Games I definitely want to play this year either for the first time or for the first time on my own copy:
Blood on the Clocktower
Sidereal Confluence
These are just the 2 most notable ones. Overall my aim will be to end the year with fewer unplayed games on my shelf than I started with: 39 right now.
Other than that:
play games with friends.
do my solo 10x10 challenge.
keep my buying urges in check & shrink the size of my preorder list (45 as of now) mostly by backing fewer crowdfunding campaigns (I‘ll see how that goes)
“Get my games to fit on my shelves” is probably the best way I can summarize my major goal this year.
It will be impossible. Or at least almost impossible. Oathsworn will never, ever, fit in a gaming shelf. I’ve reserved the space adjacent to the shelf for it.
But currently 95% of my games fit on or next to my shelves, and I’d like to deal with that last 5%. Move 'em on or whatever.
I’d also like to play all the remaining games I haven’t played, and finish off the three or four campaigns my partner and I have started but not finished (Legacy of Dragonholt, Tale of Pirates, Forgotten Waters and The Initiative, for example). Finishing the campaigns would let me move those games along to friends, so really, it’s win-win!
I think my only new gaming goal (or hope) for this year is to find a new gaming group. For a variety of different reasons the groups I had either dissipated or are no longer very practical, and other than my RPG group it’s mostly been solo gaming for me for a while now. If I end the year with some kind of regular board game sessions in person with more than one other person, I’ll be pretty happy.
In the BeforeTimes I had 3 groups that met between weekly and bi-weekly… a co-op group (they’ve since moved to St. Catherine’s, about an hour and a half drive away), a competitive group (one moved to Newfoundland, a 37 hour drive away, another moved to BC (about 40 hours of driving, mostly through the USA), and a Big Complicated Game group that met monthly (the list of potential players for that group included all the above people, plus about a dozen more, but most of them are at least theoretically still available).
I have had people over to my house to play games… 4 times? Maybe 5?.. since March 2020.
First goal done. I don’t think I controlled my purchases this year. Whoops. I am pretty happy with this though. My 10x5 Challenge went very well and get to appreciate the games that I already have.
Well… I played neither BotC nor Sidereal. In general my gaming was very very reduced this year. If not for my friend I play with on BGA and solo-ing I would probably have forgotten what games even are… I blame the renovations. And in December Advent of Code
I did play some games with friends
My unplayed games remain at about the same number: 38 by last count. At least half of which were on there at the start of the year. I need to consider getting rid of some of those I guess? Or decide they are collector‘s items.
I did not complete my solo 10x10 but I got to 89/100 which is fine by me. (Missing a few games of Ark Nova, Food Chain Island and 51st State)
I backed fewer crowdfunding campaigns. My backlog is down from 45 to 20 open crowdfunding campaigns. I haven‘t backed anything at all in a couple of months.
I didn‘t buy any games from Advent calendars this year. My buying for the year has slowed but not stopped. I need to sell a bunch of games at the start of 2024.
My collection size (as I count which includes preorders but discounts games marked for sale or as collector‘s items I can‘t get rid of for some reason or other but won‘t play) remains at a high 255. But as it fits my shelves… it‘s okay.
Fun fact: I played 56 different games this year.
56 also happens to be the exact number of times I played Star Wars the Deckbuilding Game this year. I am tempted to try to keep this ratio, so if my wife and I play it today, I will need to try to get an unplayed-this-year game to the table when our friends are over.
16 of these were off the shelf of shame, so that was good and met my goal of trying to get at least one new game to the table per month. Too bad a lot of them were bought this same year! So yeah, the buying fewer games didn’t really happen, as per usual.
All told, I played 276 games this year so far, with a couple more guaranteed today (and one in progress on BGA), which is pretty good, IMO. Even if it isn’t as good as the 308 from the previous year, but I went to SHUX that year, so played a lot there.
Didn’t get rid of any games, though I do have some set aside to be sold. I just need to list them somewhere, as the values selling to my FLGS were laughably low. So I did not meet that goal either.
