So, if you’ve been keeping up with my 365 Days of Board Gaming challenge, you’ll know that I beat that number pretty handily. Mainly thanks to the board game Orchard, a solo game that I’ve played over 100 times since getting it. And as we get to 2022, it’s time to consider what board game challenge I want to do this year?

Different Board Game Challenges

Let’s go over some of the challenges that are pretty common for people.

1×100 – Pick one game in your collection and play it 100 times

10×10 – 10 games played 10 times each

365 – What I did this year, 365 game plays in 365 days

Whole Collection – Play through my whole collection, that doesn’t mean beat all legacy or campaign games, but give them a whirl.

Shelf of Shame/Opportunity – This is playing all the games in your collection that you haven’t played before.

# of Total Plays or # of Different Games – Two similar but different ones. It’s basically picking an arbitrary

The Tough Things With Challenges

So, you can see there are a lot of different challenges that can be done. And I also get why some people don’t like doing a board game challenge. 1×100 is extremely restrictive. If you find after 50 plays of a game you’re done with it, now what do you do? Do you power through the last 50 plays or risk the same scenario happening again by trying to get to 100 with a new game?

Any total number of game one is easier for me to do. If I play any game I want in my collection, I want to play games all the time. But now I’ve done 365 plays in 365 days plus some. I’ll end around 420 I think. So just doing that again wouldn’t be too challenging. I could push to a higher number 500 plays for the year. But that feels the same as last years in some ways. Covid kept my plays down to start the year, and I can’t see it doing the same again.

What Board Game Challenge Do I Pick?

Well, it’s going to be a two part challenge. I’m shooting for 365 again. But to go with that, I have a number of my games that I need to play. I might be off slightly on some of this. I have 137 games that I own and haven’t played. Why I say this might be off is because these games aren’t rated, but I might have just missed rating a game.

So, I am not guaranteeing that I’ll play all of them. but I want to get that list lower. So my goal, by the end of 2022, is to have that unplayed games list down below 100. Now, that doesn’t sound too hard. But keep in mind that I buy new games, that doesn’t include crowdfunding games that will come in. And I did a whole article on board games that are going to be released, theoretically in 2022 that I’m interested in. You can find that here.

By putting the target at below 100 is going to be a challenge since I need to find people to play them with. I can’t do every game night that I run as a new board game night. Thankfully I do have one friend who is always up for trying a new board game, we played Kohaku last week. So he’ll play some of them with me, some I’ll play solo, and who knows when I’ll bust out others.

Plus, this is the end of year target. If I get in 30 new games that makes it way harder. Now, there is a chance a game might be sold without a play, making it easier, but this is going to be the tougher part of the challenge than the 365 plays in a year.

Final Thoughts

It was fun to do a challenge last year. And I am excited to do it again this year. And I’m excited to use this as an excuse to push for getting more of those games that I own but haven’t played played to know if they are going to be a game for me. Like I said, crowdfunded games are going to start showing up and I’ll need the shelf space.

Now, a challenge like this isn’t for everyone. I get it that it can make playing games seem like work. And that is never the goal. We want to play games because they are fun. For me, this is a way to help keep me in the fun. I love to play board games and doing so makes me happy. So this is a nudge to keep playing games and keep being happy, I’ll give myself that nudge.

Have you done a board game challenge? How did it work for you?

Send an Email.
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.
Support us on Patreon here.