Review of a boardgaming year (2015-16)

A collated list of games played is tabulated below:

No Games played	Boardgame
3	Forbidden Desert Ticket to Ride Sopio
2	Forbidden Island Hive x8 Archipelago Dominion Cribbage x6 Machi Koro x4 Carcasonne – Castle x4
1	Dungeon Petz RoboRally Alchemists Five Tribes Bohnanza Blueprints Castles of Mad King Ludwig Skulls Merchants and Marauders Blooming Gardens Quatro Chinatown Sheriff of Nottingham Black Gold Lab Wars (Kickstarter trial) Game of Thrones, the Boardgame, 2nd edition Settlers of Catan Quilt Show Parade Barking up the Wrong Tree Mr Jack x2

Some games tend to be played numerous times within a single session, these I have shown as sessions with the number of actual games played as a superscript number.

Strangely the most popular game of last year, Sewer Pirats, was not played at all this year. The ever popular Ticket to Ride and Dominion remain near the top, but were surprisingly joined by Sopio, and the Forbidden Island/Desert co-op games. Otherwise I have tended to jump around, playing many different games a single time only.

The games that have really stood out include Chinatown and Parade, both out of print, and I wish I could get a copy of each! Machi Koro was a great discovery, as was Mr Jack. Two-player games (Mr Jack, Carcasonne–Castle, Cribbage, Hive etc.) have also featured highly, and it is great to play these with Elaine on a more regular basis. Another highlight was rediscovering Settlers of Catan, which we had not played for years and had forgotten how good a game it was.

Longer games e.g. Merchants and GoT, remain a problem; devoting a whole afternoon to a single game rarely appeals to me, I think I prefer quicker games (ideally an hour and a half or less). I continue to be sucked in by new ‘shiny’ releases, but I resolve to resist and get some of the games I already possess off the shelves next year.