It’s been an incredible year of gaming. But I think 2017 will be remembered as a year of big box and epic games. And big boxes do present a storage issue, let alone getting them to the table. Which to be fair I haven’t done too bad at doing.

I think it’s also been a year where I have been a little “flat” when it has come to getting excited about new games coming out or being announced, especially round or at big gaming conventions. At the UK Games Expo I went along with no shopping list, or I’ve got to see that game. Gencon and Essen nothing was grabbing me and getting me excited. To be honest in the list of games for 2018 I’ve seen on The Dice Tower nothing is really grabbing me for the up and coming year either.

Kickstarter has been busy this year, and I have to admit when it has come to the fulfilment stage of backed projects that my “reward” for the project has been the last one out of the warehouse. Which has been very frustrating. But there have been some great Kickstarter projects delivered. I don’t think any have been duds yet. Although Clans of Caledonia has been close with its production quality, and graphic design.

Right let’s look at the headline numbers for 2017…

I played 124 games!!!! That’s amazing. I can’t believe that. If you’d asked me to guess before hand I might have gone 70 – 80. The number of plays is super high thanks to two games. Mid year it was Star Wars: Destiny and the last quarter Magic the Gathering. Two games that exploit the addict side of me, but also allow me to do something I enjoy a lot, deck construction. The number of new games played is actually 70, because 6 of those games the BG Stats app counted as new were ones I had played before, but before records began with the app. But 70 new games played is incredible. I didn’t actually buy or own 70 new games! 23 of those games were owned by some-one else, and some of those new plays were games I’d already owned and finally got to the table.

Here are in no particular order my top 9 most played games of 2017.

Ok let’s look at the two challenges I set myself for 2017. The first up was a challenge to get my city building themed games to the table. I kind of bent the rules on this one and included plays for the later half of 2016 as well. Still not managed to get Suburbia to the table.

The second challenge was to encourage me to get my bigger games to the table. To be fair this challenge should have been updated to include Twilight Imperium 4th Edition (TI4). There are at least three on the list that I really want to get to the table, and need to try harder to achieve this. But I got Star Wars: Rebellion to the table three times in the year, A Game of Thrones hit the table five times, Xia twice, plus TI4 twice in the month it came out. So it’s not as if I’m not getting the big ones to the table.

I’ll be setting a couple of new challenges for 2018 in the next couple of days and I’ll share what they are on here.

And there you have it, that was my 2017 in gaming.