Category Archives: by the numbers

by the numbers

BTN July 2016

by the numbers, gaming stats

Wow another month has flown by. 

Twenty two games, sixty plays. That’s incredible. Two OP events (Star Realms and Netrunner) helped push these stats through the roof. 

Some old and new favourites got to the table. Although I’d liked to have got Guilds of London back to the table, and played more The Voyages of Marco Polo. 

With Biblios Dice and Valley of the Kings seeing daylight, two more games make it off the pile of shame. Plus they didn’t disappoint.

July saw six brand new games getting played. Five of them in my collection. 

In all a very successful month I think. Despite none of pile of shame five not making it to the table.

Let’s look at the pretty graph showing the trend.

Wow! hey? The number of games played kind of continued the plateau I’d reached. Good grief I didn’t think I’d ever beat the high of March/May for number of plays. But holy heck this month smashed it. I’ll never ever improve on this months figure. 

My game of the month…

So this month I think my choice for my game of the month has to be between Qwixx and 7 Wonders Duel. 

Qwixx as I pointed out yesterday is a great gateway game, easy and quick to teach. And it also fills that gap of quick filler game wonderfully. Plus I think when it comes to throwing a bag of games together to take for a Costa gaming session, Qwixx will be an instant addition along with Love Letter Batman.

However I think 7 Wonders Duel has to be my game of the month. It’s such a great two player game. It has lots of replay ability, no two games are the same. It’s joined Star Realms and Netrunner in my top three two player games. Look how it hooked Nath yesterday. I don’t see how this can’t be game of the month.

Worst game of the month…

This was a close one too. My candidates for this infamous award are Dalek Dice and Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective. 

I think the one that definitely takes this unwanted title has to be the unfulfilling Dalek Dice. An unnecessary over complicated push your luck dice game, that should have kept it simple. Just doesn’t measure up to Zombie Dice.

Half Year Stats 2016

by the numbers, gaming stats, Uncategorized

I thought it would be a cool thing to look at the stats for the first half of the year.

I can't believe in just over a half year I've played 88 games! That's insane. My guess would have been 30 to 40. Not 88. Wow!

I'm not sure where the BG Stats gets the times for time. It's a new addition to the app. I'm assuming its picking these up from bgg. It's an interesting stat that I think isn't very accurate. We certainly took longer than 10 hours playing Pandemic Legacy.

 

BTN June 2016

by the numbers, gaming stats, Uncategorized

It’s the start of another month, which means it is time to look at my gaming stats for the previous month. 

I thought I’d have better stats this month because of attendance at the UK Games Expo. However I didn’t get to play as much there as I’d hope for. The drawbacks of attending a gaming expo by yourself, and not as a group of some description.

I’ve played some really great games this month, I’d be hard pressed to say that I disliked any I played. With some of the games like Fluxx, Love Letter, I’m trying to ration my plays so that I don’t burn out on them, and keep enjoying them.

My Game of the Month

Once again this has been a really hard decision to make. The contenders making this such a hard choice this month are; The Voyages of Marco Polo, Guilds of London, The Great Heartland Hauling Co. and Imhotep. 

These are all great games, and different from each other. All of them I’d ask to play again. How to decide? 

This is tough, I know as soon as I choose one I’ll regret not choosing the others! 

I’m going to copout and choose all four as my game(s) of the month. There is nothing between them for me to decide between them. I’ve got a great time playing all four of them.

The Pile of Shame Five

At the end of March I set a target of five games to try and get to the table during the next quarter. This is my poor attempt at reducing my pile of shame.

So how did I do? I got the following two games from the list to the table.

  • Ashes
  • Dead of Winter

Whilst I also got Neuroshima Hex! and Roll for the Galaxy to the table from the also rans.

So not a bad effort.

But it’s time to set a new five for the next quarter. So here are the ones I’m going to attempt to get to the table:

  • Imperial Assault
  • Marvel Legendary
  • Alien Frontiers
  • A Game of Thrones
  • Suburbia

Let’s see how I do getting these ones to the table.

