Category Archives: by the numbers

by the numbers

Flashback to March 2016

by the numbers, flashback, gaming stats, stats

I had this idea this morning as I drifted in and out of sleep to do a series of posts that look back at yesteryear and the games I was playing that month.

Obviously there is only so far I can go back as I have only been recording game plays in the bgstat app since December 2015.

I thought I’d start the flashbacks with that first full year of data that I have, which is 2016.

I’m not going to do news headlines for the month. But the mess that is Batman v Superman hit the cinemas in March 2016. As did the dire sequel to Olympus Has Fallen, London Has Fallen (which I took Nathan to see).

So what were my top 9 games that I played back in March 2016?

My Top 9 Played Games In March 2016

Only Android Netrunner from those 9 is no longer in my collection. I still have very fond memories of playing the game. In fact I still use it as a measuring stick that I judge similar games by. I still rate the game very highly. Still love the Android universe.

Obviously I play a lot of Star Realms and Epic the Card Game but digitally. I just don’t get the opportunity to play either as physical games. It might even seem a little odd if I did!

Batman Love Letter still gets to the table. Still a great version and my favourite Love Letter.

Five Tribes, 7 Wonders, and Discoveries need a bit of gaming love with a return to the table. Maybe that could be a new challenge at some point, games that haven’t been played in over a certain number of years.

Let’s look at the stats summary for the month.

Stats Insights For March 2016

For those with even less of a life than me, and wish to see the complete list of games I played that month. Here you go.

Complete list of games played in March 2016

That was a cool little exercise. Let’s do it again real soon.

January 2022 Gaming Stats

by the numbers, gaming stats, stats

It’s a new month, and it means it’s time to share my gaming stats from the bgstat app for last month.

I’ll stick to the “new” format of just presenting the stats with no rambling commentary that was just waffle anyway.

3×3 games played

Here are the “raw” stats for the month. Don’t forget the time stat is b.s. as I don’t record this. It’s what ever the app uses as a default.

January bgstats

Now for the challenges summary.

Summary of progress or lack of for my gaming challenges

My Gaming Year 2021

by the numbers, game challenges, gaming stats, stats

In my previous blog post I waffled on about the game challenges I’d set up in the bgstat app I use, and how I fell just short of achieving the Play 15 New Games to Me challenge.

You may have also noticed in that post and later on in this one the 3×3 or 4×4 image grid of game covers. I used to produce these using an app called Diptic and having to do a Google image search to find each relevant game box image. But now the bgstat generates these for me with out all that extra effort! What a great new (well to me, not sure when it was added) feature.

2021 has been an interesting year to say the least gaming wise. It wasn’t until the later half of the year before world events allowed in person gaming to become a thing again. I have to say I missed playing with others a lot. So it was really great to be doing that again.

Fenland Gamers has grown in size! By that I mean those that attend gaming sessions on a regular basis. This has been amazing, and the new members have been really great to game with. Because of this success we ended the year saying good bye to our hosts The Luxe.

We still live in uncertain times. Who knows what 2022 has in store for us. Hopefully despite what it decides to throw at us we can continue to meet up, play games, and share good times.

As with more recent stat posts I’m not going to attempt to analyse the data. I’m going to just put the data out there and let it speak for itself.

But first for those that aren’t interested in anything other than my top 9 played games of 2021, here is a snazzy 3×3 image grid of those games.

My Top 9 Most Played Games of 2021

And now for those that want more details here are the stats for my gaming in 2021. The only thing you have to ignore from these stats is the time and days figures. I don’t record that data so those figures are basically gibberish. I’d also call bs on the number of players. It’s much much lower than that, less than 20 would be my guess. But this is due to me not adding everyone I play with as a named player. They only usually get added after I’ve played against/with them on a regular basis.

My Gaming Stats for 2021

So close

by the numbers, game challenges, gaming stats

I think it was a couple of months back I set myself some gaming challenges within the bgstat app.

It’s not something I do a lot of. However I thought why not?

Over the period covered by “lockdowns” and various restrictions belatedly introduced by our Tory overlords as some sort of token gesture towards dealing with world events, I had added one or two games and expansions to the collection.

