I love my board games and I play so many board games. You know that I am getting close to 1000 games games rated on Board Game Geek. But let’s talk about what the ratings mean to me. And also announce that I’m changing how I do ratings when it comes to reviews. I’m going to keep using the my rating, casual, and gamer ratings. But I’m going to switch it over to a 1 to 10 scale like you find on BGG.

Why Change My Ratings Scale For Board Games?

First off, let’s talk about why I’m even changing my rating scale. It is more so that I can match between what I have on my BGG profile and what I have on the site. That is going to be the main reason for the change. I don’t need to adjust my rating to match between two spots or get a discrepancy.

But it’s also a chance to talk about the next topic. What the ratings mean to me. I am going to find that it falls into some of the buckets that you find on Board Game Geek. But let’s see what the scale for board games is going to look like.

What Do The Ratings Mean For Board Games?

When it comes to rating board games, Board Game Geek defines what they think that they are. And I think that I’m going to end up being pretty similar to them in some ways. But I’m going to do something that might be a bit odd. I am going to use the 1 to 10 system and clump numbers together to talk about them. And then talk about how it varies in the range as I rate board games.

10 to 9

10 and 9 are the games that I consider to be great. These are games that I want to play all the time. But also the ones that I am hard pressed to find a flaw with. But beyond that, they are games that I want to play. Even a game like Gloomhaven/Frosthaven which are big campaign games, I want to play them still. I beat Gloomhaven, twice, once in person and one digitally, and I want to play it again.

8 to 7

8 and 7 are the board games that I want to play a lot. And these are the games that I am going to recommend that we play. Are they my favorite game, certainly not. But they are going to be ones that I enjoy. A lot of these are going to be my game night games. The ones that I know that people like and I like as well. Even if not that, I still want to share them and play them with folks, or solo.

6 to 4

6 to 4 are the games that I’ll play but not ask to play. An example of this would be Catan or Tsuro. I enjoy both of those board games. But they left my collection because I already have played them a lot. And I am not apt to ask to play either of those games. That is more on the 6 side of things. A 4, not sure what that would be, Codenames maybe, I play but I’m not super excited.

3 to 1

3 to 1 are games that I want to avoid. I find that there aren’t too many board games in this section for me. I like and will play a lot of games. But there are some games that I just don’t want to play ever again. This can be for a lot of reasons. But if your game is gross or just relies on adult humor to be “good” game, that is going to score low. Or if the core loop of the game is no fun or has not decisions, also going to fall into that category for me.

Why Do Casual And Gamer For Rating Board Games?

But let’s move onto now the final section of how I do my ratings. And one of the elements that is important to me is that I rate what I think board games fall into for casual and gamer players.

What is a casual player, those are people who play games but not often. It’s the folks who play Catan, not for people who only play party games. At that point it isn’t something that is casual for you, it’s something that if you happen to have a party game brought out at a party.

Then on the flip side, a gamer is someone who plays lots of games. This one I think is a bit trickier to nail down. I play games with a friend who wasn’t thinking of himself as a gamer. Mainly because the board games that he owns aren’t that many or aren’t that complex. But he plays any game. That is the person I’m talking about. If someone likes games but won’t play anything more complex than Catan, that’s the casual side of things.

How do you rate board games? Do you follow something like I do, or do you rate them a different way?

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