May 2016 By The Numbers

by the numbers, stats

So a new month, time to reflect on my stats for the month of May.

May has been a pretty good month for gaming. I took part in my first Netrunner organised play at The Hobbit Hole, which was great fun. I'm in the process of organising an Ashes event with the official op kits (now on their way). But look at that massive fifty plays I had for May. I didn't think I'd beat the March total for a while.

Two more games disappeared off the pile of shame (Eight Minute Empire Legends, and Brew Crafters: The Travel Card Game), and another got back to the table after nearly a year from trying it with Nath (Nations the Dice Game). Plus I got to play six new games. Two of them got added to the collection, and one was mine that I had just bought.

Let's look at the graph for the over all trend.

My Game of the Month

I think on reflection this would have been a choice between two games Traders of Osaka and Bohemian Villages at the start of the month when I first played them. However there is only one clear winner, and it will come as no surprise, Bohemian Villages is my game of May. Jonathan and I LOVE this game. When we go to gaming sessions its in our bags ready to be pulled out. It's our go to game at the moment.

This really is a great little gem of a game, deserves a lot more love, but with none existent coverage in the gaming media its remaining under everyone's radar.

Worst Game of the Month

I am very happy to say that this month there are no candidates for this award. Even my experience of Agricola was pleasant.

 

By the numbers stats for April 2016

by the numbers, stats

So has it been a month already? Wow time flies these days. Without further ado let's look at my gaming stats for April.

Surprisingly I've only played in three places this month. With the majority of my game playing taking part on club nights.

This month we didn't make much progress with Pandemic Legacy for one reason or the other. Which is reflected in the number of plays, and the lack of Monday night gaming.

Fluxx in one theme or the other would be the most played game of the month with nine plays if my maths is correct.

As the vanilla graph shows I got a greater variety of games to the table, but there were less plays. I think if our Pandemic Legacy sessions hadn't been disrupted as much (and it's not going to improve for May due to one of the team taking a holiday for two weeks!) the number of plays would have been closer to the incredible March target.

Now let's try something new for these posts and pick the best and worst game I played during the month.

Best Game For April

Ok this has to Scoville. So much to love about this game. Great theme, the blind auction for turn order, set collection, hidden information. It looks amazing, lovely wooden chillies. Yeah, this has to be my game of the month for sure, no argument about it. This will be in my collection at some point. In the meantime I can't wait until Jonathan brings this to the table, or for him to get the new expansion.

Worst Game For April

I don't think the will be a surprise to regular readers of the blog when I say Caverna. The whole experience was a nightmare. Go read the blog post about it. It wasn't the games fault, and I'm sure once I've been taught it properly (on Jonathan's todo list) I'll like the game.

So that was the month of April by the numbers.

 

Stats for March 2016

by the numbers, stats

With March just ending its that time again to look at my gaming stats for the month.

Wow what a month hey? I thought I had done really well in February. Especially considering it's a shorter month than the others. But holy game pieces Batman I've blown that out of the water. Sadly as the locations show there were no Costa gaming sessions. So that will be an aim for April to get that being a thing again!
Thanks to the magic of Numbers I can produce a nice little graph to show my gaming trends. I think it's going to be hard to top March, and expect to see a dip next month. Hopeful not a big dip though.

March also happens to be the end of the first quarter for the year, so time to review the following that I wrote back in January.

So how did I do? Well as the games stats at the start show I got three of the five to the table. Which I think is not bad. Five Tribes was definitely the biggest hit of the three. Discoveries was a good game, but the wooden dice are horrid. As for Arena of the Planeswalker that game has so much potential but let down by poor support by the publisher.

But as I said in the initial post I'll be setting a list of five each quarter. We are now in a new quarter and therefore need a new list of games to try and get to the table.

  • Ashes
  • T.I.M.E. Stories
  • Thunderbirds
  • Dead of Winter
  • Imperial Settlers

Games that nearly made the list this month but just missed out: Elder Sign, Neuroshima Hex!, Seasons, Roll for the Galaxy and Eminent Domain. Who knows maybe they will make it to the table anyway.

So that was my gaming month by the numbers.