It’s not as if I needed much encouragement to get any of those purchases to the table once gaming in person was once again a thing that we did.

Remembering what had been added during that period however would be more of a challenge.

So I set up a challenge to track those plays and to remind me what games and expansions had been purchased. Apparently there were 25 additions of one form or the other in that time.

One or two of those purchases would be considered for big boardgames. For example the Prophecy of Kings expansion for TI4 or the Mother of Dragons expansion for AGoT. They would be much much harder to get to the table.

But there are some big boardgames in my collection that I’d also like to see return to the table. So I set up a second challenge to encourage me to get some of those bigger games to the table.

Both of those challenges I have given myself until November 2022 to complete.

However I needed a more immediate challenge to aim for as well. Something achievable by the end of the year. So I set up a third challenge, to play 15 new to me games by the end of 2021.

With 2021 fastly coming to an end and no more gaming sessions planned before the challenge deadline. It does indeed look like I will have failed at this third challenge.

I’ve come within spitting distance of achieving it.

As the image above shows I’ve played 12 new to me games since August of this year. Two of which belong to someone else! Who happens to be the same person, Jonathan.

I think I’ll set up a similar challenge in the new year. At the moment my gut is telling me to set the target to 20 new to me games.

Oh and finally I got caught up with the reduced to clear section at Tesco and ended up getting a poker set for half price.

2019 Gaming Stats Summary

by the numbers, stats

It’s Boxing Day and I hope you all had a great Christmas.

I think everyone and their dog who creates content for the internet are producing their end of year lists and GOTY stuff. Plus they are “spoiling” whoever consumes their content with their moment, list or game of the decade as we move out of one decade into the start of a new one.

I’ve not done a game stats post in a long time, but I’m not one to miss a band wagon. So I thought I’d do some posts sharing my stats for the year, my GOTY and my game of the decade.

Naturally I’ll start with the stats for 2019.

These stats come straight from the big stats app where I have been recording my physical game plays since December 2015. I don’t record any digital games I play like Star Realms, Jaipur and Lost Cities (although I do play these in real life from time to time and those do get recorded).

I’ve blanked out the time and days stats because I never record the duration from when I play the game. So those figures where very very inaccurate and not relevant.

I’ll start off by correcting the new games figure, this should be 35 not 38. The list of new games that I played in 2019 includes games that I had played but not recorded in the app previously. Which is a poor way of saying I played them before December 2015 when I started recording game plays.

My top 10 played games of 2019 are:

That concludes the stats for this band wagon post. Next post my game of the year.

2018 Gaming Stats Part 3

by the numbers, gaming stats, stats

I’m not sure as I write this instalment of the 2018 retrospective if it will be the third and final part, or if I’m going to be cruel and do another one after this has been finished and posted.

In this post I’m going to steal the top 9 games meme, and use it here as others have elsewhere to share with you my top 9 new games to me of 2018.

I’ve not put them in any particular order, so their position in the grid should not be taken as having any significance or indication of a ranking. Nor was this process as scientific as my Top 100 of All Time that I did a couple years back.

The process I used this time was more gut feel. There were some games I really did enjoy playing that belonged to friends. But a deciding factor was, did that game make it into my collection? One or two that made this list were initially friends copies that I played. But they made such an impact I almost instantly added them to my collection.

So for your torture I present my Top 9 New To Me Games of 2018 meme…

2018 Gaming Stats Part 2

by the numbers, gaming stats, stats


Continuing the look back at 2018 that we started together yesterday. Today we look at the oddly chosen top 14 boardgames I played in 2018 ranked by the number of times that they were played.

I don’t think it’s any surprise that the top slot is MtG. I was playing a ridiculous amount casually during the first quarter of the year.

What I find interesting is that so many (approximately 5 of them) were added to the collection in the last quarter of the year. And so many of the top 14 were new to me games.

Charterstone is a game that needs completing, we got to the half way point before life got in the way. Our group that was playing it needs to find a common time slot that we can finish the game off in.

Did you play any of the above games? What did you think of them? What was your most played game of 2018?