Gaming Goals for 2021

A couple of days early with this but I’ve begun to think about next year.

The big challenge I’m setting myself is not buying any games or backing kickstarters in 2021. I have my birthday and Christmas to receive presents and I’ll keep trading, but no purchases. Over the last 18 months I’ve developed FOMO to a huge extent and it’s not healthy.

I’m not going to do a 10x10 in 2021. Too many of my favourite games or my new acquisitions play best at 3 or 4. I don’t want to force poor experiences with a lower than that play count. I also don’t want to hold myself hostage to fortune with Covid. I’m going to do something like a 30x3 to get everything new played and contrast to what we love to work out what’s worth keeping around.

Which leads to; play a game with friends in person indoors. It’s up to Government and society as much as us to make that happen but hopefully from May/ June it could happen. If I may be so bold, hopefully some of that in person gaming may involve some people from here??

I’d like to really explore an RPG campaign. Hopefully Enfys will start rolling higher than a 6 and I’ll be able to get out of the cave she’s stuck in with Ash and Ssora!

To continue exploring online gaming with real life friends and with lots of you guys. @lalunaverde’s suggestion of a group on TTS to tackle Spirit Island sounded great.

To attend a con. Unfortunately Rules Con in Cardiff is usually April and UK Expo is May so we’ll see about that!

To find the next game we’ll devour as a family of 4 (The Crew, Gloomhaven JOTL and The King’s Dilemma were all flown through in a lockdown fueled craze this year). I suspect/ hope Imperial Assault will be the game.

To crack 300 (250 to be realistic) on Doppelt so Clever.

I think the last one flows on from 2020. I’ve recognised how much gaming means to me. Playing games is great for my mental health, the social aspect as much as the brain working bit. It’s also a great barometer of my state of mind - if I’m chomping at the bit to play heavy stuff then I know I’m probably ok. So to keep wanting to play games, new and old.

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I’d like to reduce my overall stack of big boxes down to under 20 (at 25 currently). With Powergrid taking up three boxes and not going anywhere this means I have 17 big boxes to keep. I’ve already taken a step by asking if I can cancel my 18MS order and will sell 1861/67 on arrival

This is not helped by three coming in in January. So buying no games is always where I start (and fail).

Consume less BG media as this sucks out time for games I end up wanting and I can be much more productive with the 20 minutes I didn’t read/watch that review. Which in turn should help with my buying habits

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I’m not going to do a 10x10 this year either. I am, however, going to help our regular gaming buddy finish his. It’s the least I could do after subjecting him to so many games of Brass this year :laughing:

Instead of a 10x10, I have a “play all my unplayed games” challenge on the go. That includes base games, expansions, unfulfilled Kickstarters, and preorders. I started it in mid November, and so far I’ve done 9 of 41.

Related to the above: play all of my unplayed games before buying any new ones. That one will have to start in the New Year, since I bought a game in the Boxing Day sales :roll_eyes:. That one might even be more achievable than normal, seeing as I doubt that our regular conventions in January and March will be on. For extra motivation I’m trying to save up money from my monthly ‘hobbies’ budget (created so that I don’t spend all of my disposable income on games, plants, and craft supplies) to buy a crokinole board.

Make some new local gaming friends. This one is very pandemic-dependent, obviously. We used to regularly be able to get 4-8 people together every week, but for various non-pandemic and pandemic-related reasons we’re down to 3.

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I’ve been thinking about gaming resolutions for the New Year for a bit now.

I, too, have a problem with the FOMO and with retail therapy. I’ve done this all my live (I still have one of my earliest dopamine buys ever from when I was around 12 years old!) and already count it as an achievement that I’ve been able to push it into 1 single thing this year: games.

Now the next step is to start limiting the game buying. Slowly. I don’t think I can go from 52 to 0. But I’ve started by listing purchase date for my whole collection in BGG and then saw that an average year before I started watching reviews I bought ~10 to 15 games. So my limit is 1 game / month plus 3 bonus for SPIEL if it happens. I am exempting last year’s pre-orders/Kickstarters or I would already be at the limit which is the equivalent of going cold-turkey for the shopping part. Also at least half a dozen have been pushed back from this year… (making my list for this year even longer).

