2023 in Review -- Games

Another year in the books -- and with it, another year of entertainment. It's time for me to take my traditional look back at what I enjoyed over the past 12 months. First up, the board games I played in 2023.

Interestingly, I played almost exactly the same number of different games in 2023 as I did in 2022 -- 79 games in this lap around the sun, compared to 78 the year before. But I played significantly more games, reaching 273 plays for 2023 (versus 201 the year before). This was my highest total plays since 2020, a year where I perhaps paradoxically played a lot more games (because so many of those plays were virtual, with friends, using Board Game Arena).

Here's the list:

24    My City
24    My Island
19    The Crew: Mission Deep Sea
10    Rear Window
9    Clever 4Ever
9    Exit: The Game – Advent Calendar: The Hunt for the Golden Book
9    Fun Facts
9    The Great Split
9    Kokopelli
6    The Quacks of Quedlinburg
6    Secret Hitler
6    That's Pretty Clever!
5    Clever Cubed
5    Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle
5    Just One
5    Splito
4    Cockroach Poker
4    Joan of Arc: Orléans Draw & Write
4    Merlin
4    SCOUT
4    Twice as Clever!
3    Azul: Master Chocolatier
3    Concordia Venus
3    Distilled
3    First Rat
3    Forest Shuffle
3    Inside Job
3    Roll for the Galaxy
3    Viticulture
3    Wandering Towers
3    Wingspan
2    Arcana Rising
2    Azul: Summer Pavilion
2    Codenames
2    Glitch Squad
2    Herd Mentality
2    Noobs in Space
2    Paint the Roses
2    Planet Unknown
2    Point City
2    Project L
2    Sagrada
2    So Clover!
2    Star Wars: The Clone Wars
2    The White Castle
2    World Wonders
1    Aurum
1    Azul
1    Azul: Queen's Garden
1    Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig
1    Calico
1    Can't Stop
1    Cascadia
1    Clank! Catacombs
1    Coloma
1    Dune: Imperium – Uprising
1    Earth
1    Empire's End
1    Ex Libris
1    Great Western Trail
1    Great Western Trail: New Zealand
1    Heat: Pedal to the Metal
1    Majesty: For the Realm
1    Nidavellir
1    Nokosu Dice
1    Old London Bridge
1    Parade
1    Patchwork
1    Pelican Cove
1    Ready Set Bet
1    The Search for Planet X
1    Secret Identity
1    Skull King
1    The Speicherstadt
1    Take 5
1    The Taverns of Tiefenthal
1    Telestrations
1    Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West
1    Wild Tiled West

The usual caveats here:

• I don't count the games made by my work if I played them for work (in unfinished forms).

• I count a few games by the "session" -- The Crew, and the Exit: The Game Advent Calendar (has anyone ever been able to actually do one of those "1 per day for 24 consecutive days?").

What jumps out at me:

• This is the closest I've ever gotten to a "10 x 10," that challenge to play 10 different games each 10 times throughout the year. How close I got depends on whether you agree with my accounting of a couple of the games involved. Is a play of an Exit Advent Calendar one single play, or more? (I counted it by sitting, not as "24 plays.") And no one would really count The Crew "by campaign playthrough," would they? (It's not like I counted it "by hand dealt" to reach my total; I mean that on 19 separate occasions, we played multiple hands of the game.)
  

• My friends and I played the legacy games My City and My Island in their entirety in 2023, so naturally those both topped the list. We've got a couple more legacy games already on deck for 2024 -- Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West (which we began right at the end of 2023), and Sagrada Artisans. (Those two put me well on the road to a 10 x 10. Maybe I'll chase after that for 2024.)
  

• A couple of games remain my group's go-to "time for one more?" games -- Kokopelli, The Quacks of Quedlinburg, and The Crew: Mission Deep Sea. I expect these to continue their reign in 2024. (We've always open to "newer" takes on The Crew, but they don't seem to stick. See: Inside Job.) Another popular "one more?" choice is one of the "Clever" games. If you roll all four into one, I played that 24 times in 2023 -- tying it with the two legacy games. (That said, I can't imagine we'd have played the same one that many times. The variety between the versions helps a lot to refresh the experience.)

• On big group game nights, the most popular selections have changed a bit. Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig has been displaced by The Great Split, and So Clover has given ground to Fun Facts. Just One and Secret Hitler remain in the mix. But while it looks like Rear Window ruled the "group game" roost in 2023, I don't expect it to repeat next year; about 1/3 of my group really likes it, another 1/3 tolerates it, and 1/3 truly dislike it.

• Maybe I should go for playing each variant of Azul in 2024. Looks like I missed Stained Glass of Sintra in 2023.

• I think each one of those 4 Merlin plays involved a different mix of things from the "Big Box" version of the game. But I'm inclined to say that "straight-up, no expansions" is the best. (And in my opinion, the Morgana expansion is never to played, under any circumstances.)

• There were several late-in-the-year additions to my group that I expect could rack up more plays in 2024. (I haven't even gotten around to blogging about them.) These include Forest Shuffle, Great Western Trail: New Zealand, Point City, Project L, and The White Castle.

• All 3 Roll for the Galaxy plays were on Board Game Arena. I really like that game a lot. But also: I kind of never want to play that game in its physical version; digital play is so much faster and easier.

• All 3 of the Viticulture plays were cooperative, using the Viticulture World expansion. We might have played more of that, because the coop version is interesting... but it's also brutally, punishingly difficult.

• Games I really would have liked to play more of than I did: Concordia Venus (a personal favorite), Distilled, and First Rat.

We'll see what hits the game table in 2024!