Category Archives: bgstat

Flashback to December 2016

bgstat, Blast from the past, by the numbers, flashback, stats

Before I bore you with the December 2022 stats post it’s time to bore you with yet another post looking back to 2016.

As per usual for this post we start off with the top 9 games played that month.

My Top 9 games played December 2016

Love Letter Batman, sadly no longer available for folks to buy. But it is my favourite version of Love Letter still. I love the theme, and the extra point for guessing what another player has in their hand when playing a Batman card, a nice rule change. Probably my favourite introduced by any version.

Ah yes Pandemic Iberia. The game ZMan was a limited printing. Yet somehow gets reprinted! It’s not a bad version of Pandemic. Don’t think I’ve played it since. However it is the version I’ve kept in the collection.

Braggart was a fun card game. But not one that held up to repeated plays over a short period of time. I gave this away in the end iirc.

We all know how I feel about Scythe. Nuff said.

Viticulture and Alien Frontiers both great worker placement games. Which I’m looking forward to getting back to the table as part of one of this year’s challenges.

I do need to get The Others (a great one vs many game, which soured how I feel about CMoN and will never back a project of theirs again), and Cry Havoc back to the table. I do really like both these games and they deserve more love.

Robinson Crusoe possibly the most brutal co-op game on the market. Also probably the most fiddly to setup also. Still a fun game with the right people.

Ok let’s wrap this post up with the raw stats for December 2016.

My bgstats for December 2016

Naturally the next post in these look backs will move into 2017. See you then.

2023 A New Year, New Challenges!

bgstat, game challenges

It’s that time of year where folks make resolutions to improve themselves. I don’t do that. Let’s face it I’m a deeply flawed person who is so long in the tooth now that I’m comfortable with that flawed entity I have become.

But what I have started doing in the last year or so is using the challenge functionality of the bgstat app to set gaming challenges.

Out of the four challenges I had running last year I only completed one of them. That being the Play 40 New-to-me Games challenge.

One of the four challenges carried over into 2023 (see further down) so technically is ongoing.

2022 Challenges (minus the one that carried over)

I don’t see not completing the remaining two a failure. Both had over 50% completion. They encouraged me to get certain games to the table. And that’s the point. The challenges are there to get me to play games that are just sitting there on the shelf.

So to get over half of my big games to the table was a great achievement. As was playing so many of the purchases I made during the pandemic.

Ok with the rolling over 2022 challenge of trying to play as many of my unplayed games I’m only doing one other challenge in 2023.

Hopefully it will allow me to focus on getting those unplayed games played. I still have a lot to get to the table. Plus play those games that have one of my favourite game mechanics.

Well that’s it for my 2023 challenges. See you in my next post.

My GOTY 2022

bgstat, by the numbers, gaming stats, GoTY, stats, Year In Review

It’s that time of year once again when content creators of all types throw top 10 lists of this and that at you.

I’m not one to avoid jumping on a bandwagon.

This post is all about me choosing my game of the year for 2022 from the 54 new to me games that I played.

Now the caveat is that this is new to me. Which means that the games may or may not have been published in 2022. In fact one of them is approximately 40 years old! But until this year I had not played them.

But first here are some stats from that really great app, bgstats.

First my top 9 new to me games based on the number of game plays.

My 2022 top 9 new to me games based on number times played

Next up the bgstats insights for those 54 new to me games.

The 54 new to me games I played in 2022

Roll & Writes

I’ve played a few roll and writes this year. That side of the collection has grown considerably also. So I think it’s safe to say it’s a genre I enjoy playing.

There is one shown above, it’s not only my least favourite roll and write, but probably my turkey of the year also. That game is Super-skill Pinball: 4 Cade. The least said about this game the better.

Out of the remaining 8 roll and writes if I had to choose one to be the roll and write for 2022 it’d have to be…

the combotastic Three Sisters.

I really like all the others. They are great, fun roll and writes. But wow Three Sisters just blows the mind, especially when the combos kick off. The use of the rondel and die selection introduce a bit of decision making whether to take a die to deny an opponent that die and action, or go for one you really need.

A great roll and write that really does stand out.

Expansion of 2022

My expansion of the year is the Rise of Fenris expansion for Scythe.

I had a blast playing the 8 game campaign. Which can be reset and played again. However you can also add it as modules to the main game. Adding more options, variability, replay ability to the game.

But that first play through. The twists and turns. The big reveals. Epic.

Also this was the last game I played with my friend Ben before he left us. Ben will be missed. But it’s the fond gaming memories that remain behind. Rise of Fenris will be one of those memories.

Honourable mentions: Dune Imperium: Rise of Ix (I won’t play without this expansion), Tapestry: Arts and Architecture

Ok onto the main event.

54 games to choose from.

Some incredible games played.

