Gameplay Summary of 2019

by | Dec 30, 2019

It's that time of year, where I go through and start looking at all of the gaming I've done the previous year and think about how things have gone.  I will mostly mirror last year's post on this, I think.

The ten games I played the most this year:
  1. Warmachine/Hordes - 21 plays
  2. Magic: The Gathering - 17 plays
  3. KeyForge: Call of the Archons - 13 plays
  4. Warhammer Underworlds - 9 plays
  5. Cataclysm: A Second World War - 9 plays
  6. The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game - 7 plays
  7. Splendor - 7 plays
  8. Marvel Champions: The Card Game - 7 plays
  9. HATE - 7 plays
  10. Fight for Olympus - 7 plays
A few games stuck around in this group from last year- Warmachine/Hordes, Magic, Splendor, and Warhammer Underworlds have still seen quite a few plays from me this year, which is awesome.  The rest are new, although several of these are from very early in the year, or from over a two-day period.  Still, interesting to see what I have gotten on the table frequently.

Last year, I managed to get my wife to play more board games, and it reflected in what I played- Ticket to Ride, Catan and so on.  This year, due to various reasons, she played less, and the only game that made the above list was Splendor.  A shame- although I think next year she'll probably be a bit more available for gaming.

I played a total of 99 different games this year, a total of 266 plays.  This is only slightly down from last year's total of 286 total plays (and I don't remember how many games).

Let's look at how I split my gaming:

There is no Roleplaying Game section... because I didn't play any Roleplaying Games this year.  Our Mutant Year Zero campaign, run by Rob, took a break in 2018, but hasn't returned, and so far, nothing has come back to fill that.  So we won't have much to say on the RPG front for 2019.

Straight board gaming, as I imagine is usual, took up most of my gaming this past year.  Given how it's the catch-all for everything, this is something I suspect happens every year, but I haven't been paying attention thus far.  This year, 121 out of my 266 (45.5%) plays were normal board games, led by KeyForge, Splendor, and Fight for Olympus.  Splendor is still one of my wife's favorite games, so I expect that one is going to be something I get a chance to play for years to come.  KeyForge is a bit of an odd one to categorize.  When I envision 'card games', I think of games where I am building a deck beforehand, and the deck construction/tuning/testing is part of the 'card game' process.  KeyForge doesn't really have this.  Even though the primary component of the game is, indeed, cards, and the gameplay is that of a card game, I've been counting it as a board game.  Your opinion may vary, of course :).

Miniatures gaming came in second, with 60 plays (22.6%).  One of my goals this year was to play more Warmachine and Hordes, and even though I didn't quite get as much as I wanted, I did manage to play a bunch more than last year, and it made up over a third of the minis gaming I did this year.  Other games of note this year were Warhammer Underworlds (as my brother tries to get more into the game), HATE (which Rob and I played early in 2019), Kill Team, X-Wing, Infinity, and WarCry, plus a bunch of others.  I tried some new miniature games that I think I'll play a lot more in 2020 (like Marvel: Crisis Protocol), and I had plenty of reason to start dusting off my old GW minis.  Overall, it felt like a good year for playing with miniatures.

Coming in third were card games, which I define as games that not only use cards as their primary component, but also involve pre-game deck building.  Think Magic or the LCGs from Fantasy Flight Games.  Here, I had 55 plays (20.7%), with Magic leading the way, as it's the one easiest to find opponents for.  Following it, I played a lot of Lord of the Rings: The Card Game (playing through all the quests, in order, with Joey), Marvel Champions (the new LCG from FFG), and the Star Trek CCG 2nd Edition (which I've taught to my brother, and he has enjoyed).  Given that these games can be easy to fit in, I thought I'd end up playing more this year, but it just really hasn't seemed to happen.  I'm honestly not sure why, although the fact Netrunner is no longer officially supported certainly hurt.

Finally, we come to war games, or conflict simulation games.  Here, I ended up with only 30 plays (11.3%).  Given that these are frequently the longest to play and set up, these being the lowest is not surprising.  Thirty seems like a pretty good amount, however, I can't complain.  The ones I played the most were Cataclysm, War Room, and Europe in Turmoil.  Cataclysm even made my top ten, as we played each week for several weeks in a row at two points this past year.

One more pie chart for this year.  I wanted to see how frequently I play cooperative games vs competitive games.  This is how my split looks:

Okay, about what I'd expect- I play a lot more competitive games than cooperative ones.  As a matter of fact, over 85% of my games were competitive (one or more players against one or more players).  Interesting, although unsurprising.

Anyway, that's it for my look back at the previous year.  Time to start looking ahead!