It’s that time of year again – when most gamers pull out their notebooks or spreadsheets to go over the data that they have meticulously collected and relive the glory of the previous year in gaming. OK, so I don’t usually do that with the data, but why else do we gamers keep such records? It’s not like I’m going to need to know in 2025 how many games I played this year…
So, I didn’t do the best job of keeping records. I pretty much lost the data on anything that didn’t involve my weekly group. But, with the help of the other members of my group, I was able to successfully fill out the Google Doc which we share amongst us with the goings on of the local group.
It’s been awhile since I’ve had a group that was this stable – and it has helped me play games almost every week. We have limited this particular group to only 5 people – and I’d say that we average just under 4 gamers at any particular meeting. But, even if we all show up – finding a game that easily accomodates five players is no problem. By keeping the numbers intentionally low in this group, we always stick together at a single table, and there isn’t any of that funny “waiting around for the other table to finish” business that happens in larger groups.
We meet about once a week, usually Tuesday or Wednesday night, starting around 6:30pm and going until we get tired – usually between 11 and midnight — meaning there is about 5 hours of gaming in each session. As part of the email chain to decide which night to play, we often propose a game or two to make sure that we play that week. The upside of this early discussion is that we often have all had a chance to read the rules to the games ahead of time – so even if we are playing a new game, we can get through the rules explanation at a fairly quick pace and get into the fun of actually playing a game!
All five of us are fairly open-minded in our gaming, and we all pretty much will try anything once – though we’re not afraid to exercise a veto if there is something that we didn’t like the first time around. The other nice thing is that we mostly play fast – this allows us to get in 3-4 games on most nights.
So looking at the spreadsheet, our group met at least 42 times this year – though I think that we missed a few weeks of data! We usually miss a few weeks around the holidays as well as the weeks just before and just after Essen and just before and just after the Gathering of Friends.
Over those 42 sessions that were recorded, we played 263 games. Interestingly, there was only one game that would make a nickel/dime list… We played Finito 5 times (four of them in one gaming session). The next most popular games were all played 4 times: Terra Mystica, Seasons and Love Letter. Then, there are a bunch of games that were played 3 times. Why 3 times? Because that’s the number of times that I like to play a game before reviewing it, and that therefore becomes a target for many games.
An alphabetical list of the games that we played over 2012 will show the breadth of the games that we played. We also made a point of playing a number of older games as one of the guys in our group is still relatively new to gaming.
- 1969
- 1000 island railways
- Acquire
- Aeroplanes
- Agricola all creatures great and small
- Aloha: the spirit of hawaii
- Among the stars
- Aquileia
- Arabian Adventure
- Ark&Noah
- Arngriff der Klonkrieger
- Asara
- Atlantis Rising
- Attraction
- Banana Matcho
- Battle beyond space
- Bayon
- Burdigala
- Burgund
- Can’t Stop
- Carrara – basic
- Carrara – advanced
- Catan Junior
- Caveman Curling
- Chipswitcher
- City of horror
- Climb!
- Copycat
- Coup
- Courtier
- Crazy Creatures of Dr Gloom
- crazy derby
- Croa!
- Defenders of the Realm card game
- Der dreizehnte Holzwurm
- Der Elefant im Porzellanladen
- Diamant
- Die tore der welt kartenspiel
- Doge Ship
- DrachenSchatten
- Einfach Genial: Das Wurfelspiel
- Enigma
- Epic spell wars of the battle wizards: duel at mt. skullzfyre
- Escape
- Family Vacation
- Famous 500
- Famous fairways
- Famous fastball
- Famous football
- Famous forehand
- Felinia
- Filipino Fruit Market
- Finito
- Fleet
- Flower Fall
- For Sale
- Fruit Ninja the Card Game
- Game
- Gauntlet of Fools
- Giganten der lufte
- Ginkgopolis
- Gipsy King
- Goblins inc
- Greg’s Tagebuch
- Helvetia
- High Society
- Hobbit card game
- Hols der teufel
- Il Vecchio
- Irondie
- Kaispecher
- Kalimambo
- Karnaxis
- Keltis: Das Wurfelspiel
- Keyflower
- King of Tokyo + Power Up
- Kleine fotosafari
- Kosmonauts
- Lancaster
- Last chance
- last days of pompei
- Lets take a hike
- Liar’s dice
- Limits
- Little Devils
- Lords of Waterdeep
- Love Letter
- Mage Knight
- Master of Rules
- Metropolitan
- Milestones
- Myrmes
- Neighborhood planner dice game
- Nur peanuts
- Oddville
- Ole
- out of gears
- Oversight
- Pala
- Palaces of Carrara
- Payoff Machine
- PG: first Sparks
- PI
- Pizza theory
- Puerto Rico
- QIN
- R
- Ra
- Rapa nui
- Riff Raff
- Rocks!
