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.