A very very hard choice. However I did come to a decision.

My GOTY 2022 is…

Drawn to the game by comparisons to Scythe, but apart from a mechanic or two it’s not really like Scythe.

I loved this game. From the variable board setup, to the era cards, power ups via paintings, variable leader powers and player boards, being able to tailor the maps to encourage or discourage combat.

It’s a really great game.

Honourable Mentions: Survive Escape from Atlantis, Libertalia Winds of Galecrest, Portal: the uncooperative cake acquisition game, The Thing boardgame.

Obviously I’ll be returning at the start of 2023 with the monthly round up plus the stats for for 2022.

September 2022 Gaming Stats

bgstat, by the numbers, gaming stats, stats

I hope you like the new image for these posts. Don’t worry that’s the only change. I’m not going to start changing the current no thrills, just the data format.

No onto the data.

My top 9 played games for September 2022

Ok here are the stats and games played for the month.

Bgstats for September 2022

Finally here is my current challenges progress.

Current challenge progress

My bgstat Origin Story!

apps, bgstat

I’ve been logging my plays of boardgames with the bgstat app since 29th December 2015.

To date that means I have played 374 games (not all mine!)

My all time stats to date
My 16 most played games to date

But why did I start recording my game plays?

Back in 2015 things were not brilliant at work.

I was being bullied and it made me ill.

I was off work with depression. I was not in a good place.

My line manager was doing nothing about it apart from enabling it.

Luckily I was referred for cognitive behaviour therapy (cbt) and didn’t have to wait months to get my first appointment. Something I’m not so sure would be the case now.

During the treatment I decided I needed a way to try and have an early warning sign that I was becoming ill again.

So I started logging my game plays with the bgstat app.

The logic being if I started to become depressed again then I’d be playing less games (pandemics not accounted for). I’d start to withdraw. My monthly stats were my canary down the mine for my mental health.

My journey to becoming well involved leaving that toxic environment (I quit my job and did a short stint doing supply teaching), as well as doing things I enjoyed (or used to).

Since then logging my game plays has become an addiction. The app itself has grown considerably since those early days. In some ways unrecognisable.

But I love the insights it gives me. Not just in what I’ve played, but into me.

The challenges I’ve started using aren’t just gaming challenges, but also another way to encourage me to do something I enjoy.

And to be totally honest September was never a great month for me with it being the anniversary of Dad’s death. But with the first anniversary of my Nan passing away so close to Dad’s. This year it’s a pretty rough month emotionally.

It’s going to take some Herculean effort to get through this month. And any little trick I can use to get through it like the bgstat app and forcing myself to play games will help.

I don’t know how to end this post. So I’m just going to stop and see you in the next one.

New bgstat Challenge Created

bgstat, game challenges

The tail end of last week the idea for a new bgstat challenge hit me.

I can’t remember exactly what sparked the idea. It might have been a YouTube video, a conversation, who knows?

What is important is the idea popped into my head.

The idea being to set up a challenge to get my worker placement games back to the table.

I have one or two in the collection. Which isn’t surprising I really like the mechanic.

So I went into the bgstat app to setup a new challenge.

Sadly the bgstat app doesn’t allow you to filter games by mechanic. Which meant I had to go through each listed game (or just the ones I wasn’t sure if they counted) on the bgg website to check, and add a “worker placement” tag to the game info.

From there when setting up the new challenge I was able to just select my tagged worker placement games.

The surprising bit for me was I had eighteen games that had the worker placement mechanic in them.

3×3 of the games making up the worker placement challenge

I set the challenge date for next year. One less challenge to think up in the new year.

However…

Those that “read” the barebones bgstats posts I put up at the end of each month know that I have nearly completed the “Play 40 New to me Games” challenge.

It’s very very possible that September will see me complete that challenge.

Then the question becomes do I start the new challenge early or concentrate more on the remaining challenges?

There is a little overlap between this new challenge and the current ones. And by a little I mean the odd one or two games at most.

The list of games in the worker placement challenge

In all likely hood I might start the new challenge early.

But I can see future challenges being based around mechanics.

I just wish there was an easier way to set them up. It’d be amazing if I could filter on game mechanics, designer, publisher, etc. But that’d be a big change to the apps database to hold all that info. Which might upset bgg.

Whilst I’m discussing my wish list of features I’d love to see in the bgstat app I’d love to see the bgg rank of the game, and be able to filter on that, and see that on the 3×3. How cool would a challenge of playing all your games in the bgg top 100?

And talking of ranking I’d love them to add in the ability to rank your owned games using paired comparisons. Similar to what I did in Python a few years back and still not updated. Seeing that on the 3×3 as an option would also be super cool.

I’m sure others would find this stuff of use. I’d even pay extra to have these features! That’s how much I want them.

Anyway enough of this day dreaming. See you in the next post.