Another goal is to prevent the collection from growing over a certain magical game count 200 if you want to know, expansions excluded and if I cannot get rid of some games my preorders/kickstarters alone will crash that ceiling without me buying a single additional game. So… I need to start selling or donating games as trading alone will not reduce that number. I will likely give away some games to friends who don’t have huge collections and kids who may want some of those.

I am still thinking about a good resolution for what games to play. I am certain I want to get more of my games played–again with the same goal of figuring out which games get to stay. So 10x10 may not be totally feasible. At least not in any pre-planned way. As I will be playing with two or solo for at least the first half of 2021 that will limit my options again (although most of my new acquisitions do have solo-modes).

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My 2020 goals was alright. I did a big purge this year. Easily smashed it, but I could have done more if not for COVID. I have mostly played old games (older than 2019 is the definition) with a target of 3/4, which was successful. However, I’m still accumulating old but cheap games. They are quick to pile up than you’d expected.

KS limits was 5, but end up with 9. I shouldn’t compare myself to others, but my friends did much worse (that should tell you something about the hobby)

  • I will lower the bar and say the limit is 7 KS this next year.
  • Find the will to remove the games that I’ve rated with 8 or lower, when they have obvious alternatives. If I’m not playing my faves, what am I doing lol?
  • Keep all the games within the 4x4 Kallax limit. Sticking again on the target of culling 75 games - it went really well last time.
  • To expand on the above: cull down to 20 heavy games and 20 mid weight games, as I don’t play them enough. The rest of the Kallax will go to light and filler games. Again, what am I doing if I’m not playing my fave mid and heavy games?
  • Cull 10 heavy games / 50 mediums
  • Play more 18xx and cull down to 5. I own 3 and I have 6 incoming.
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Having not bought anything since 14th of September when I preordered 18west I intend to keep this going. Maybe I’ll go the whole year without buying new games. I do have 13 KS and preorders in coming. Ok, my limit this year will be 3 games. That will be across preorders/ks backings and straight up purchases.

I have a lot of 18xx bought and on preorder. My aim is to play enough to develop my tastes and refactor that chunk of games. Some out, maybe some in but crucially when we can play in person again I’m still hoping for fortnightly trains.

The other aim is to get all non 18xx unplayeds played. That could be achievable on account of only having 2 currently and 3 awaiting delivery. Let’s hope all the mutations don’t stop in person gaming being feasible.

I’d like to get a few heavier games played more often. I’d love to get a run of Indonesia’s in this year. And some consistent Food Chains.

I want to beat all the new adversaries from Jagged Earth and promo 2 up to level 6 as well.

Lastly a light trim. This will be the first year I exceed 100 games. I don’t think I’ll trim below 100 but I’d like to keep on top of it. Games no longer being played without sufficient nostalgia/affection I think should go.

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I’m not going to do another strict 10×10 and I’m officially abandoning any attempt at this one at the 77/100 mark (though one I’m playing with a friend and may finish before Thursday). Yes, I could play all the remaining games in the next three days, but I feel I would like them less as a result; this is supposed to be fun.

I haven’t looked at next year’s 52 game list yet but I’ll probably do that again because it’s fun. (Mind you this year I had most of them knocked off before March.)

I’ve been buying fewer games anyway but I think I’ll also have a bash at finishing off my unplayed list.

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I’m gonna try and not get sucked into kickstarters as much.

Too many times I’ve just been a million miles from the excitement of the crowdfunding bit as the game lands on the door mat at a time I have no interest in playing it (or worse I’ve played a game in between which ruins the forthcoming game for some reason)

Ironically the one crowdfunder I skipped actually gave rise to my favourite game of the year in “it’s a wonderful world”.

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I, pillbox, hereby announce that my goal for 2021 is to buy less than 12 games. Games already pre-ordered or Kickstarted will not count towards the <12 (or I’d have already lost)

I also will strive to get some of my enormous backlog of games played (thankfully, I’ve greatly stretched out the solo-able sub-category of my collection).

