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.

So let’s see what got played in July.

Tainted Grail – 4 Plays

No shock here that Tainted Grail is again towards the top of the list. It’s the campaign game that I’m playing quite often. And we got into Chapter 9 now, which is exciting. The story is still amazing and it’s progressed in some interesting ways. This is still a really tough game and if you want to see why you might want to buy it or not, I did a video on that.

Aeon’s End Legacy – 3 Plays

The other game that I streamed comes in #2 in terms of most plays. Starting Aeon’s End Legacy has been a blast. I love Legacy games and I really like Aeon’s End. You can see my playthroughs over on Malts and Meeples YouTube channel. I really like deck builders and I think that Aeon’s End Legacy works really well for a cooperative deck building game.

Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition – 2 Plays

This was a new game into my collection and a new game to get played, obviously, this month. I am bummed I didn’t back it on Kickstarter for some of the nicer pieces. But I am glad that I picked it up at Target. It’s a pretty big game for a card game, in terms of the combos and game length, but so much fun. You can find my thoughts for it in a TableTopTakes.

Dice Throne – 2 Plays

Dice Throne is always a blast when I play it. I got to play head to head once and three player king of the hill another time. I really like it head to head, but king of the hill works well. Mainly, I like that it incentivizes you to attack the person with the most health. There is no ganging up on a single player, which just normal 3 player could do.

Hanabi – 2 Plays

This was one that I hadn’t played in a long time but it was fun when I got it back to the table. We did okay in both of our games, but I like the concept of this one. You play with your cards facing away from you and are giving clues to other people as to what cards they have. Still need to get a perfect game on this one, but that might take a while.

Fruit Picking – 2 Plays

So, this one isn’t new, but it was the first time I played my copy. In 2020 I played this digitally for GenCon and I had a lot of fun with it, probably the second favorite game I played after Night Cage (which came in). Playing the physical version was a lot of fun. It’s a nice simple game in what you do, but there is strategy to it as you play. I like big games, but also simple games with good decision space.

Point Salad – 2 Plays

Another game that is simple. Now, I don’t think the decision space is as good on this one but still fun. Point Salad is a great drafting and tableau building game, especially with two players. I play it really fast at two which means two plays in a sitting. I also like that even with the same set of cards if feels different when you play it. Good filler game.

A Gentle Rain – 2 Plays

Two plays of this solo game while watching the Olympics. I should pull it out some more and get it played that way. I really do like this game as a relaxing game and a mind clearing and refocusing game.

Similo – 2 Plays

Another new game for me, this one I picked up from Horrible Guild recently. It is a really nice party style game. I really like mixing sets together because it’s fun to use animals to try and get people to guess a mythological figure or the other way around.

Calico – 1 Play

And yet another new to me game. This one I didn’t buy recently, but I hadn’t played to this point. The game play is a ton of fun in this one. It is in the category of games that are simple but have a great decision space. No full review of it yet, but if you want to see Beyond the Box Cover on it, I did write about that on Friday.

Icecool – 1 Play

Game night game and I am so glad to get this back to the table. Icecool is just a game of silly fun and flicking penguins around. Had an amazing time playing it as I always do, and with eight players it is just a little bit hectic and crazy. If you want a simple and cheap dexterity game, Icecool is it.

PitchCar – 1 Play

On the other side, this is a simple and expensive dexterity game, but also a ton of fun. We had 7 players, I believe, flicking our cars around in this game and it was a blast. The look for it is amazing and so much fun to play with. I loved playing it with more people as compared to two or three. Everyone was just having a great time and I want to get it out again soon.

Yearly Stats

So, like I said, I didn’t get as many plays in as I wanted to. I am at 191 plays which isn’t bad at all. But to hit my target it would be 174 plays in 151 days, which is doable for sure. I’m over 50% of the way to the goal. One cool thing is that it tells me what % of my collection I’ve played. 20% of the games that I own I’ve now played. And six of those games I’ve played 10 or more times.

So which of those games would you want to play from this past month?

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.
Support us on Patreon here.