2014 in Review -- Games

Happy 2015, one and all!

Once again, I'm kicking off the new year with a look back at the games I played in the old year. (A look back at movies will be coming soon.) Compared with 2013, my gaming took a sharp turn back upward. (Hooray!) I played 150 board games in 2014. The list is satisfyingly diverse:

5    7 Wonders
1    Agricola: All Creatures Great and Small
3    Amerigo
1    Apples to Apples
1    Belfort
5    Bruges
2    Bruxelles 1893
20  Cards Against Humanity
1    Caverna: The Cave Farmers
1    Clans
2    Concordia
1    Dragon's Hoard
1    Dungeon Lords
1    Dungeon Petz
1    Eketorp
1    For Sale
1    Francis Drake
6    Ghost Stories
2    Glass Road
2    Going, Going, GONE!
1    Gravwell
2    Hanabi
5    Hawaii
1    Hey! That's My Fish!
1    Indigo
1    In the Year of the Dragon
1    La Isla
12  Las Vegas
1    Last Will
1    Libertalia
1    Lords of Waterdeep
1    Love Letter
1    Metro
1    Notre Dame
1    One Night Ultimate Werewolf
1    Palazzo
1    Pandemic: The Cure
4    PitchCar
4    Poker
1    Plunder
1    Race for the Galaxy
1    Rampage
9    The Resistance
2    Ricochet Robot
7    Say Anything
1    Set
3    Snorta!
1    Sorry
3    The Speicherstadt
1    Squint
1    Superfight
1    Sushi Go!
1    Takenoko
3    Telestrations
1    Thurn and Taxis
1    Timeline
2    Time's Up! Title Recall
1    Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar
1    Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar - Tribes & Prophecies
3    Vikings
2    Vinhos
3    Viticulture
1    Wits and Wagers

The most played game of the year was (unsurprisingly to me) Cards Against Humanity. It's become the go-to "big group game" in my, well, big group.

I was also not surprised at the second place finisher, Las Vegas. That's become my group's go-to "I don't feel like thinking too much now, but I could play something fast and easy" game. It's also super easy to explain the minimal rules -- so easy, in fact, that it probably saved me from playing Sorry more than the one time. That Sorry play was with my friends' two young boys, who were both savvy enough even at their age to pick up Las Vegas and play that instead.

My play of In the Year of the Dragon was a memorable one. I used FaceTime and my iPad to play that with a good friend living thousands of miles away, each of us tracking the game with our own personal copies in front of us.

I'm hoping for many more plays of Concordia in the new year. Our group found it late in 2013, and it was one of my favorites in quite some time.

The Tzolk'in expansion really changes that game dramatically. Not in a way that I'd say is either clearly better or worse -- it's just another way to play a really good game.

Despite the numbers above, the games I truly played the most in 2013 were using the iPhone apps for five different board games. Add those 86 additional plays in, and my grand total jumps to 237 for the year:

32    Agricola
14    Stone Age
4      Ticket to Ride
19    Ticket to Ride Europe
17    Ticket to Ride Switzerland

If you have the apps for any of those (or Caylus, Lost Cities, Le Havre, or Tikal) and would like to play, leave a comment or drop me a message or something.

Let's keep the fun rolling in 2015!