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I need to play more and cull anything that isn’t tip-top great. Thinking of emigrating in the next 12-18 months, and don’t want to take >100 games. Need to get it down to a reasonable number! Now I’m in my gulp mid-thirties, I don’t really want a wall full of games tbh.

The difficulty is I’ve always kept a range of games for all abilities, but if I were to cut down I’d probably get rid of most the light games, which then raises the barrier for entry. Difficult situation!

Fingers crossed for Covid…

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Do we mark this day as the start of the collapse of the modern boardgame industry?

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Two walls full of games? :thinking:

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The $2K stimulus wont be enough!

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AKA, A half Pillbox

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Good luck! I have faith in you!

He’ll never do it!

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I sense a theme here–besides making fun of @pillbox–because I think almost everyone seems to be keen on buying less, or owning fewer boardgames. I think this is a sign that in 2020 a lot of us bought more games than we normally would or feel comfortable with. “Last game bought” felt like a confession booth at times…

I like @RogerBWs 52 games link above! I think I could integrate that into my 2021 gaming.

Other than that I think I’ve thought of my personal “play challenges”. I want to play:

  • my top-ranked games (rating 10-8) no matter how old at least a few times each
  • my 2019-2020 acquisitions until I feel confident about my rating
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Oh boy I’ll come right out and admit I blew my 2020 resolution (cut spending to a bare minimum) in spectacular fashion. I was doing alright until the realities of the pandemic set in and I decided I needed a new hobby. Investing in Warhammer specialist games made this the single priciest year for boardgames in my entire life. It was also the leanest year of my life in terms of general entertainment expenses, so thankfully I still made out ok on the whole.

Importantly though, this was all done while still actively shuffling my collection around (ostensibly refining it), and I still largely followed a one-in, one-out system. I can’t recall precisely how many games I had coming into the year, but it was around 40 and today I sit at 41 (with a half dozen or so due in the first quarter of 2021).

So, 2021 is basically real simple for me: paint more, buy grail games only (currently: Yokohama deluxe, Forbidden Stars and a complete copy of Feudum), and trim whatever fat remains. I reserve minimal wiggle room for any must-have surprises (a few expansions are going to hit this year that I’ll “need”) but there you have it. If things improve faster than expected I’ll also add in some vague promise to actually play some of them, but by this point I’m so desperate for group games it feels like a cheat to include it as a resolution.

[EDIT] I should allow myself some RPG indulgences. Anything for Troika!, Mothership, Alien, or Forbidden Lands is fair game. :grimacing:

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I think I pivoted a bit in 2019 with a feeling that I now had most of the games I wanted, so since then when I see a new review or whatever my predominant feeling is “eh, probably not for me” unless there’s a specific reason otherwise (like Rallyman Dirt). Which is not ideal in itself, though it’s cheaper than the other extreme.

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Most of my response is in here Nippon, a life changing game? - #3 by Chewy77

Although I think overall I’d bought less games this year than usual. I did buy Bus on lockdown as an impulse thing and regretted that. The big thing for me this year was All Aboard Games’ mass manufacture.

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Yes, looking at that post again, in hindsight, is interesting. I have bought and been given a few games more, and when back then I had just one backing in KS, now I think I have 5. Considering Christmas is at fault of a few of those, I am not too worried.

I like the Kallax as the limit. At this moment, my collection is on roughly 20 decent games, I can see it growing a bit, but having 50-70 games looks like a target maximum, specially when the club I go to has a good 150-200 minimum with also other members games entering the mix often. My rule keeps being buying games that I love, or I know they will make it to the table. I am actually considering selling my Fog of Love copy, which would be my first sale, and that gives me some hope of being sensible enough to not keep games just for the sake of keeping them.

Regarding game objectives for next year, I was pondering the 10x10, but I am not sure there are 10 games I want to play so many times, specially when I am still trying so many new ones. I think other kind of challenges will help to expand my experience in a better way. I will see what comes together on the Guild, and that would be most likely my goal for 2021.

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