We’ve started a tradition of writing a group document with very short takes on the games that we play.  Of course, you’ll not get as much info as in a full review, but as our reviews likely won’t start for awhile, you can at least get a glimpse into what we think about certain games.   The OG writers can leave their initials at the end of a comment if they want attribution…

We’ll post this to the blog every few weeks to give some thoughts on each game. This will be the final one for the year… 

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Once upon a time, I played strategy board games, but then I got bitten by the design bug and I fell into a designer playtesting group.  My logged plays from 2024 reflect a dramatic and unexpected change in how I’m spending my precious board game time.  I’ve been logging plays since 2005, and my most played games in various past years have included board games like Lost Ruins of Arnak, Santorini, Ark Nova, Oath, Root, Living Forest, Terraforming Mars, Roll for the Galaxy, and Spirit Island.  I’ve always logged all unpublished prototypes collectively under BoardGameGeek’s Unpublished Prototype entry, but only in 2024 did that emerge as my most played “game” with 70 plays, including many plays of my two forthcoming designs.

First things first, it turns out that I played 235 different games a total of 735 times over the past 12 months.  My first game played of 2024 was Dice Miner on New Year’s Day, the very underrated and overlooked 2021 game by Joshua DeBonis and Nikola Risteski.  And my last game played was simultaneous YINSH and DVONN by Kris Burm on New Year’s Eve with my nine-year-old, who couldn’t decide which to play, so we played them both… at the same time!

My top ten most played games of the year included another prominent trend though…