grumpy at Journeys in Middle Earth; after spending all that time painting the expansion, we played one of the two campaigns and found its ending to be frustrating and badly designed. We haven't picked it up since, but maybe we will in 2022.

We played a few tabletop roleplaying games this year as well. The data for these are not counted in the total plays discussed above. Earlier this year, we played five sessions of Dungeon Crawl Classics as part of a funnel and a scenario, and more recently, we have played two sessions of Raccoon Sky Pirates. I'm not sure if we'll see more RPGs in 2022 or not, but I hope they are still well represented. Like so many games, they are hard to get to fit exactly into all family members' sweet spots. 

My h-index is 27, meaning there are 27 games that I have played at least 27 times. 

As usual, let's wrap up by looking at all-time plays (at least, "all-time" since I started logging in 2016). I'll just be looking at games with at least 30 plays, which is a higher cap than last year but keeps the list a little more manageable.

• Clank! (83)
• Crokinole (75)
• Kingdomino (74)
• Thunderstone Quest (71)
• Gloomhaven (61)
• Race for the Galaxy (64)
• Animal Upon Animal (56)
• Carcassonne (56)
• Camel Up  (49)
• Arcadia Quest (48)
• The Quacks of Quedlinburg (47)
• Quiddler (47)
• Rhino Hero Super Battle (43)
• Pathfinder Adventure Card Game (all versions) (40)
• The Crew: Quest for Planet Nine (40)
• The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth (39)
• Labyrinth (38)
• My City (38)
• Runebound Third Edition (38)
• Reiner Knizia's Amazing Flea Circus (34)
• BONK (32)
• Mage Knight Board Game (32)
• Massive Darkness (31)
• Terror in Meeple City (31)

Note that this year, I still combined both the original and new core sets of Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, but I did not roll together the Clank and Clank Legacy stats. I'm on the verge of recycling my copy of Clank Legacy since, with the campaign over, it's just so much more trouble to get to the table than one of the core games. Fond memories, but maybe too much effort for the amount of shelf space. It's fun here to see games I really enjoy growing to expand over ones that are locked in time, like Animal Upon Animal. There was a time when this was the easiest game to get to the table with young boys, but now, everyone gets much more excited about something like My City. 

That's it for this year's report. I hope I get to join you at the game table in 2022!