- Rolling Freight
- Rolling Racers
- Rondo
- Saint Malo
- Samurai Sword
- Santa Cruz
- Santiago de cuba
- Schnuff
- Seasons
- Settlers of Catan
- Seven Sisters
- Sheepdogs of Pendelton Hill
- Sheepland
- Siberia TCG
- Smash Up
- Snowdonia
- Spellbound
- Star Wars Angriff der Klonkriegers
- Starship Merchants
- Step by Step
- Stichmeister
- Stone age
- Suburbia
- Tenakee
- Terra Mystica
- The Crow and the Pitcher
- The Dwarf King
- The hobbit card game
- Through the desert
- Tokaido
- Tooth and nail faction
- Town center
- Trains
- Trajan
- Trick of the rails
- Tricky Bid
- Troyes
- Truckers 1.5
- TTR Asia Team
- TtR India
- Uchronia
- Unexpected Treasures
- Vanuatu
- Verflixxt
- Web of power
- Wurfel bingo
- Yellowstone park
- Yspahan
- zirkus flohcati
- Zooloretto wurfelspiel
This year, we are keeping to the same schedule, and we’ve got a lot of games still to play from Essen 2012! Hopefully, we’ll get through all those games by the time the Gathering rolls around in April because that’s when I’ll get the first batch of Nurnberg releases to try out! I would also like to explore the idea of theme nights – where we pick a year and then only play games released in that year.
For instance, if we chose 1998, I’d try to get Through the Desert, Elfenland, Verrater, Schnäppchen Jagd and Honeybears to the table. For 1992, it would be Modern Art, Tal der Konige, Stimmt So!, Spekulation and Loopin Louie! We had also thought of going through and playing only SdJ winners for a week or two. Anyways, those are all good ideas for the summer when we’re in between waves of new releases…
Thanks to the regular members of the group for playing so many different games and for not being afraid to try something at least once!
Wow! 3 – 4 games in a 5-hour period? You guys really play fast. Many in our East Tennessee Gamers group — myself included — tend to play considerably slower than folks in your group. Unless we are playing games that have a 1-hour time frame, we can usually only fit 2 games at most in an evening. Some games take the entire evening, like our Clash of Cultures adventure last week.
Greg, well if you look at the list of games, we also play a lot of fillers. Easy to get to 4 or 5 games a night when you play things like Love Letter, Finito and Can’t Stop!
What we usually do is trade emails back and forth early in the week. Usually one or two “meatier” games are nominated, and we generally start off with the heavier games. The benefit of knowing the games ahead of time gives everyone a chance to read the rules prior to game night. While we still go over the rules before playing a game for the first time, this process is greatly streamlined when most folks are already familiar with the basics of the game.
When we played Clash of Cultures recently, Luke was able to get us started in about 20 minutes with rules… Then our game itself took just under 3 hours (for a 4p game). Of course, we all planned our turns out in advance when we could to avoid Luke’s promise of punching us in the face if we hadn’t at least started planning!
That is a great process … but I fear it would not work in our group. We regularly get 15 – 20 people at game night, and the vast majority of times we do not plan in advance what games we will be playing. Occasionally someone will make a post requesting a specific game, but more often than not we decide on the spot. I do make sure I have read the rules in advance to any games I might be teaching, but if it is a new game, usually no one else is familiar with it.
Well, that’s one of the reasons why this group has been specifically limited to 5 members. We always play at a single table, and while we lose some of the camaraderie of a larger group, it is a much more stable group to play in. We all like each other, we can tolerate everyone’s habits, and there isn’t any of the politics that I have seen in larger groups. No one has to avoid playing with anyone else. Also, there is less downtime because you’re never waiting around for 20 minutes for the other table to finish up to re-distribute. When we finish a game, we just look for the next one and then dive right in.
It’s not the perfect plan for everyone, but it works for us.
So if I moved to Cincinnati, I wouldn’t be able to play with y’all? :o)
Well not in this group. Anyways, you might not be fast enough to keep up with the group ;) Luke would be punching you in the face a LOT…. ;)
If you moved up here, the easier solution would be to make a second group with the same rules!
Note: No faces were actually punched in the making of this game group.
This one-time, good-natured cajoling was specific to Clash of Cultures, which is both long, and particularly suited for allowing for turn-planning. I swear I am not violent. Much. We do like to keep it moving though. Even with all my take-backs.
Wait, can I change what I posted…….
No take backs now. I’ve already made another comment and it would be too hard to undo it all.